Timeline Tips

Timeline History – A Method To The Madness

Posted by fcpxpert1 on March 27, 2017
Posted in: Timeline Tips. 4 Comments

Finally! This is something that probably everybody knows, but it’s been driving me crazy for years. “It” is the fact that, if you have multiple Projects open in the Timeline, sometimes they just “randomly” disappear from the Timeline History.

Say I have Projects 1, 2, 3 ,4 ,5 and 6 open. I work on each, open a new one, attempt to go forward to another and… half of them are now gone from the History. Why?!?! Well… here’s why, and it’s really simple.

When you open any Project, it becomes the last thing in your history. So, if you have Projects 1, 2, 3 ,4 ,5 and 6 open, are working on Project 3, and then open a new project (Project 7), Projects 4, 5, and 6 are now gone and 7 is now the last Project in the History.

So, now that I know this… if I want to open a new project and keep my History intact, I just go to the last project in the History, and then open the new Project. Easy.

There’s a catch though….

When you  open a Compound Clip from a Project Timeline, the Compound Clip becomes the last thing in your history. So, If I want to open a CC from Project 3, and keep 4, 5, 6, and 7 in the History, I go to the Browser and double click Project 3 which then makes it the last thing opened and moves it to the end of the History. So I now have Projects 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 3 and a CC as my history. Out of order, but all still in the History.

Anyhow… hope you find this helpful, I sure did.

Don’t Fight The Magnetic Timeline – An Oldie But Goodie

Posted by fcpxpert1 on August 3, 2016
Posted in: Timeline Tips. Tagged: . Leave a comment

The other day someone was asking (again) about the reasoning behind the FCP X Magnetic Timeline. I started to (again) attempt an explanation, and then realized that about a year ago I wrote an article for The Creative Cow that explains it pretty well. So, because I’ve been busy working and stuff and have nothing new to post, I thought I’d regurgitate the link to the article here, in case it’s of any use to someone. Many of you have probably seen it, but it’s all I got right now. 😉

I just re-read it and it’s actually not bad. Maybe someone else wrote it. lol

Click Here or on the pic to check out the article.

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Pancakes, Shmancakes! – Premiere vs FCP X

Posted by fcpxpert1 on February 15, 2016
Posted in: FCPX At Work, Timeline Tips. Tagged: , . 10 Comments

Pancakes! Huh?

For some time now, aficionados of Premiere Pro have touted its ability to do “Pancake” editing. Huh? Well, in Premiere, you can stack (get it? stack… like pancakes) multiple timelines to quickly access string outs or sequences of selects etc., and add them to a cut. This is also often cited – by FCP X critics – as something you can’t do in FCP X.

Now, this is a really nice feature… in Premiere. But, it’s a technique that is completely unnecessary in FCP X. Why? Because in X you have access to everything, always. Have a look at the video below for an explanation. It’s not too long and rambling… honest!

Compound Clips vs. Nesting

Another “criticism” of FCP X, and alleged benefit of Premiere, is that it allows you to use a sequence as a source, and FCP X does not. Again, this is false. In X, you just do it differently… using compound clips.

In Premiere, making a sequence into a Nested Clip to use as a source is possible, but it’s really not a great way to do it. The main reason is that you can’t easily reveal the multiple clips inside the Nest once you’ve cut it into a sequence.

You also can use a sequence as a source, but the track targeting madness involved in doing that, with anything but the simplest sequence, is… maddening. So you use “Pancakes” as a workaround.

In X, using a Compound Clip made from a source project is a great way to use an existing cut as a source, as getting back to the clips in the Compound Clip is simple.  The video below illustrates this, but the difference can be summed up in these “instructions”:

How to break apart a Nested Sequence In Premiere

Ensure the nest toggle is off (upper left corner of timeline window), mark in and out on your nested clip, put the playhead at the top of the clip (in point) then match frame back to the nested sequence, then overwrite with the appropriate patching and voila your nested clip will be replaced with the contents of your original sequence.

How to break apart a Compound Clip In FCP X

Select the clip and press SHIFT-CMD-G.

Connection Point Fun-SFX Spotting

Posted by fcpxpert1 on November 3, 2015
Posted in: Timeline Tips. Tagged: , . 4 Comments

Here’s another of my infrequent, semi coherent tip videos. 🙂 For FCP X pros, probably nothing exciting here, it’s just a little demo about using connection points to quickly and accurately spot SFX when doing sound design. People complain about audio in FCP X all the time, but it’s actually my favorite NLE in which to do this sort of stuff.

Anyway, hope you find it useful.

EDIT: It’s been pointed out, correctly, that this is way too long… After about 2 minutes, I’ve made the point. I guess I need a producer. lol

Quick Tip-Clip Skimming Fun

Posted by fcpxpert1 on March 23, 2015
Posted in: Timeline Tips. Tagged: , . 1 Comment

Yet another in my infrequently updated series of tips. As usual, you may know this, but if you don’t you should. You’re using the clip skimmer right? You should be. OPT-CMD-S turns it on. With it you can skim individual clips to see and hear what they are. Very useful for compositing and Projects with piles of audio. This tip is about using it to make overcutting picture in FCP X much more pleasant.

In my glamorous world, we’ll often start cutting with a source, and then after some time, we get an updated source. We then go through our cuts and replace all the clips with the new source. It’s a common task in many workflows, VFX in particular. Always fun in any NLE. :-/

The replace commands in FCP X are very nice, but there’s currently one common command missing, match frame replace. Most of the time, this isn’t a big deal, you can always find a match at the head or tail of a clip. But if the head or tail is buried in a transition, then match frame replace – to match to a frame in the visible portion of a clip – is what you use. In FCP X, it’s not there. But, as usual, there’s a simple way to deal with this… the Clip Skimmer comes to the rescue!

In my usual rambling, semi coherent fashion, I’ll show you how in the short video below. If you’re familiar with the overcutting process, you can skip to about 2 minutes in for the actual tip. Hope you find it useful!

Quick Tip – Compound Clip Match Frame

Posted by fcpxpert1 on March 5, 2015
Posted in: Timeline Tips. Tagged: , . 4 Comments

Another quickie. This is something that you may know, but for those that don’t it’s pretty handy. It is possible to jump into a Compound Clip that’s in a Project and have the Playhead position in the CC match that of the project. Very useful for adjusting timing of picture in a Compound Clip to music in a project, or music/sfx in a Compound Clip to Project picture. If you don’t have 2 minutes to watch the video, here’s the tip:

Don’t use the button on the clip to “step in” to the Compound. Just double click the top of the clip. Give it a try!

Unfortunately doesn’t work for MultiClips, so send feedback to Apple. Hope it’s useful. 🙂

Disable Connections “Lock” Trick…

Posted by fcpxpert1 on February 16, 2015
Posted in: Timeline Tips. Tagged: , . 2 Comments

Just another quick tip with which you may be familiar. If not, it’s very useful. As you probably know, holding the accent/tilde key down while dragging clips will “disable” clip connections temporarily. When you release the key, connections are enabled again. This tip shows you an easy, (and undocumented) way to “lock” connections off so you need not hold the key down.

If you don’t feel like watching the video… the trick is to press the accent/tilde key and, while holding it down, press the SHIFT key and then release both keys at the same time. To reenable clip connections, simply press the accent/tilde key again. Comes in handy…

Another One… Reverb Tail Out Trick

Posted by fcpxpert1 on February 12, 2015
Posted in: Timeline Tips. Tagged: , , , . 2 Comments

So, ya know how you sometimes have a clip, usually a music ender or something, that you’d like to add a reverb tail out to? And how you have to put it in a Compound Clip, add some Gap, go back to the project and extend the clip so you’ll have some media for the ‘verb to tail out in? Or you set an I/O range that extends beyond the clip, export it, import the longer clip you made and add your reverb.

I’ve been doing that in every NLE I’ve used. Actually… I think Vegas might act more lIke a DAW and verb will tail out past a clip boundary. But… you gotta do the workaround in FCP Old, Pr or MC.

Well, in FCP X, turns out you don’t need to do that at all. There’s an easier way – using the audio hold frame “panhandling” trick. Check it out, and thanks to a viewer of one of my other videos for pointing this out, it’s an enormous timesaver…