A shortcut to add to your FCP keyboard

On recent jobs I’ve been having to modify the motion and filter settings for many clips on my timeline. If was applying the settings from one clip to many, I could use command-X and command-option-V. Unluckily for me in this case, I’ve had to change only one slider in the motion tab or one slider in a filter tab – where I need to keep varied values in other tabs.

That’s where I can save some time by using the ‘playhead sync: open’ mode. This connects the viewer to the canvas such that the clip under the playhead in the timeline is automatically opened in the viewer. If you have a specific filter or panel open with the current clip, any clip you move to will have that panel open.

There is a pop-up at the centre of the top of the viewer and canvas, but sometimes Final Cut switches out of the mode, so I add the command to my keyboard layout using the Tools:Keyboard Layout:Customize command –