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 –