Ripple n' roll, slip n' sliiiiiide

Select the Trim tool ('T'), click a clip, and you get this:

You can now use the trim left/right keys (,/.) to roll the selected clip without changing its duration or the clips either side. Or use [/] to select the in or out edits and ripple those.

This morning, in a key-fumbling daze, I selected the clip using option+click. The result is this:

…which leads to the obvious response, vis:

Try it. Now try the , / . keys.

Yeah, I know, right? Slide on by, man. Nice and smooth.

Oh, and Damien, the slacker whose blog this ostensibly is? He looks exactly like Beaker. With exactly that expression.

Keywording

One of the most common causes of my explosive swearing at FCPX is when it doesn't quite keep up with me when I'm adding keywords, and I end up with bins smart folders keyword collections called things like 'i' and 'nterviews.' Grrr. This week's MacBreak Studio freebie from the Dynamic Duo of Mac video training Steve Martin and Mark Spencer covers another way of working:

 

You know, I've been a keyword nut since FCPX came out, and I never spotted the playhead info skimming trick. Brilliant.

Adjustment layers

FCPX doesn't have them. You can't slap a layer on top of a bunch of clips to apply filters or colour correct across all of them.

 …which is a pity, because it would be terribly useful.

 …and is also not true, because you can. You just slap an empty title caption on top, then apply colour correction and bung filters on to your heart's content. Here's how:

How to build and use adjustment layers in Final Cut Pro X - fcp.co

I've just done this to slap a white balance correction and vignette across an entire scene, then tweaked colour on a shot-by-shot basis beneath. The biggest issue is that in the Project browser you only see the adjustment layer preview default, not thumbnails of the final composition.

Select NONONO! Oh damn

I wanted to find the total duration of all the media in a keyword collection, so I hit 'command+A' to select all. Only, the input focus wasn't in the Event, it was in the Event Library list.

As I type, FCPX is dutifully trying to load every clip from every Event from every drive. I have several drives connected, dozens of projects, and thousands – many thousands – of clips.

...and of course I can't interrupt it.

So that's lunch, then.

Minus Green

FCPX doesn't have a white balance filter, which on the SI scale of inexplicable counts as about five Marie Celestes. Sure, you can fiddle with the colour board, waggle some pucks around like you know what you're doing, bitch about how much easier it would be if they'd only used three colour wheels because, dammit, you were familiar with waggling those around like you knew what you were doing and you shouldn't have to learn this whole new way of waggling, FFS.

Yeah, or: you can drop a few bucks on one of the squillionity of white balance plugins out there. Which is cheaper than the time you just spent bitching about the colour board, right?

Ah, but which one to choose? There are so many.

I've used a couple of these, haven't tried them all, but my favourite so far? Nick Dashwood's in his Editor Essentials pack for FxFactory. For $49 it comes packaged with a dead pixel fixer, anamorphic reverse de-mungers of every stripe, quick gamma curve correction, and... wait for it...

...

...a preset for 'minus green.'

What, you're telling me you always wrap every practical fluo tube in minus green gel ahead of every shoot? T'ch yeah, right. Oh, you have a bridge for sale? Sure I'm interested. Let me finish this post first, m'kay?

Right, so making people look less like aliens from the planet Queasy is one of those things we do every.single.damned.day, but lining things up on that itty-bitty skin vector is quality time when you could be down the bar. Deity Dashwood brings a preset that, on my footage, nails it. Hard.

Mind you, Jonathan Richards is a nice guy too and his HyColo(u)r plugin has a green caste removal checkbox. Dammit, choices! How am I supposed to get any work done? I'm done with FCPX, I'm jumping ship for Premiere Pro!

What's that? Premiere doesn't have a minus green tool by default either?

Pour me that damned drink, I'm gonna explore Lightworks.

Leave the bottle.

Please don't ever use transitions like this

Why are [nearly] all the transitions in FCPX shit? In fact why are [nearly] all transitions shit?

Cross fade is about the only transition you need regularly. Here's what larry Jordan has to say:

"The thing I like about transitions is that they can add life to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative".

No Larry. No.

Exporting for years!

About 732 million hours? That's about 30 million days. Which is about 4 million weeks or 84 thousand years! But is always speeds up towards the end doesn't it?