Let me reveal you 4 hidden shortcuts inside
of Final Cut Pro X that are not set by default. Number one: Audio Fades. If you’ve ever worked with the audio clip,
which I assume you did as an editor, right? You’ve probably encountered the weird annoying
clicking sounds between your clips. And no, that’s not Clickers invading your
video. Those noises appear when you suddenly cut
the outgoing or incoming audio track. Removing them is actually quite easy. The simplest option that people use is to
create an audio transition between them. Hover your mouse over the blue handler at
the edge of the clip, so that your mouse turns into two triangles pointing left and right. Drag this handler from the edge to create
an audio-fade. Repeat the process both for the fade-in and
fade-out, and now the click should disappear. But we can do much better than that. Let’s say you’ve cut down the huge talking
head sequence, resulting in gazillions of clicking sounds between clips. If you decide to create all audio fades manually,
your client will surely die from an old age while waiting for you. Instead, press CMD+OPT+K to open the Keyboard
Customization window. On the top right corner there is a search
bar. Click on the bar and search for the Audio
Fade. You will see four commands, namely toggle
audio fade in, fade out, apply audio fades and remove audio fades. But what’s interesting is that these four
commands are not assigned to any shortcut. Let’s change that. To see which shortcut you can use, hold on
your keyboard/or click ON cmd, shift, opt, or ctrl, or even combine them together, and
then hover over any grey key. If the name of the function pops up, the shortcut
is already in use, but if it’s not, it isn’t. Now click on the command you would like to
assign a shortcut for and press this combination on your keyboard. Personally, I decided to use F1 for audio
fade in, F2 for audio fade out, F3 for both audio fades, and F4 for removing the fades. If it’s your first time assigning custom
shortcuts, Final Cut will prompt you to duplicate the command set since you can’t change the
default one. Press ok and name it as you wish. Your new custom command set appears in the
list at the top left corner of the window. And in fact, you can create multiple custom
shortcut sets and switch between them when necessary. Now let’s close this window and look at
our new commands in action. Let’s say we have the clicking noise here. Select both of the clips and press F3 to apply
audio fades from both ends. As you can see, two handlers will automatically
be shifted from the edges, creating the transition. However, they are too long, resulting in the
voice over completely disappearing for a brief moment. In the best-case scenario, we want them to
be unnoticeable and smooth, which means the fades should be as small as possible. Let’s remove our fades with F4. Now, all you need is to go to Final Cut Pro
tab —> Preferences —> Editing, and here you will see the parameter called duration,
audio fade. This is the default duration for the audio
fades that Final Cut Pro is going to use when you apply them. Change this field to (point zero one) 0.01
seconds, which is the smallest possible value for the transition. Close the window and apply the audio fades
again. You might think that nothing happened, but
if you zoom into the section between two clips, you will see that the audio fade was, in fact
added, and the clicking sound disappears as well. Now we can press CMD+A to select all clips
and press F3 to apply audio fades for all of the clips at the same time, saving us hours
of manual work. Number two: Faster Retiming. You might know that by selecting the clip
and pressing CMD+R, the retime editor pops up. Here you can drag the handler on the right
to either speed up the clip or slow it down. Even more than that, you can either double
click on that handler or press CTRL+OPT+R to open the custom retime editor. In this editor, not only you can set the precise
speed in percentage manually, but you can also reverse the clip. Reversing clips is useful when you need to
change zoom in to zoom out, or vice versa, or to pretend that you are a hero of the Tenet
movie, epically reversing time and all. So, press CMD+OPT+K to open the Keyboard Customization
window and in the search bar, search for Retime. In fact, there are many commands that are
not set by default and you can assign them by yourself. For example, fast with double speed or slow
50%. However, we will focus on these two commands:
reverse and rewind. Select Reverse command and press SHIFT+OPT+R,
and then SHIFT+OPT+T for Rewind. You can choose any other combination that
suits you, but I just discovered that there are not so many shortcuts that use SHIFT+OPT,
meaning you will have a lot of available customization with these two keys. So now, pressing SHIFT+OPT+R reverses your
clip in one click, and the best thing is that you can do it with multiple clips at the same
time. But what about the second command, rewind? Surely, you could copy paste the same clip
several times and reverse every second copy, creating this effect. But we can do better. Select the clip and press the shortcut that
you just assigned for rewind. In my case, it’s SHIFT+OPT+T. Not only it
is easier and faster, but it’s more convenient since instead of having a bunch of separate
clips, now we have one clip only. It would save your time in case you decide
to apply certain effects on your clip, only to realize that now you need to copy these
effects, select the remaining clips and paste them manually every time you decide to change
something. Moreover, the rewind shortcut is powerful
because it works with a range as well. Press R to switch to the range tool, select
the part of the clip that you want to rewind, and press your newly assigned shortcut again. Number three: immediate volume manipulation. One of the most annoying FCPX techniques with
mouse is adjusting the volume of the audio clip… Slowly, slowly… Sure, you can try to hold CMD while dragging
the handler down and up, which makes the handler move slowly and much more precisely. But it still takes too long. Sure, you can adjust the volume with CTRL
+ and – shortcuts, but what if you want to silence the audio? Good luck with reaching the minus infinity. That’s why you might want to add the shortcut
that silences the audio immediately. Press CMD+OPT+K to open the Keyboard Customization
window and in the search bar, search for Volume. There are two interesting commands that are
not assigned to any shortcut, one of them being set volume to silence. Select that and press CTRL+ENTER. Now, the reason why I chose CTRL for this
shortcut is that all the other volume related shortcuts use CTRL too. Close the window, select the clips that need
to be silenced and press CTRL+ENTER. Awesome. But what if you need UNO REVERSE? What if you want to reset the volume back
to zero? One way would be to press CTRL+OPT+L, which
is a shortcut for adjusting volume absolute. And once the appearance of this little bar
is changed to purple, input a specific volume that you want your clip to have, for example
0. That’s useful, but we can do better. That’s where the second command comes in
handy, namely reset volume. For that one, I’ve decided to use SHIFT+
CTRL+ENTER. Choose your clips, press SHIFT+CTRL+ENTER
and all of them immediately are reset to the initial volume. The best thing about these shortcuts is that
both of them work with the range. Press R to switch to the range tool, select
a part of the clip that needs to be silenced, and press newly assigned shortcut to silence
the specified range only. Essentially, what Final Cut has done is the
same thing as if you manually created four audio keyframes by holding OPT left mouse
click and silenced the middle part. Adjust these keyframes if needed. In the same way, reset the volume of the specified
range with the second command. Number four: Let’s say you want to create
an animation for the logo. First, I will drop the image into the timeline,
and then convert it to the compound clip by pressing OPT+G. Next, I will apply a circular mask to make
it look like a logo, as well as some effects and transformations on top. Cool. The best thing about compound clips is that
now, I can essentially open my compound clip by double clicking on it, and then change
this image to something else, like this picture. Now, go back by clicking on this little arrow
here or by pressing CMD+[ on the keyboard. As you can see, we still have absolutely the
same animation but with new image without recreating everything from scratch. But here is the problem. Let’s say you actually needed both versions
of these logo animations. Well, you can just duplicate the compound
clip and change the image in the second compound clip, right? Now, let’s see what happens to the first
compound clip. Both of them were changed. Let me explain. Imagine that the content of the compound clip
is a top branch of the tree called parent. Well, both of these compound clips that contain
this content are the children of this parent. They both derive from the same parent, which
means that changing the parent causes all children to change as well. Now, don’t freak out and get depressed,
because this issue can be solved in only one click. Press CMD+OPT+K to open the Keyboard Customization
window and in the search bar, search for Parent. Here you will see the command called “Reference
New Parent Clip.” Select that, and press SHIFT+CMD+P, which
stands for Parent, or any other alternative you would like. Now let’s repeat the experiment. Select the second clip and press newly assigned
shortcut SHIFT+CMD+P. Open its content, change the image, and go back with CMD+[. As you can see, only the second compound clip
was affected. Essentially, what this command does is that
it creates a copy of the parent clip and makes the compound clip reference the new parent
instead. As a result, now you have two completely separate
variations of the same animation that was done only once. Note, that the name of the new compound clip
has changed, indicating that it is in fact a new, separate compound clip. Click here if you want to learn 101 crazy
FCPX shortcuts in only 15 minutes. Press subscribe and like shortcut to support
the channel but remember that the first rule of the edit club is we don’t talk about
edit club.
Some very handy tips here.
Regarding the first tip about audio, there's an even better function buried away in the Command Editor. Search for Crossfade and assign it a shortcut to taste. Then select two or more clips in the timeline and apply it: FCPX automatically extends the audio handles either side of the cut and applies a rapid crossfade across the overlap.
These were great, thank you!
Ok so this is a gamechanger