FCP 7: An Obscure Tidbit Of Knowledge

Posted on by Larry

[ This article was first published in the February, 2011, issue of
Larry’s Final Cut Pro Newsletter. Click here to subscribe. ]

 

Misha Tenenbaum sent me this simple trick you can use to amaze your friends.

Last week I went in for an interview at the Conan O’Brian show. One thing that stood out to me was the way they used (or rather didn’t bother to use) multi-clip.

 

On their show, each camera has synchronized timecode for multi-clipping. However, instead of creating a multi-clip, they load all the isolated angle’s into the viewer at once. Then (and here’s the kicker) they match frame the line cut in the timeline and OPTION click the recent clips menu to pick the new angle. Whatever angle is picked from the recent clips list will have the playhead jump directly to the same timecode that the line cut was on. I was shocked!

 

A great time saver. And an almost completely obscure titbit of knowledge that so few people would appreciate. Thanks again for including me in the newsletter last month.

Larry replies: OK, I’ve read this several times and still don’t understand it… Let me try and apply it.

1. I have four clips in the Browser with matching timecode. Each clip is a different angle.

2. I select ALL four clips in the Browser and drag them to the Viewer. This does two things – loads the clips into the Viewer, which we don’t care about, but also loads a list of those clips into the Recent Clip pop-up menu, which we care about a LOT!

3. In the Timeline, I have a line cut / master clip with timecode that matches the clips now loaded into the Viewer.

4.I put my playhead in the Timeline at the point I want to make an edit and type F to load the match frame of the source clip in the Browser into the Viewer.

5. Then, hold the Option key down and select one of the other clips from the Recent Clips pop-up menu. (The Down Mountain clip is from an earlier exercise and should be ignored for this example.)

6. Wow! The selected clip loads into the Viewer and matches the position of the In, Out, and Playhead of the match-framed clip, which allows you to easily edit the new angle down to the Timeline.

Whoa! Way faster. Thanks, Misha. This is a trick that I didn’t know.


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4 Responses to FCP 7: An Obscure Tidbit Of Knowledge

  1. mike janowski says:

    And this is faster than having the Multiclip button bar mapped to F1, F2, etc., how?

    I mean yes, the option match frame is a great bit of obscure knowledge. Seems that properly prepped multiclips would still be faster.

  2. Steven says:

    This is great. And is there a way in Final Cut 7 to “restripe” timecode on a clip. I have some mixed format multi camera edits that this would make more sense with rather than converting everything to prores for the edit.

  3. Marty says:

    Nice tidbit any shortcuts are great!Thanx!

  4. Hannah says:

    Is there any way that I can use this with three camera angles that do not have matching timecode? More specifically, can I add auxiliary timecode to two of the angles to match the master shot and still use this function?

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