Ten Tips For A Better Final Cut Pro Experience

digitalfilms blog by Oliver Peters

Many experienced editors making the transition to Apple’s Final Cut Pro often struggle with some of FCP’s core operating features. This is especially true of many Avid editors who view working in Final Cut akin to learning a different language. Here are 10 quick tips on how to run and organize FCP edit sessions that will hopefully ease your frustration.

1. Edit with sequence content. Many editors like to cut one sequence into another. This forces FCP to nest the source sequence – a feature that I consider evil. Nesting causes a number of operational problems and should be used sparingly and only when intended. To avoid this automatic behavior, remap your Overwrite (F10) and Insert (F9) keyboard commands to become Overwrite/Insert with Sequence Content. The behavior won’t change with master clips, but when you cut one sequence into another, the original source clips show up on the new timeline, instead of a single nest. read more...