Final Cut Pro Presets

Nov 13, 2019 As powerful as Final Cut Pro is, there is no denying it that editing a video is a long process. But with the right preset, you can save a lot of time and cut your video editing time significantly. We’ve rounded up the best free presets and templates for Final Cut Pro that you can download and use in your projects. See Add video effects in Final Cut Pro. Select the clip in the timeline. Do one of the following: Choose File Save Video Effects Preset. Open the Video inspector, then click Save Effects Preset at the bottom of the inspector. The Save Video Effects Preset window appears, with any applied or adjusted effects selected in the Attributes list.

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  1. About Easy Setups, Presets, Settings, and Preferences
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Final Cut Pro's designers have carefully organized the tools you use to configure settings and preferences. The goal of this organization is to make it much easier for editors using the most common hardware and video formats to configure FCP—and much more difficult for users to unintentionally modify individual settings within a preset configuration. This chapter covers in detail the various preferences and customization options that are available in Final Cut Pro.
This chapter is from the book
Final Cut Pro HD for Mac OS X: Visual QuickPro Guide

This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

Final
Final Cut Pro HD for Mac OS X: Visual QuickPro Guide
Final cut pro presets folder

Final Cut Pro's designers have carefully organized the tools you use to configure settings and preferences. The goal of this organization is to make it much easier for editors using the most common hardware and video formats to configure FCP—and much more difficult for users to unintentionally modify individual settings within a preset configuration.

Final Cut Pro Presets

FCP's preset principle is balanced by a highly customizable interface. At the end of this chapter you'll learn about options for reconfiguring Final Cut Pro's interface to complement your personal working preferences.

About Easy Setups, Presets, Settings, and Preferences

Capture, device control, and sequence settings are all organized into preset configurations, and these Audio/Video presets are grouped into master presets called Easy Setups.

Any of these preset configurations are completely customizable, but most FCP users should be able to choose an Easy Setup based on their hardware and video format, specify a scratch disk for media capture on the Scratch tab of the System Settings window, and forget about settings until they change their external hardware.

FCP 4 preference settings are accessed from four menu choices: Easy Setup, Audio/Video Settings, User Preferences, and System Settings (Figure 3.1).

Figure 3.1 Access preference settings from four Final Cut Pro menu choices: Easy Setup, Audio/Video Settings, User Preferences, and System Settings.

Easy Setup

An Easy Setup is a master preset configuration of multiple Final Cut Pro settings: presets for a Device Control preset, a Capture preset, a Sequence preset, and Audio/Video Playback settings. Instead of choosing several presets and Video and Audio Playback settings using various tabs, you can make one selection in a single window: Easy Setup. FCP offers several standard Easy Setups, but you also have the option of customizing an Easy Setup.

Any customized setups you create are stored in the Custom Settings folder in the Final Cut Pro Documents folder, which makes your custom setups portable.

Audio/Video settings

FCP's Audio/Video settings have their own preference window, called Audio/Video Settings. That's where you can make detailed adjustments to your Sequence presets, Capture presets, Device Control presets, Video Playback, and Audio Playback settings, should the need arise. Your Audio/Video settings are summarized on the Summary tab. If for some reason you want to modify your underlying basic QuickTime settings, you can access them through the tabs in the Audio/Video Settings window.

User Preferences and System Settings

Unlike the Audio/Video settings, which are largely dictated by your hardware and video format, a preference is a setting that specifies how you want to work with your media in Final Cut Pro. FCP 4 preferences have been divided between two different windows: User Preferences and System Settings. The settings in these windows affect all your Final Cut Pro projects.

Accessing preferences and settings

Frequently, Final Cut Pro provides more than one route to access your settings for presets and preferences. For example, you can access the capture preferences from the Capture Presets tab in the Audio/Video Settings window, and also directly in the Log and Capture window by selecting a preset from the Capture/Input pop-up menu located on the Capture Settings tab (Figure 3.2). The list of Capture presets you access directly from the Log and Capture window is labeled Capture/Input, but the preset list is the same, and any changes you make on the Log and Capture window's Capture Settings tab will be reflected on the Audio/Video Settings window's Summary tab (Figure 3.3) and in the Easy Setup window (Figure 3.4).

Figure 3.2 Select a different Capture preset from the Capture/Input pop-up menu located on the Capture Settings tab of the Log and Capture window.

Figure 3.3 Your change is reflected on the Summary tab of the Audio/Video Settings window.

Figure 3.4 You'll also see your Capture preset change in the Easy Setup window. All three windows reference the same set of Capture preferences.

One of the reasons FCP's designers based their configuration scheme on presets is that they wanted to make it easy to completely configure the program settings without having to alter individual settings. And it is easy to get confused. Some settings windows look the same but actually modify different program settings. For example, Sequence presets and Capture presets have separate QuickTime settings options. A mismatch between capture settings and sequence settings makes clips play back poorly when you start to edit them in the Timeline, and a settings mismatch is one of the primary causes of user difficulties with FCP.

So how can you avoid problems and confusion? When you launch Final Cut Pro for the first time after installing it, your answers to the Initial Setup questions determine the settings you see in the Easy Setup, Audio/Video Settings, and User Preferences windows. It's best to start with the default settings, use the recommended Easy Setup, and make changes only if you have a specific problem. If you do make changes, your troubleshooting will be most effective if you make one change at a time.

[ Updated Aug. 16, 2020, with a variety of wording changes.]

Creating the perfect effect takes a lot of time. Wouldn’t it be great if, once you create an effect, you could save it to reuse again later?

Good news! Final Cut Pro X provides exactly that: an Effects Preset.


Image Courtesy: EditStock (www.editstock.com)

Here’s an example. In this image, I’ve added:

  • Color Presets > Dry
  • Stylize > Vignette
  • Transform > Scaling
  • Transform > Position
  • And used the color wheels to increase saturation in the midtones

Whew! All to give the image an “old-timey” look, which fits perfectly with the story.

CREATE AN EFFECTS PRESET

Once you’ve created the effects combination you want to save, look to the bottom right of the Video Inspector. There is the Save Effects Preset button.

That opens this window. At the top, I named this effect “Old-Time Memory”.

All presets need to be stored in a category. Click the Category menu and choose where you want the presets stored. While Color Presets would work, I decided to create a new category, so I chose New Category at the bottom of the menu.

This displays a small window where I can name the category. All we are doing here is creating a folder where this effect – and any future effects – will be stored. The actual preset name was entered earlier in the Name field.

In the Attributes section, check the effects you want to save with the preset. In my case, I want to save the look, but not the changes I made in the Transform menu. The image on the left shows all the applied effects, while the image on the right shows my final choices; I’m keeping the effects, but not keeping the changed Transform settings.

Notice the yellow diamonds in the Keyframe column? These indicate that an effect has keyframes applied to it.

Cut

If the effect you are saving includes keyframes – and in my example, I’m excluding them – these bottom two choices are relevant:

Pro
  • Maintain timing. This does not adjust the position of the keyframes when you apply the preset to a new clip.
  • Stretch to fit. This adjusts the position of keyframes based upon the duration of the original clip compared to the duration of the new clip. For example, if the original clip was three seconds long and you apply a preset containing keyframes to a new clip that’s six seconds long, the duration between keyframes will be doubled. If you apply it to a clip that’s only 1.5 seconds, the duration between key frames will be cut in half.

If you don’t use keyframes, you don’t care about the Keyframe Timing setting.

If you do use keyframes, most of the time you will probably want to choose Maintain Timing; however Final Cut gives you the option to adjust keyframe positions based upon clip durations.

Click Save and you are done.

APPLYING A PRESET


To apply a preset, open the Effects Browser, go to the Category you saved the effect into and apply it, the same as any other effect.

REMOVING EFFECTS Minitool partition wizard gezginler.

You have three options when you need to remove effects from a clip: Best torrent client macos catalina.

  • Select the clip, then manually remove effects using the appropriate Inspector.
  • Edit > Remove Effects. This removes all effects applied to the selected clip, or clips.
  • Edit > Remove Attributes. This displays a dialog allow you to select which effects, that are currently applied to a clip, you want to remove (see screen shot). Blue boxes indicate effects that are applied to a clip. Uncheck a box to remove that specific effect.

While you can manually remove effects using the Inspector, the Edit menu options are much faster. In any case, select the timeline clip, or clips, to which you want to remove effects, then choose the appropriate option.

DELETING A PRESET

Effects are stored in the Library of your Home Directory. But, rather than dig through the Library to find these files, the easiest way to delete them is to right-click the effect you want to remove and choose Reveal in Finder.

NOTE: For the record, custom effects are stored in: [Home Directory] > Library > Application Support > ProApps > Effects Presets.

Then, select and delete the effect you no longer want, the same as any other file. Be careful not to delete any files in this folder that you did not create!

Even after you move this file to the Trash, it may still appear in Final Cut. Once you quit the app and relaunch it, any deleted effects will be removed.

NOTE: Any effects presets, or custom effects in general, that are applied to clips in the Timeline will NOT be removed when you trash an effects preset. Once applied to a clip, effects stay applied, unless you remove them from each clip manually.

SUMMARY

Final Cut Pro Trial

Effects presets can save us a lot of time when we are reusing effects across multiple clips, or multiple projects. And creating them only takes a few seconds. Now you know how.

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