March 2nd, 2010

What's Your Preference?

Every software program, no matter how big or small, has preferences and Final Cut Pro is no exception. So, here's what you should know about FCP preferences.

You will find the User Preferences under the Final Cut Pro Menu. Choosing and setting your preferences can help you edit within certain parameters. Final Cut Pro will remember the preferences you set. In fact, you can copy these preferences and and use them on any other computer you may want to edit on. For example, If you're working on the same project at both your home and office, just copy your preferences to a flash drive and take them along to with you.

The preferences are divided under six categories: General, Editing, Labels, Timeline Options, Render Control and Audio Outputs.

Here are some of the important features to remember when setting your preferences.

General Tab

These preferences give you control over features such as the number of Undo levels you can assign while editing.  You can have as many as 99 undos, although I wonder if anyone ever uses that many! The point is that they're there if you need them. The default is 10 which could be sufficient for your needs. However, I like to set my Undos to about 30, because I find that covers me for my editing "backup" needs. You can also set the number of clips that appear in the Recent Clips pop-up in the Viewer, and you can specify how often you want the AutoSave Vault to automatically save your projects as well as the number of projects you want to continue to save. If you ever see a red audio render line due to too many audio tracks, raise the number of tracks you would like for real-time audio mixing. There are also some Capture functions, like do you want to abort your capture on dropped frames, etc.

Editing Tab

This tab contains options for durations on Still/Freeze, preview and post roll, and whether you want Dynamic Trimming on or off. If you've got a batch of stills you want to import, and you happen to want them all marked for a specific duration, say to cut together as a music montage, just change the Still/Freeze duration to the music beat duration, and THEN import the stills. They will all be imported with that duration.

Labels

If you want to change the name of the color labels to color code bins, sequences, and clips, etc., you do that in the Labels tab. Default label names include Good Take, Interview, B Roll, etc. Labelling can be very useful to help you keep track of different clips, particularly if you have lots of footage to screen.

Timeline Options

The preferences in the Timeline Options tab may seem very similar to the Sequence Settings tab. However, the difference is that the settings you choose for your Timeline in the User Preferences window will determine how any NEW sequences are set up. These settings will not change ANY current or already existing sequences. If a new project requires 8 audio tracks and 6 video tracks, then you can choose that number of default tracks, along with a specific display option and track height, etc. When you create a new sequence and open it in the Timeline, it will appear with those options. You can also choose whether you want the audio waveforms to be visible as well as other options.

Render Control

The Render tab allows you to set parameters when you are rendering like frame rate and resolution, or a particular Codec, and what quality you want to see your Motion templates displayed in Final Cut.

Audio Output

This last tab is  where you can choose an audio preset for new sequences, such as 5.1 surround sound. In this window you can also customize audio presets.

It is important to set up your preferences before you start editing, but rest assured you can change them at any time during yor editing process.

Another good thing to know about Preferences is If your system seems buggy or FCP keeps crashing, deleting the preferences is a usually good quick fix. To do that, find your preferences at User Name > Library > Preferences > in a folder called Final Cut Pro User Data.

It's always worthwhile to take a moment to customize your User Preferences. So don't forget to build that into the beginning of a new editing session.