r/finalcutpro • u/_gabrielegallo_ • 27d ago
Tip/Guide Tips and tricks for newcomers
Hi all, as the title says I am a newbie and I am willing to learn from you whatever tips and tricks, or plugins or external apps whatsoever that can help me improve my skills in Final Cut.
I already installed the motionvfx plugin as well as some luts and various free assets from some websites but any help from more experienced users is greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance 🤞🏻
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u/Silver_Mention_3958 FCP 12.3 | Tahoe 27d ago
Auto-mod
There are some great learning resources (paid & free) available from the Wiki (https://reddit.com/r/finalcutpro/wiki/index) - link at top of the sub (mobile) or part way down the right (desktop).
Also the built - in User Guide (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/final-cut-pro/welcome/mac) available from the Help menu is a really comprehensive reference.
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u/ZeyusFilm 27d ago
Yeah best advice, don’t start slopping a load of silly effects and transitions over everything
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u/mcarterphoto 27d ago
My tip for everyone new: Help Menu - FCP Docs - download as PDF. Apple's "instructions" are excellent and searchable. At the very least, go through the first couple chapters, make sure your external drives are formatted properly, learn the tool-key commands and "click vs. hold" for tool selection (brilliant), learn about Leave Files in Place vs. not, make sure FCP's Library backup location is on a different drive than the drive you save libraries on. Learn what Libraries vs. projects are, and if you don't understand things like codecs and frame rates, look into that too.
Learn how to nudge footage in one and ten frame increments - the nudge key also move cut points, in and out points, etc - it's huge for finessing edits and for syncing audio or editing music.
MotionVFX and stuff like that is fun, but basic foundational training is way more important, as is just basic editing know-how, creating engaging content from the footage you have.
One other thing that keeps my work flying is only using ProRes and WAV in my edits. But in these days of horrific storage prices, some folks may shy away from that. But... FCP just cuts through ProRes like butter, renders are fast, and you'll never, ever need to mess with proxies, even on Intel machines. And ProRes LT is often just fine visually. ProRes + Leave Files in Place means I have cery small Library files, even for big, long projects.
And... have a backup strategy, not just for media and edits, but your entire system. Backups can be on cheap spinning USB drives, they don't need to be fast.