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Final Cut Thumbnails
Is there a way to make the final cut thumbnail preview in the Browser preview a different frame other than the very first frame? The editing assistant was capturing the last frame of each previous take to the new take thus every thumbnail is not indicating what is in the take. Or is there a way to batch remove the first frame out of every video clip? (There woud be close to 1000).
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4 Replies
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Hi David
Its called the “poster frame” and there are number of ways to change it:
To set the poster frame of a clip in the Viewer
Double-click a clip in the Browser to open it in the Viewer.
In the Viewer, navigate to the frame you want to use as the poster frame for the clip.
Choose Mark > Set Poster Frame (or press Control-P).To set the poster frame in the Browser in large icon view
Use the hand tool (h) to scrub through a clip until you get to the frame you want.
Press and hold down the Control key, then release the mouse button.I’m sorry, I don’t know any obvious way to batch change poster frames.
Best
Andy -
There’s no Final Cut way of doing this.
There are two directions you could go:
1. Export an XML of the clips you want to modify and use another application to modify all the in points of the clips and re-import the XML as a new project (Final Cut’s XML format doesn’t include Poster frame information, so you’ll have to use the fact that the default poster frame is the in point).
2. Use a keyboard and mouse recording app to record the operations to change the In points or Poster frame of one clip, and modify the macro to virtually press the keys 20 or 100 times. QuicKeys would be best, but I managed to use Automator to do the job:
a. With the browser window open, and your first clip selected, start Automator
b. In the main Automator window choose a Custom workflow
c. Make sure the browser window is visible on screen
d. Press the Record button in the Automator window to start a ‘Watch Me Do’ action. The following needs to be done quickly as Automator records in real time.
e. Press Return (opens the clip in the Viewer)
f. Press Shift-I (jump to in point)
g. Press the right cursor key (to move to the next frame, or Shift right cursor key to move 1 second on from the in point)
h. Press Control-P (To set the poster frame)
i. Press command-4 (To bring the browser to the front)
j. Press the down cursor key (to select the next clip down in the browser)
k. Find the floating Automator window and press the stop buttonYou now have an Automator action that brings FCP to the front, sets the poster frame of the currently selected clip and moves to the next selected clip. We can now duplicate that action in Automator, remove the command to bring FCP to the front. This new action will set the poster frame of the currently selected clip. You can then duplicate this action as many times as you like.
l. In Automator, save your workflow as ‘Increment clip poster frames’
m. Select the Watch Me Do action and set the Playback Speed to 10x which speeds up the key presses
n. Select all the events and set the Timeout to 0.0 seconds
o. Duplicate the first Action using Duplicate from the Edit menu
p. In the duplicate Action, select the ‘Bring the window “Browser” to the front.” event and delete it with the delete key
q. You now have an action you can duplicate as many times as you’d like the ‘Change the poster frame of the currently selected clip in the browser’ to repeat.
r. Save your workflow again.
s. In the browser, select the first of the clips you’d like to modify
t. Back in Automator, press the Run button to see your actions performed.[- If you aren’t sure about pressing the keys fast enough, you could use a special keyboard layout in FCP to assign those actions to a series of keys on the keyboard!]
It is possible to use this free utility on your computer to do this, but you’d get a lot more control if you use QuicKeys from Startly – which costs $60.
@alex4d
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great call to automate the process, there\’s a lot of time you can save by using automator to program the keystrokes. I\’ve got a couple of articles detailing how complex the steps you program can be & how convenient and fast it can be.
https://www.luminoir.com/20090725/using-automator-with-fcp-to-automate-repetitive-steps-with-video/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsjRSHmJZLM
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I am using Final Cut pro 7.0.3 & i want to create thumbnail my edited film so how can i do it?
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