Adding ‘Favorite’ to a clip on the timeline

[Brett Sherman]

This would be a great feature to have. And I don’t get why Bill thinks it would upend FCP X’s organizational structure. Having more capabilities in a program is better not worse.

The way I’d imagine it working is you could select all clips in a project (timeline). Right-click or menu item “Make Favorite in Event(s)”. Simple, elegant, useful. Why not?

[Brad Bell]

In 10.1.1 you can simply press the f key and it will mark the clip in the timeline as a favourite.

I find I need to eyeball the browser though to see it happen. What’s selected isn’t always entirely transparent depending on window selection.

This also works for keywords. You can now add a forgotten keyword in the timeline.

Both of these work best as incidental touch ups, rather than allowing you to do all your metadata in the timeline.

[Craig Alan]

When I select a range in the timeline and click F the entire clip in the browser is selected as a favorite – the selection is ignored. The only way I know to save the work you did on an edit in the timeline is to create a compound clip. Am I missing something?

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Brad Bell]

[Craig Alan] “When I select a range in the timeline and click F the entire clip in the browser is selected as a favorite – the selection is ignored. The only way I know to save the work you did on an edit in the timeline is to create a compound clip. Am I missing something?”

No, you’re not. I wouldn’t have thought to try that. I snip all my clips into usable shots in the browser. I sometimes do this from the timeline so I can view it letterboxed, but even then I have to slice the clip to select a region and SHIFT+F to select it in the browser to mark as Favourite. What I learned recently was I could just slice the clip and mark the Favourite on the timeline. Although I have also realised tagging *after* segmenting into shots means I end up with different groups of keywords which are not necessarily available in the Timeline Index. I hadn’t really tried to search by keyword in the Timeline Index before. I found the second group of keywords wasn’t searchable. Very annoying.

I now suspect the correct workflow is:
1. Skim to tag whole clips
2. Watch clips to segment them into shots and rate favourites and rejects
3. Start working on the timeline.

As an aside – I do wish Apple would add a letterbox option to the Overlays in the Display settings, as it’s the only way to see what you’ve got without going to the timeline, which the designers discourage. I tried adding a letterbox to the clips in the browser, which is possible, but then the clips have generic thumbnails. One should also be able to add a LUT to the display for similar reasons.

[Marty Simpson]

I completely understand using X the way it was intended and I LOVE THE NEW FEATURES. However on this work flow I am a tad frustrated.

I do athletic highlight videos.

So picture a 7 minute clip that is one inning of a girls softball game. Within that one 7 minute clip I add Keywords in the Event Browser that are typically, “Great Oufield Play”, “Great For Slow Motion”, “Great Hit” and those key words apply in three different locations on that seven minute clip and each of those keywords apply to about 30 seconds of footage.

In the past I would have put that 7 minute clip on the timeline and bladed it linearly and drag clips to certain Layers that I would have mentally labelled in my head with the keywords. Like Layer 1 was great hits, layer 2 was great outfield plays etc… Then copied and pasted those bladed clips to their own sequences.

My issue with the keyword deal in the browser is it doesn’t allow me to go ahead and set ins and outs. At least I don’t know the magic work flow short cut keys. I would like to set ins and outs of a 7 minute clip to be around ten seconds long. THEN LABEL THAT in-and-out clip as a Keyword.

Possible? Easy? Help please. Thanks.