how to HOLD a keyframe in your timeline? very simple question but can’t find it in FCP X!

[Bret Williams]

No hold keyframe. You can right click on the keyframe in the viewer, and choose linear or smooth. But changes to the temporal data aren’t available. They’re all ease in/out. If you want to remove the easing, you have to place a keyframe right before and (If applicable) after the keyframe that is easing. Then delete the new keyframe. I guess that forces it to remove easing since it can’t ease over the course of 1 frame.

You can control easing on a particularly useless property. Opacity. Right click in between the keyframes in the keyframe editor in the sequence after expanding the opacity property to see the keyframes.

I have never needed to change the easing of opacity in 20 years. But who knows. Maybe they’ll port that over to the other properties that actually make sense. Probably not. As in FCP Legacy keyframing was also a horrible mess, and not one single change was made to it’s functionality in the 13 years that they had a chance to.

[Bret Williams]

Oh, so to do a hold, you’d have to simply have two linear keyframes with no easing of the same value. So just copy the first keyframe, and move down the timeline to where you’d want the hold to end and paste…. oh, wait…. you can’t copy and paste keyframes in X. Or legacy. But gosh, who’d want to do that? All those other NLEs are just wasting code on that feature!

[Nick Toth]

A “hold” consists of two keyframes with the same values. The duration of the “hold” is set by the time between the two keyframes.

anickt

[Esther Casas]

I already know what a hold is…I am asking how to hold a keyframe for a long time until I change the value. I am asking if it is somewhere in FCPX and I am not seeing it, like you do in After Effects in a second.
I know what a hold is, thank you.

[Esther Casas]

Thanks Bret, it just doesn’t really make sense..not putting this function with keyframes..can’t believe they didn’t. Unbelievable!

[Jeremy Garchow]

FCP keyframing ≠ Ae keyframing

To set up a hold keyframe type of action, put a keyframe at the beginning of the move, put a key frame at the end of the move, now go forward one frame and adjust, this making a new keyframe.

You have to make one more keyframe than Ae. It’s not too much of a travesty, I promise, although FCPX could stand to use some better keyframing.

I don’t know what parameter you are adjusting, but to get keyframes in the viewer, try hitting shift-t to bring up the transform controls.

FCPX does have a “lock point” function, but it doesn’t work like Ae hold keyframes.

[Esther Casas]

Thanks J, I didn’t want to do that…But I can see is the only solution! Definitely keyframing is not at all a good feature in FCPX…thanks for talking your time to answer.

[Patrice Freymond]

Hi Ester,

true, FCPX is not great at keyframing and we’re all hoping for improvements.

Having said so, comparing FCPX to AE isn’t fair IMHO. And for any complex keyframing, go to Motion (where you can copy, paste keyframes etc.)

One thing missing yet re Motion that we did have in prev. version is roundtripping. But you knew that.

hope this helps.

[Esther Casas]

Hey P! I actually just purchased Motion5 and will start right away, actually today! I am hoping that you can copy and paste keyframes! Can you also hold keyframes? and what do you mean with roundtripping?

thks P!!

[Bret Williams]

I would think keyframing in X should be held at least to the standard of Avid or Premiere, don’t you? In both you can copy and paste keyframes. In Premiere you can hold, ease in/out, etc. just like AE. So I DO believe that X should be held to the same standard, at least for basic stuff, as AE. X and Legacy’s keyframe engine is just inexcusable. And since Motion is no longer included and doesn’t support roundtripping, then it’s not a very good argument either that advanced keyframing should be done in Motion. Not that anything being discussed is in any way advanced.