Locking in and outs in Bin (or what ever they call it now)

[David Burch]

What about simply adding a keyword “edits” to all your ranges? That will group them all into a collection that you can browse later.

[David Burch]

Just tested it. You don’t need to use favorites. Simply select the range you want, hit cmd+K, and type a keyword like “edits”. A new collection will show up with only the range you just added the keyword to, not the entire clip. Hope that helps.

[Craig Seeman]

That would work but then you’d either have to add the keyword using the shortcut for it. That would be “Control whatever” vs just hitting F. I’m not sure of the advantage although it is another way.

[David Burch]

The advantage of using keywords over favorites is that you can only have a given range favorited once, while you can apply as many keywords to it as you want.

For example, let’s say you had a 2 minute segment of an interview that you wanted to save for later, but you also had a couple of sound bytes within that 2 minutes you wanted to use for a promotional piece (or another work entirely). You could favorite the 2 minute range, but then you wouldn’t be able to favorite the smaller sound bytes within it because they are already part of the “favorite” range.

Keywords don’t have this limitation. You can keyword the 2 minute range, and then go in and add the same keyword if you want to the sound bytes (say, “edits”). Not only that, you can apply multiple keywords to the same range. So, besides tagging your sound bytes as simply “edits”, you could also call them “bytes”, and you would have two keyword “bins” show up, one with all your “edits” segments and the other with “bytes”. You can even apply boolean operators to keywords in keyword collection.

What you are trying to accomplish is exactly what keywords are designed to do. The favorite tool, on the other hand, is a bit more of a blunt instrument. It’s designed as nothing more than a simple rating system, to balance out the “rejected” button.

If you like the fact that favorites can be applied simply by hitting “f”, simply assign commonly-used keywords to hotkeys. The first 9 use are automatically assigned to ctrl+1-9, and you can easily modify what these keystrokes do. You can even have a keystroke apply multiple keywords if you wish.

I hope that helps. It took me a second to wrap my head around the new paradigm, but after using it I can say that it’s really quite powerful. Keywords are one of the features Apple did right with FCPX, IMO (and if you look at my history right of posts right after it released you’ll see that I’m no fanboy…I was just as furious as everyone else about what they did and still am about some things).

[Craig Seeman]

[David Burch] “For example, let’s say you had a 2 minute segment of an interview that you wanted to save for later, but you also had a couple of sound bytes within that 2 minutes you wanted to use for a promotional piece (or another work entirely). You could favorite the 2 minute range, but then you wouldn’t be able to favorite the smaller sound bytes within it because they are already part of the “favorite” range.”

Yes but at that point you’re beyond simple in and out points. In FCP7 you can mark in and outs in different clips and they are all retained. Once you want overlapping in an out points on the same media, you’re into subclass in FCPX and Keywords in FCPX.

In many cases people aren’t looking to make subclips, they simply want to retain in and out points they mark for a clip. There’s no reason to get into keywording for that. A Favorite is just one more keystroke than the simple I/O method in FCP7.

[David Burch]

You make it sound as if keywording were altogether more complicated than favorites to implement. They’re really not. Setting a favorite is a matter of hitting “f”; setting a keyword is as simple as hitting ctrl+1 (or any number through 9, depending on which it’s store in). You may not need to overlap segments, but keywords really are much better designed for saving in and out points than favorites are. Just my 2 cents.

[Brendan Gibbons]

I have also decided on key-wording for retaining several in and out points on a clip.

Specifically for the reason mentioned earlier, quite often for different versions of an edit you will want to have different length versions of a talking head. So quite often the in / out points will overlap so using favourites will not work in this case.

Either by using control+1-9 for preset keywords, or hitting command+K and type in the first sentence the person says.

Then to keep the events browser tidy I create a folder (eg interviews) and drag all the keyworded items in there.

I’m sure everyone will find a way that works for them best.

Cheers,

Brendan