Make “C” select clip under playhead instead of under mouse pointer

[Jeremy Garchow]

Hit s to turn off skimming, then hit c, and map commands to “select above” and “select below” to move the selection of a clip under the playhead.

[Jeff Feaz]

Thanks Jeremy!

Are you sure “select above” and “select below” are what I’m looking for? I’ve been using those commands to move a selection to connected clips above or below the main storyline clips, but they still don’t get my selection out from under the pointer, even with skimming off.

[Jeff Feaz]

I guess you can use “select next” and “select previous” (cmd+right)(cmd+left) to move the selection out from under the mouse, which is cool because you don’t have to reach for the mouse to move the pointer away, but it would still be nice if “C” just selected the clip under the playhead right away.

[Jeremy Garchow]

C selects the clip under the pointer, yes.

What clip do you want to select if it’s not under the pointer? What’s under the skimmer or under the playhead?

Just move the pointer away form a clip, or above the timeline, and the clip under the playhead gets selected.

Is that what you mean?

[Jeff Feaz]

Yeah, my current workaround is to move the pointer away from the clip. But I don’t want to use the mouse at all while I’m working on the timeline.

I’m looking for behavior similar to (sigh) Premiere, where the mouse is irrelevant and the select clip shortcut always selects the clip(s) under the playhead (as long as you have tediously selected all the correct tracks, probably with the mouse).

If FCPX doesn’t have this ability I guess that’s just how it is.

[Jeremy Garchow]

FCPX is different in that there’s two playheads.

The ‘s’ key temporality disables one of them called the skimmer. So if the playhead (not the skimmer) is on or near the clip you want, simply hit s to disable the skimmer, then hit select above/below (or next/previous) until the clip you want is selected.

Jeremy

[Michael Hancock]

If your mouse head is on another clip though, it will select that clip, and not the clip that is under your playhead. That doesn’t have anything to do with the skimmer. So you have to either move your mouse off of all the clips, or move your mouse to your playhead so that it selects the clip you want.

I’ve submitted the feature request several times for the option to “ignore mouse position” for selection, but I don’t think it will ever change.

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Michael Hancock
Editor

[Jeff Feaz]

Michael – you know exactly what I mean. I’ll submit an enhancement request using the same wording (“ignore mouse position”). Who knows?

[Jeremy Garchow]

I guess I look at this differently.

C selects the clip under the pointer. That’s how it works. ‘C’ does not select the clip under the playhead, so if you do not want to select the clip under the pointer, don’t hit ‘c’.

If you look at the playhead, the clip that is underneath it is selected by default when you pause playback. When you stop playback, the top most clip that is under the playhead is loaded in to the inspector. That’s what this little ball means:

So to select the clip under the playhead, don’t hit ‘c’ as that will select a clip under the pointer. Hit select above/below or next/previous, and you will be able to select the clip under the playhead. And toggling the skimmer (and clip skimming) on and off will focus the select functions to the playhead.

I guess if you were to ask for something, it would be to add a command that is to “select clip under playhead” which, essentially, is ignoring the pointer.

[Michael Hancock]

[Jeremy Garchow] “C selects the clip under the pointer. That’s how it works. ‘C’ does not select the clip under the playhead, so if you do not want to select the clip under the pointer, don’t hit ‘c’.
“

If you go to the keyboard editor, C is simply “Select clip”, which isn’t very helpful, because there is a hierarchy to what it selects. For anyone interested, this is how it works:

If your mouse is on a clip, then it selects the clip under the pointer, whether the clip is in the primary, connected, secondary storyline, audio/video, etc., – whatever is directly under the mouse gets selected.

If the mouse is not on a clip but the skimmer is active it selects the clip in the primary storyline under the skimmer. It never selects a secondary clip or connected clip – just the primary.

If the skimmer is not active and the pointer is not directly over a clip, hitting C selects the clip under the playhead, in the primary storyline.

So yes, C will select what is under the playhead (in the primary). But only if the above conditions are met.

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Michael Hancock
Editor