Synch lock tracks

[Jeremy Garchow]

Shift-f4 and shift-f5

[Bret Williams]

You say sync lock, so I figure you’re from Avid land. In avid you turn on the sync locks on the left of the timeline. Well, FCP doesn’t work that way. Avid, by default, has all the tracks off by default and you can screw up the sync of things without noticing pretty easy if you don’t turn on sync locks at all time. (At least that’s always how I preferred to work.) In FCP, it’s default function is to operate somewhat like sync locks always being on. The lock icons on the left of the timeline provide a way to BREAK sync. Doesn’t make sense until you quit thinking of them as sync locks, and consider them track locks. They lock a track in place. Therefore if you ripple delete with a track lock on, it will ripple edit everything else and leave that track in place. But if I remember correctly, you also have to have the autoselects on or only some things will ripple. In Avid, whatever tracks are highlighted will ripple. Just different ways of working. For me I keep all the track locks off, and all the autoselects on, except when I have some specific little bit of timeline surgery to perform that requires a lock to be on.

So to review, the autoselects are “kind of” like highlighted Avid tracks and the track locks are “kind of” the opposite of Avid sync locks. There’s the added feature in FCP of clip sync and also stereo clips that affects all the above too. Sometimes all the little features of FCP get in the way and sometimes they’re wonderfully helpful. In the end, they’re just different.