Using Mouse Weel to Zoom In/Out

[Andrew Rendell]

I don’t know, but I’d make a couple of points. I came to FCP after being very experienced on Avid and made the mistake of trying to set FCP up to work like Avid, but I realised quite quickly that FCP works best if you get used to working it the way it’s designed (and it’s designed so that everything, really everything, can be done at least 3 different ways and with a bit of practice you can find what works best for you). What works best for me (and I think lots of others will agree with this) is to use quite a few of the keyboard shortcuts with my left hand and the mouse in my right, so the concept of “not having to reach for the keyboard” doesn’t arise. (E.g., you could click on the zoom icon with the mouse and click on the pointer icon when you’re done, but I’d think most of us would find tapping the Z and A on the keyboard quicker/more fluent).

[Mark Suszko]

The apple mouse with the tiny trackball does this on my FCP system and I love it. I can leave the mouse where it is, use my pointer finger to roll the ball and the timeline left and right, up and down, and to increment most slider controls, once they are selected. Mine already came this way at the start, but if I needed to configure it, I guess I’d go into control panels first, then FCP preferences, to turn that stuff on.

BTW what do you do to clear that tiny trackball when it gets gunked up and stops working in one direction? I used to use a drop of isopropyl alcohol on my finger, but the clog’s gotten worse.

[Chris Babbitt]

Take a sheet of clean paper, turn the mouse upside down, and roll the trackball rapidly against the paper repeatedly in all directions. It works every time for me.

[Ben Edwards]

Thanks both of you for your responses.

I did wait until the end of my first project before I thought about moving from default set-up and its the only thing I want to change. I don’t use a apple mouse and don’t have the problem of trackball getting closed put the wheel does not seem to be mapped to zoom. Any idea how to do this?

Ben

[Tom Matthies]

I use a ShuttlePro II for this. I remapped the ShuttlePro’s jog wheel to zoom in/zoom out. I also changed the keystroke for zoom in/out to follow the playhead and not the highlighted clip. Huge time saver. I use my track ball/mouse to select a position on my timeline and my ShuttlePro to quickly drill down on the time line for more resolution. I’m also a keyboard shortcut user big time. All three add up to really fast editing.
Tom

E=MC2+/-2db

[Gard Cookson]

Hi Ben,

If you want to continue using your mouse, you could also try using our HD Mouse software (free trial, $9.95 to buy), that will allow you to do exactly what you want.

By default, we’ve programmed the scroll wheel for frame forward/reverse. You could either replace the function with the timeline zoom function (Command & Plus and Command & Minus) or you could keep the frame forward/reverse with a ‘normal’ scroll and then make it so holding down the Command key and scrolling would zoom in and out. Lots of possibilities!

Best,
Gard

Bella Corporation
http://www.Bella-USA.com

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