When it comes to editing, whether in videography or photography, the use of shortcuts is imperative for speeding up your workflow. Much like any other video editing program out there, Final Cut Pro has many shortcuts that you are able to utilize but do you really need to memorize over a hundred shortcuts you will never use? You might speed more time looking up the shortcut for a specific task than just using your mouse.
Below I put together 10 of the best and most useful Final Cut Pro shortcuts that you will probably use most often to seep up your editing!
The Best Time-Saving Shortcuts
“B” Key
This will give you the Blade Tool and allow you to cut one clip into two.
“M” Key
This is the shortcut to place a Marker on your clip. This is great for timing to music or dialogue.
“N” Key
Pressing this shortcut will toggle off and on the Snapping feature. This is great for automatically snapping your clips together in your timeline.
“A” Key
This shortcut brings up the Arrow tool which allows you to select clips and is the default mode.
“V” Key
This shortcut will toggle on and off the visibility of the selected clip.
Shift + Cmd + D
This shortcut will create a Project Snapshot of our selected Project.
Cmd + T
This shortcut creates a Text layer to your project for typing anything on your project timeline.
Shift + B
Unlike the “B” key alone, this shortcut will separate your clip but not cut it. This is a great way to Speed Ramp your footage.
Shift + Z
This shortcut will allow you to size the timeline or image to fit in the window.
Cmd + E
This shortcut will export the master file of your project. It’s the quickest way to save and share!
Now that we have covered these ten useful shortcuts you might be wondering “Is that it?”. For those folks who want even more shortcuts, you might be interested in the Final Cut Pro X Shortcut Keyboard Cover by XSKN. This cover slips on right over your keyboard to give you easy access to pretty much all of the popular shortcuts FCPX has!
