Does it take you forever to find the filter you are looking for in Final Cut Pro? Well, then this podcast is definitely for you. I'll show you 4 ways, one of the being the super duper fast way, to search for and apply filters to clips.

Video Transcription

Today’s daily tip Podcast brought to you by ScopeBox. Check them out at www.scopebox.com. Welcome to the TDMD Daily Tip Podcast. My name is Marcelo Lewin. The digital media dude. Today’s tip is for Final Cut Pro in how to quickly find and apply filters to a clip. Basically there are four ways to search for filters and apply them to clips. The first way is by going to through the effects tab. The second way is by going effects pull down menu. The third way is by hitting command F in the effects tab and finally the newest way which is done through Leopard is by going to the help and searching for your filter. So let’s get started. Okay here we are in Final Cut Pro and what I’m going to do is I’m going to play a filter. The three way color corrector to this clip right here. First thing you want to make sure is that you have the clips selected and it’s in your viewer. Once it’s in your viewer, then you can go ahead and apply the filter. Now the first way that I’m going to show you just to go to the effects tab, so this is your effects tab. I’m going to look for the three way color corrector. So I know it should be under color correction. So we’re going to look at for color correction and here it is. I’m going to go ahead and click on color correction and then go the color corrector three ways then I’m going to go ahead and drop it in there and apply it. And that’s pretty much it. Now that’s one of searching for a filter. It’s not the fastest way. There is a second way and we’re going to go ahead and undo this. So my color corrector is gone now. The second way is to select the filter. You don’t have to double click it. Just select it then go to the effects tool, then go to video filters and then you start searching for the filter you want to apply. In this case I’m going to go color correction three-way. This automatically applies my color corrector. That is another way to do it. Again it’s not a very fast way to do it or efficient, but yet is another way to apply a filter. There is a third way to do it and I’m going to go ahead and command Z to undo my filter that I just added there. And let’s go to your effects tab, just click in there and then command F. This is going to bring up to find dialog box. Make under search you have effects. Under results, replace find results, if you’ve done a previous search, it can replace those results with the new ones or you could just add to the results that your PC had. Now in here I’m going to go ahead and say any column contains and we’re going to say color. Now if you find next, it will find the first one that contains color. It’s best to click on find all. When you do that, it will open up a new window with the results and here you have all the filters that match the color criteria. Now here is the one that I’m looking for. So I’m going to go ahead and grab it, drop into my clip, close my find results and you can see them. My color corrector is right there now. Now there is a much better way to find and apply filters. And that’s using the help screen in Final Cut Pro, now one word of caution, this will only work if you’re in Leopard, if you’re not in Leopard, you will not be able to use this. Now I’ve covered how to search for menu items in tip number 18. Now consider this, in the effects, the video filters, all the filters are actual menu items. So without having to use the mouse, I’m going to hit command shift forward slash. That’s going to bring me to the help. In there I’m going to type in three-way, now you see that there are three menus that popup. I’m going to hit my down arrow, automatically it’s showing me that I applied it last which is okay, but I’m going to pretend that I didn’t. So I’m going to go to the next entry which is again it’s under video filters last, but I’m going to go to the one where if we didn’t apply it last. It wouldn’t be there and there it is. It’s under video filters color correction color three way. And you can see the arrow that is bouncing up and down. That’s all part of Leopard and it’s pointing to it. Now I’m going to hit enter and then that’s it. Now you can see here because I did have a color corrected, it applied the second one. So you can see that it automatically applied it for me. That’s without using the mouse and that’s the quickest way to apply a filter. Well that’s it for now. I hope you enjoy this Podcast. I would love to hear from you. If you have a moment please email me at marcelo@thedigitalmediadude.com. So until the next Podcast, this is Marcelo Lewin. The digital media dude. Cheers.