Transcripts
1. Introduction: So you've finished a video
project in Final Cut. Now you just need to go through all your footage and grab
screenshots that will be useful for social media for designing your video thumbnails or
to post on your website. So you scrub through
your timeline, you'll find an image
that you like. You go to Share. Save green frame next and safe. And this is cool. If you only want to
save one or two images, whatever you want to grab, 1040 or even more screenshots. And you even have to give a unique name to
every single file. After a while, you
will realize that you're wasting so much. What if I told you that
you could add markers anywhere in your timeline and with a custom
keyboard shortcut, you could process
and export all of those into high quality images. My name is Robert.
I'm a photographer, filmmaker and I've composed several instrumental
music albums. I'm always looking for ways to be productive in my
creative process. And I have found that a
fantastic solution for this is automating whatever
I can to avoid wasting time. These days, cameras
capture incredible video. But if you want to preserve the best quality when
savings steel frames, you wanted to grab
those directly from your editing application, not after rendering
or exporting. Unfortunately, the process too, this is not always
the most convenient. In this class, I'll
teach you how to create a shortcut that
will allow you to batch, process and export high resolution steel frames
from Final Cut Pro X. You do not need anything
else other than Final Cut and the
shortcuts application, then you can download
for free from the Apple store in macOS,
Monterey or higher. Whether you're a
filmmaker in editor, content creator, or anyone that works with video
projects in Final Cut. What you will learn in
this class will save you so much time
in the long run. I am serious. It doesn't matter
how much experience you have with automation. Creating shortcuts or coding. I will guide you
step-by-step and you will learn an incredible way to
speed up your workflow. So stay with me and let's
dive into the process.
2. Overview and FCPX Commands: Hi, Welcome. In this video, I want to give you
an overview of the entire process
of what we will be doing inside Final Cut Pro X so that we can later or made it. Actually all of these thing that I will be teaching you in this class is not part of the native functionality
of Final Cut Pro. But I will be using some of the commands inside
the application. If you know these commands and if you pay attention
in this section, you will actually find out how I figured out this entire process. Also, if your system is
in a different language, if your keyboard is in
a different language, this is a part where you
should take note because you will be able to customize a shortcut for your
specific needs. Okay, so here I am inside Final Cut Pro and I predict open, which is actually a Skillshare class that I just finished. And here I have a lot
of raw clips right now, since I just wanted to show you a very quick example of how everything
else will be working. And we'll just add one
of these clips here. I will bring the
volume down and I make sure that I have skimming on so that when I move my mouse, the playhead follows this point. I want you to go inside
Final Cut Pro menu commands. And we will click customize. If you have never changed any of the default keyboard shortcuts, you will be here on the default
and that's totally okay. You don't have to
do anything else. And Rhino, if you
have paper and pen, just make sure that
you write this down. Or if you have a
node application, open it because your system may have different shortcodes
than I have in mind. So it's very important
that you write these down. And what we need is for marker, how do we are the
markers that we go M? And take note of that. Next Margaret. Control and this symbol, dreams start Three, Start Queue. Next frame. The arrow to the right. Blade. Command B. Select clip wrench, x. Okay? Now, once you've got all of these keyboard shortcuts, Let's go back into the
application and let's look at this clip that I
inserted in my timeline. So at this point,
where we will be doing is adding markers, then making sure
that each marker becomes a single,
separate frame. And then exporting all of
these frames as snapshots. Final Cut Pro has the
functionality of not only exporting current frames. You can also get
there through file, share and add destination. And you can add image sequence. And I normally stay with JPEG, but if you want better
quality, you can use PNG. Exporting image
sequence will do. It, will graph all the frames in our timeline and export them
all one by one as snapshots. And of course, we don't
want all of these because there's a lot
of unnecessary frames. We want to choose specific ones. And for that we will
look at our shortcut for adding a marker which is m. In my case. As I move
my mouse around, I will be adding em, M and M. This is just a very
quick example. Then what we will want to
do is learn how this works. We will go to the next marker with control and this symbol. Then we will trim startup, go to the next frame and blade. So we will be jumping to the next marker,
control and symbol. We will trim to
the start with Q. We will move to the next frame. Them blade. Jump to the next marker. Trim to the start. Move to the next frame. Blade. Jump to the next marker, trim to the next frame blade, and then select clip range x. And then we can delete
that. Now, when we zoom in, we have our markers that
became single frame. Now, of course this
doesn't look fast. This actually is a lot of work and actually you
have to be thinking, okay, what's the next key
that I have to press part? Here's where the magic happens. Because with a shortcut
application that Mac gives us, all of those key presses
can be automatic. Everything can be done just
with a click of a button. And when we're there, of course, we would just be
able to go back here and then export image sequence. And as we will see later, all of these will be exported
as a separate screen grabs. In the next section, I will explain to you how to start building this shortcut. I'll see you there.
3. The Basic Shortcut: Now that we understood
how the application works and which commands
when needed to press, in this section,
I want to create a very basic version of this shortcut that will allow
us to automate the process. So let's just go back
into our system. Here I am back in Final Cut Pro. Let's open the
application shortcuts. And if you do not have it, you can download for free
from the Apple Store. Let's add a new shortcut. And let's call it
Final Cut Pro X. Snapshots. You can call it anything,
it doesn't matter. Here. Let's look for Apple script. Now, we want to delete these two lines and
type tail application. System events. Repeat two times. Right now we will just be testing these very
basic shortcuts. So two times is enough. And then we want to press all of those commands that I
showed you a keystroke. The first one will be
the one for next marker. So it's this symbol. Using control. Actually like this,
control down. Maybe you do not
need this last part. It depends on the command that you grow down from final color. Then we will make a
small delay, 0.1. Then keystroke. And we want the one
for dream start queue delay 0.1 again. Then we want to press
the one for next frame. Next frame is actually
not a letter, both a symbol and this one. We cannot use keys row, we have to use something
called key code. And there's a lot of
references online for all the key codes
and you can use this one is men reference. Google it and it will give you a complete list of
all the key codes. And we want the one for
the right arrow key here, 124, key called 1234. Pay attention how I didn't
use quotation marks here. Delay 0.1. And after I move
to the next frame, I want to blade CMDB. So again, here
will be keystroke, be using Command down 0.1 because we started
a repeat two times, then we have to
put it and repeat. And also since we
started it till here, we also want to
tell me straight. There we go. Perfect. Now let's
go back here on the side, and it will give us
short code details. And we can have a
keyboard shortcut. I have so many different
keyboard shortcuts, so I will just use one that I'm sure that
I haven't used before. Control command option has. Let's go back into Final Cut. Now I will be adding any clip. Just to test this out. I'm bringing down the volume. And before I press the actual shortcut that I
gave it in my shortcut app. I want to make sure that I click here at the
beginning of my timeline. I don't want to be on another part of my
final called window. I want to be on the timeline. So I click here and
I make sure that when my shortcut is working, that I'm not moving
my mouse around. Because as you can see, every time I move
my mouse around, the play head is also moving around so you will
mess up with it. Let's add two markers, because I made a shortcut for only two times to be repeated. So let's go here, like I told you
at the beginning. And now, are you ready? I will be pressing
Control Option Command S. Wow, There we go. It worked perfectly. Let's zoom in. Our markers became
single frames. Now there's these big chunk of material that we
didn't want one. So now for that, we will use the other shortcuts, Select Clip range x. So if we press X, it
will select everything. We can also automate that. Let's go back to
our shortcuts app. Once we're here. I suggest that you
click this because for some reason this
application doesn't work very well when you
have this option activated. So let's go into ng-repeat. Ng-repeat, we will keystroke X so that it will select
that big chunk of footage that is at the end. Delay, 0.1, and we
want to press Delete. Delete again is one of those special characters
that need a key. Code, is go back to a reference. Delete is a key code. 51. Again, no quotations for
key quotes, not like this. Use a number. Now remember
to turn this back on, and it will remember
your last option. Okay, so we're back
into Final Cut Pro X. I will select these clips.
I will delete them. Let's just add another clip. Bring the volume down. I have my two
markers for testing and make sure that I click at the beginning of my timeline. Now I will press Control
Option Command S. There we go. Now, it deleted the
last part In left me with my two markers that
are single friends. Okay, and with that, we have made our most basic
form of our shortcuts. Remember that you
do not have to do this every single
time right now, just because we're
setting up everything. So let's just go to the
next section where we will be customizing all of
these a little bit more.
4. Customizing the Shortcut: We already got our very
basic shortcut done, which will allow us to convert any markers in the timeline
into single frames. In this section, I
want to give you some more customization
options to make our shortcut even
more user-friendly. Let's continue working on it. Okay, so here we are
back into our shortcut and let me explain to you something the way
that it is right now, whenever I press this key
combination down here, no matter the application
where I am at, the list of instructions
that I grew up here will be performed one
after the other one. And we do not want that. We only want them
to happen if we are with Final Cut
and the front. For that to happen, we need to add a little
bit more code. Let's deactivate this. And right after on Ron, let's copy exactly
the same line. We will create a variable here, set active app to name
of application process. And so we created this variable which will contain the name of the application which is at
the front of our window. In this case, it
will be shortcuts. You were back here,
it will be final cut. And then we want to say, you know what, if active app, the variable that we just
created is final coat, then the list of
instructions will happen. At the end. We will have to put in if
before Enron and click here, and everything gets
the correct format. Now, why it's not final? God, we use don't want
anything else to happen. I like to have some kind of notification to tell me you're pressing something
that is doing nothing. So let's add here before
n If this put else, return, open Final Cut Pro X. And also since we are already
dealing with notifications, Let's add one more after
our shortcut is completed. So after entail here. Don. Let me click here. Perfect. And let's add a notification. Notification. We want to clear this out. Right-click. Insert Variable,
select variable, and we will select the
Apple Script result. So again, really quickly, let me tell you a quick
summary of all of this. We are telling our
system to create active App ID variable, which will have the name of the application which
is in the front. If that application
is spinal cord, it will do all of the instructions that
we asked him to do. At the end, it will say done, it fits not final call, the one that is in front, you will tell us open Final Cut. And then it will throw the result of this
into our notification. Let's just test it out. Let's just go back here. And again, we will activate
our keyboard shortcut. And I am on my desktop. And let me press the
key combination. Open Final Cut. Okay, Got it. So he didn't do all the list of instructions that
are written there. Let's go into Final Cut. And now let's do
exactly the same. Done perfect. So all of our code
makes sense and it gives us the result
that we were expecting. There is one more thing that
I would like to add to this. I want to be able to tell my shortcut how many markers
I wanted to process. So let's turn off the keyboard
shortcuts for now again. Let's come back here to see
the Library of actions. And we will look for
ask, ask for input. And here we want it
to ask for a number. And what we want to say, we want to say how many markers. And we will put the result
in a variable, set variable. Let's call it markers. So the result that we die pain will go inside
markers on here, wherever it says, run Apple script with,
we will click here. And if you have markers, you can select it directly here. If not, you can click
Select Magic variable. And click markers is the same. Now, wherever it says here, repeat two times, we will
say repeat input times. So our variable
marker will become the input here and it will
appear in our instruction. And just a really quick test, once again, at a
keyboard shortcut. Good. I will bring another clip in the timeline just to test
this really quickly. And this time I will
add four markers, 1234. Again, I click at the beginning, make sure that I'm
in the timeline. And now we'll press
my key combination. How many markers? We got four markers done. And we see the notification. Let me zoom in a little bit. And we got our four
frames from the markers. Perfect. In this section, we added
that input box where we will grind the number of markers that we want our
shortcut to process. We also added some
notifications like when our shortcut is completed or if Final Cut is
knowing the front. We also added the option that if our final card is
not in the front, shortcut will not
actually do anything. But until now, we have only been dealing with small tests, like two or four markers. In the next section, I actually wanted
to show you how to use these shortcuts
in a bigger project until you how you can
take a bigger number of markers like
40 or 50 or more. And how you have to
set up everything in your timeline to work correctly. So everything will come together and there you will be
able to see the benefits of using this shortcut on saving so much time
whenever you want to make screenshots
inside final goal. So let's do that guys.
5. FCPX Complete Setup and Class Project: In this section, I
want to share with you how to set up your timeline in Final Cut Pro for
a bigger project. Now, we're not testing, now we're dealing
with a real thin. At the same time, I
would like you to do the project for this class, which will be grabbing at least ten screenshots using the shortcut
that we use created. So let's open Final Cut. I have an empty project
here that I created specifically to place anything that I need to get
a screenshot from. Now, let's just go
looking for Eclipse. And here's a project
that is already done. And let's just select
everything here. Normally, I will do this every time that
I finished product. I will just bring all the cut amusing
copy and paste here to bring all that video from other projects into this
new empty timeline. As you can see, I tried to
avoid bringing in any audio. Then I'm also going go inside
all the other raw footage. And I looked for some
clips that maybe I did not use in my final
edit, but who knows? Maybe there's some
good images there that I can use just to show you what to do in case I have foolish with audio
in my timeline. And good, select
all of those clips, right-click and the
Dutch Day audio. I do not need the ALU for
this process and I don't want my system to work any
harder than it needs to. So I will select
the audio tracks which are now
detached and delete. These clips at the beginning
are also color corrected. So Ira know that my system can handle this
if we have a slow computer. You can also do
everything that I'm explaining in this
video with proxies. Proxies in Final Cut
are extremely helpful. And if you feel like
everything is still too slow when scrubbing
through the footage, you can go back to the shortcut. And do you see
this delay of 0.1? You can raise that
up if you need more buffer because your system is kind of like lagging behind. So you can add 0.5, which will be 2.5th
between each action. Now, we got all of
the clips here, we got some raw files here. And we want to select everything and
make it a compound clip. In my case, I make
a compound clip by clicking option and g. If you do not know or if it's
different in your system, you can go back here
in commands and look compound clip. There we go. Option. That way everything becomes like if it was one clip and these can include
compound clips, multi-camera clips, raw files, color corrected clips, anything. Now, again, with a skimming on, I will just go looking for images that I may
want to capture. I'm just moving my mouse around. I'm pressing M to add markers. If I want to be more specific, I can even press left or
right on my keyboard, which will move me
frame-by-frame. And let's say that you
already went through all the images that seem
interesting or maybe useful. At this point, you
need to find out how many markers
you added in total. We will go inside index and make sure that you
click here in tax. And you can click
here to see them. Markers show standard markers. In this case, I see that
I have added 39 items, Perfect clues, index by
clicking on its label. Then I bring my mouse to the
beginning of the timeline and click there and
hold on for 1 second. In a previous lesson, I've told you to select
the beginning of the timeline before
running this article. Here's a little
nugget of knowledge. If there's an action
that you repeat again and again or
on your system, there's a big chance that
you can automate it. In this case,
instead of having to select the timeline
every single time. You could also add
that to your shortcut. You can go to your
final code commands as before and look for
Godel timeline. In my case, that's command two, and there's also a command for jumping to your
previous edit. This is simply the up arrow. Since we only have one
compound clip without edits, these goods send those to the
beginning of our timeline. Let me clarify that
this is not necessary. But if you want to forget
about having to select the timeline every single time before running
your shortcut, then you can add some
lines to the code. As we already learned before, this will go just before
your repeat action. Without being said, let's
go back to our project and I'm ready to trigger
my shortcut. How many markers? 39. And don. Don. 39. Frames. Just like that. Not bad at all. Okay, We are just one step away from finishing all of this. The next lecture, and I
want to talk to you about exporting and batch
cropping your images. You've got something
that you also need.
6. Export and Cropping: Here we are in the last
section of this class. And I just wanted to talk to you about export and cropping. Let's open our project
that we were working on. We already got like all they separate
frames that came as a result of running our
shortcut through the markers. And we can click Share export image sequence
if we don't have this option, remember, you can
add the destination. If you want the best
quality possible. Normally you want to go with
PNG or the last one, tiff. But for most purposes, I feel like jpeg is good for me. I'm not printing anything, I'm just using web.
Struggle with that. And I will create a
new folder on desktop and call it class Save. And it will start
exporting all of them. Sometimes if you're
working on a very color, colorectal project
or something that is very taxing on your system with lots of plug-ins
and stuff like that. Final card may
struggle a little bit. And you can also export all
of these with compressor. If that's an application
that you have, compressor is great
for handling, exporting with different
colleagues and for images. It also has this option here
under Motion Graphics diff, image sequence, you have the
option of selecting tiff, PNG, JPEG, and
many other things. But if you don't have
compressor or if you're not working on a super heavy predict I think this will be
more than enough. Here we have the
folder and it snaps, and we got our 39 screenshots. Now you can go and process all of these in Photoshop
or Lightroom. But one last tip that
I wanted to give you, because sometimes I am dealing
with cropped images here. I like to put my letterbox to make you a little
bit more cinematic, if you may call it like that. So if I want to crop the
best tool that I have found for that is
called re-size master. And this application is
actually free in the abstract. What you would do is
just make sure here that you have whatever you need
before overgrazing fascia. You are wondering warning
copy, okay, sure. And this option is perfect because it will
not crop to this size, it will just crop tool the
aspect ratio that you give it. Then I can draw everything and it will tell me where I want it. And then I can call it cropped. Fantastic tool for batch
cropping and it's totally free. Of course, you can
also use Lightroom. Why even feel this is
faster and more convenient? We can go to the cropped one. There we go. Why their images? And we are done with our class. I truly hope that you'll
learn something new. And that by creating
this shortcut, you will be able to save hours and hours that you
would have otherwise spent going through the
traditional process of capturing images
in Final Cut. Thank you so much
for watching guys, and I'll see you
in the next one.
Robert J. P. Oberg, Creative • Filmmaker • Photographer
