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- About Easy Setups, Presets, Settings, and Preferences
- Using Easy Setups
- Using Audio/Video Presets
- Specifying Sequence Settings
- Specifying Capture Settings
- Specifying Device Control Settings
- Using Video and Audio Playback Settings
- Specifying Audio/Video Output Settings
- Specifying User Preferences and System Settings
- Setting Editing Preferences
- Setting Label Preferences
- Customizing the Timeline Display
- Specifying Render Control Settings
- Specifying Audio Output Settings
- Setting Scratch Disk Preferences
- Specifying Memory & Cache Settings
- Specifying Playback Control Settings
- Setting External Editors Preferences
- Specifying Effects-Handling Preferences
- Customizing Final Cut Pro
- Creating Custom Screen Layouts
- Creating Custom Keyboard Layouts
- Creating Custom Shortcut Buttons
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Specifying User Preferences and System Settings
The settings in the User Preferences and System Settings windows affect all of your Final Cut Pro projects. The User Preferences window contains six tabs: General, Editing, Labels, Timeline Options, Render Control, and Audio Outputs. The System Settings window offers another five tabs' worth of additional preference settings: Scratch Disks, Memory & Cache, Playback Control, External Editors, and Effect Handling. System Settings window preference options are covered in the second half of this section.
To set General preferences
- Choose Final Cut Pro HD > User Preferences.
The General tab will appear as the front tab in the User Preferences window (
Figure 3.35
).
Figure 3.35 Specify a number of general program preferences on the General tab of the User Preferences window.
- You can specify settings for the following:
- Levels of Undo: Specify the number of actions that can be undone. Specifying a large number of undos can make significant demands on your available RAM, however.
- List Recent Clips: Set the number of recently accessed clips available on the Viewer's Recent Clips pop-up menu.
- Real-Time Audio Mixing: Specify the number of audio tracks that Final Cut Pro mixes in real time. The default setting is eight tracks. The maximum number of tracks you will be able to mix depends on multiple factors. Reduce the number of tracks if you experience audio playback problems, such as video stuttering or audio pops or dropouts.
- Audio Playback Quality: Choose the quality of sample-rate conversion when you import audio files with sample rates that differ from your sequence's rate. At the lowest playback quality, Final Cut Pro can reserve more processing power for real-time mixing operations. If you choose the highest playback quality, your sample-rate-converted audio will sound better, but you won't be able to stack up as many simultaneous audio tracks before FCP needs to mixdown (render) your audio. Higher quality settings will take more processing time, so the default is set to Low. In general, choose Low when editing. FCP automatically defaults to the highest audio quality during all rendering, audio mixdown, editing to tape, printing to video, and OMF operations, so you won't need to switch the setting here when you're ready to output your program.
-
Autosave Vault:
Check this box if you want FCP to save backup copies of all your open projects automatically at regular intervals. Enter a number to specify a time interval in minutes. For more information, see "Using the Autosave Vault" in Chapter 4.
- Save a Copy Every n Minutes: Enter a number of minutes to specify a time interval between backup operations.
- Keep at Most n Copies per Project: Enter a value to specify how many autosaved backup copies of each project file you want Final Cut Pro to store.
- Maximum of n Projects: Enter a value to specify the maximum number of projects you want to back up in the Autosave vault. If the number of open projects exceeds the number specified here, Final Cut Pro will override the maximum you set and autosave all open projects.
- Show ToolTips: Check this box to toggle the display of tooltip labels on buttons and tools.
- Bring All Windows to the Front on Activation: Check this box to specify that whenever FCP is in the background, clicking any single FCP window to activate the application will bring all open FCP windows to the front of the Desktop.
- Open last project on application launch: Check this box if you want FCP to automatically reopen your last saved project when you launch the application. Uncheck the box if you want FCP to create a new empty project on application launch.
- Prompt for settings on New Project: Check this box if you want the option to modify project properties each time you create a new project.
- Prompt for Settings on New Sequence: Check this box if you want to see a list of sequence presets each time you create a new sequence.
- Sync Audio Capture to Video Source if Present: Check the box to ensure that the timecode from any genlocked audio deck is referenced to the timecode of the genlocked video source during audio capture, thus ensuring sync accuracy during long sync audio captures from device-controllable audio decks. See Volume I, page 61, of Apple's Final Cut Pro 4 User's Manual for more information.
- Report Dropped Frames During Playback: Check this box if you want Final Cut Pro to display a warning dialog box whenever frames are dropped during playback.
- Abort ETT/PTV on Dropped Frames: Check this box to automatically stop any Edit to Tape or Print to Video operation if dropped frames are detected.
- Abort Capture on Dropped Frames: Check this box to automatically stop the capture process if dropped frames are detected during a capture.
-
On Timecode Break:
This pop-up menu offers three different ways to direct FCP's behavior when it encounters a timecode break during a capture operation.
- Make New Clip: When FCP detects a timecode break, it will save a media file containing all video captured up to the break, setting the frame before the break as that file's Out point. FCP continues capturing video after the break as a second media file.
- Abort Capture: FCP automatically stops capturing if it detects a timecode break during the capture process.
- Warn After Capture: FCP will report the timecode break after your capture operation is complete, and will retain that captured media file. Clips containing timecode breaks can't be recaptured accurately, so select this option only if you never, ever need to recapture this clip ever, ever again.
- Warn when importing non-optimized media: Check the box if you want FCP to alert you when you import media files created or captured using a codec that cannot be optimized for real-time playback.
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Auto Render:
Check the box to enable the triggering of automatic rendering when FCP is idle for a specified period.
- Start Render After: Enter a number of minutes to specify how long FCP should be idle before automatic rendering is triggered.
- Which Sequences: Select Open Sequences to render all sequences currently open in the Timeline, select Current Only to render just the active sequence on the front tab of the Timeline, or select Open Except Current to render all open sequences except the active sequence on the front tab of the Timeline.
- Render RT Segments: Check the box to include those sections of your sequence that use real-time effects in the auto-render operation.
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Tip
- Displaying video on the computer monitor while printing to video or editing to tape taxes the computer's processing power and can cause performance problems. If you notice dropped frames in your output when performing these operations, check out the tips for optimizing performance in Chapter 2, "Installing and Setting Up," before giving up and disabling Desktop video playback. You may want to increase the size of your thumbnail caches if you are working with a large number of clips and want to display thumbnails, or if you are using the Browser's Icon view. If you often scrub through thumbnails in Icon view, you can optimize the performance of this feature by increasing the size of the thumbnail RAM cache on the Memory & Cache tab of the System Settings window.