FCP Tip # 008: Enable/Disable Clip

OK gang,(I guess that means you Gene) I'm fresh off of a much needed vacation and ready to get back into the sharing knowledge business.  Today's tip is all about turning individual clips on and off rather than turning entire video tracks on and off for the purpose of trying out alternate shots in an edit.  Believe me, this can save you oooodles of render time.

We've all seen the warning as we are about to turn off a video or audio track about how we're gonna lose all of our render files, yada, yada, yada.  We go ahead and turn off the track anyway and then end up re-rendering stuff that we've already rendered once we turn that track back on again.  In a long timeline with a lot of effects, this can really take a toll.  And sometimes the need to do this can happen dozens of times during an edit and I can't think of a worse use of time than re-rendering the same clip(s) over and over.

Want a better way to keep alternate clips around on the timeline without having to turn off entire tracks?  When I've got an alternate clip, or several, I leave them right in the timeline on a track above and just disable them in place by selecting the clip in the timeline and then hitting Control+B on the keyboard.  You can also do this by going to Modify>Clip Enable but in case you haven't noticed, I'm a big proponent of keyboard shortcuts and I  strongly recommend against using the slow painful menu system.  Although the function is labeled "Clip Enable", it actually works as a toggle-style on and off switch.  Meaning select it once to turn off, select again to turn on.  Working with the keyboard shortcut Control+B, you can turn your alternate clips on and off very quickly.  I'll often have a stack of 3, 4, 5 even 10 and turn them on one at a time to show the various options to a producer or director.  This can be done very fast with little to no render repercussions unlike turning off entire tracks.

I not only use this feature to keep alternate clips around, it is also a great way to A/B compare a color correction or any other video effect.  For instance, if I have a clip that has 3 or 4 effects on it and I want to see what it looked like originally, I can't uncheck all of the filters fast enough to get a true before and after view, but if I keep an unaffected version of the clip on the track above it and just turn it on and off with Control+B, it works instantly.  I find this particularly useful when I am trying to match someone else's color correction.  I open the "video scopes" window and watch the scopes as I turn the top clip on and off, eventually dialing in a matching color correction.

There you have it folks Control+B...for enaBle.