Toggle Range Check and Canvas Gamma and Brightness

You may notice that when you turn on Toggle Range Check (Control + Z) the gamma of your canvas will change, generally becoming darker with Toggle Range Check on. Why?

It has to do with FCP 6/7's insistence that it pretend it's a studio monitor. You'll see the same kind of shift when you go into System Settings… (Shift + Q) and click on the "Playback Control" and toggle Gamma Correction from "Approximate" to "Accurate".

FCP's Toggle Range Check is in effect emulating a Broadcast Monitor when Toggle Range Check is on, that's the main reason you'll see a gamma shift.

If you set Gamma Correction to Accurate, FCP will shift the gamma of the canvas to emulate a broadcast monitor and you'll see no change in gamma when toggling Toggle Range Check because it's already in "emulation" mode, as I like to call it.

Accurate is pseudo-emulation mode.
Approximate is semi-WYSIWYG.

Toggle Range Check is pseudo-emulation mode.

Btw, strange as it may sound, if you're not using a TV or studio monitor setting this option to Approximate is more accurate. You may see your footage look a bit less contrasty but that's likely more accurate in most cases. FCP won't apply a bit of gamma juju and jump from 1.8 to 2.2 because it won't assume everything is 1.8.

I like to keep this setting to Approximate because in my case, with my setup, it's more accurate to what's been actually loaded into FCP and more closely matches the raw footage. Exporting to Quicktime is another matter entirely.

None of this holds a candle to a real broadcast monitor or decent TV though for gamma/color grading/correction.

The Hidden "H" 50% Key

Here's one I'll bet few people know.

Place your cursor over either the Viewer or the Canvas then hold down the H key.

You should see the Viewer or Canvas pop out at 50% size no matter what it was originally set to. Why? I dunno, it's probably some function or preference or something I've missed all these years. But it's pretty cool nonetheless and could be handy since 50% gives a clearer representation of your footage than odd numbered percentages, although 50% won't reveal interlacing as 100% does. Man I'm up late.

What's Keyframed in the Wireframe?

Here's something you may not have noticed.

I think the keyframe indicator in the Motion tab of the Viewer is pretty horrible. It's buggy, has scaling problems and is generally trickier to use than it should be so here's a tiny bit of help.

When you set some keyframes, and you have Wireframe + Image on in the Canvas (toggle it with "w") relevant parts of the wireframe will turn green to indicate that they have a keyframe and that the playhead is currently on their keyframe.

In the above image you can see that among the green there are some white indicators, namely the "1" and the upper left and lower right handles. Here's what the Basic Motion tab looks like for this shot of clouds:

You can see that Scale, Center, Upper Right and Lower Left all have keyframes. Scale is the large X-like crossing lines, Center is the center handle and the upper right and lower left handles are right where they should be. If the "1" were green, that would mean that the playhead is on a Anchor Point keyframe.

Canvas Corruption

Sometimes the Canvas window gets a little confused.

Moving an item and all its motion Keyframes all at once

Lets say you have a still image keyframed to move across the screen from point a to point b over so many seconds via it's Center positions. But, you need it to move in the lower portion of the frame rather than the top as it is now.

Easy. Hold down Shift+Command and then (you'll see the cursor turn into a hand - without arrows) hold them down while clicking and dragging your image along with it's keyframe paths all together to a new location.

You may have to zoom out of the canvas a bit to see both ends of your keyframe path. It will set extra keyframes along the path but they shouldn't alter the motion.

Artifacts and Fast User Switching

I've been editing on a friend's system for the past few days under a newly created account on their Mac. We've been using Fast User Switching a bit and I've noticed that if I leave FCP running on my login while my friend logs into their account, when switching back to my account sometimes, but not always, the Canvas will display heavy artifacts and skip considerably while playing something from the timeline. The footage was shot to a P2 card as DVCPro HD, 720 24p.

The odd thing is it's not consistent and I can't reproduce it every time at least so far. It may have something to do with this little-acknowledged Quicktime bug 7.4.5 but I'm not sure. Another report of this bug is here.

Nudging Items in the Canvas

Lets say you have some background video and one item over top of it. You can click on it in the timeline and then move it around in the Canvas with the mouse (you'll need to select the top left pull-down menu in the Canvas and select Image + Wireframe first) but there's a easy way to move it around (nudge) by very small amounts to get it in just the right position.

With the item highlighted in the Timeline and the Canvas the frontmost active window hold down the Option key and tap any Arrow Key. You'll see your element moving in small amounts for precision placement.

Hold down Command + Option and then tap an Arrow Key for really small movements. So small in fact that you may not be able to detect the movement unless you zoom in on the Canvas (Command + + (plus) or - (minus) with it the active frontmost window) a bit.