FCP X: Playback Secrets

Final Cut Pro X includes a variety of helpful playback tricks that can make your editing faster and easier – provided you know where to look.

Here’s a collection of helpful keyboard shortcuts.

START SIMPLY

We all know that the spacebar starts and stops playback. While Shift + spacebar plays a clip in reverse. But, that’s only the start.

Shortcut	What It Does
J	Play a clip or Timeline backwards. Press J up to 6 times for speeds up to 32x backwards.
L	Play a clip or Timeline forwards. Press L up to 6 times for speeds up to 32x forwards.
K	Stops playback
J + K	Play in slow-motion reverse (press both at the same time)
K + L	Play in slow-motion forward (press both at the same time)
Press K, tap J	Move one frame left
Press K, tap L	Move one frame right

IN YOUR FACE

Shift + Cmd + F plays a video full-screen. Move the mouse to display the playback controller.

KNOW YOUR LIMITS

Select a clip, or use the Range tool (R) to select a range of clips. Press / to play the selected range.

Put the Playhead somewhere – say near an edit point. Press Shift + / to play around the current position of the Playhead.

Cmd + L Turn on loop playback so the clip or Timeline plays over and over without pause.

NOTE: The amount of Pre-roll and Post-roll is determined in Preferences > Playback.

Shortcut	What It Does
Control + Shift + I	Play from the beginning of the Timeline, or a clip in the Viewer. This is faster than pressing Home, then spacebar.
Control + Shift + O	Play to the end of the Timeline, or a clip in the Viewer. (I’m not clear of the difference between this and simply pressing the spacebar.)

HIDDEN SHORTCUTS

These shortcuts exist, but no key has been assigned to them. You can add these yourself using Final Cut Pro X > Commands.

• Play from Beginning of Clip
• Play forward up to 32x (six different shortcuts)
• Play backward up to 32x (six different shortcuts)
• Retime a clip at 2x, 4x and 8x speed (three different shortcuts)
• Retime a clip at 10%, 25% and 50% speeds
• Reverse the playback of a clip

SUMMARY

Keyboard shortcuts are fun to discover and play with, because they can make everything we do happen faster. Let me know if there’s a favorite shortcut that I missed.

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