FCP X: Playback Secrets

Posted on July 5, 2015 by Larry

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.

FCPX001

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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24 Responses to FCP X: Playback Secrets

Newer Comments →

Gretta Wing Miller says:

July 6, 2015 at 3:26 pm

That Control + Shift + O will play to the end (out point) of a selected range in the TL (but not so in the Browser)

Thanks,
Gretta

Reply
Kay says:

July 24, 2015 at 1:48 pm

Thank you for the great article.
I think that the note below the picture is misleading. One can change the Pre- and Post-roll in “Preferences – Playback” (not “Editing”).
Regards from Germany

Reply
- Larry says:
  
  July 24, 2015 at 2:03 pm
  
  Kay:
  
  Good catch. I corrected the article.
  
  Larry
  
  Reply
Tommy says:

July 27, 2015 at 5:15 am

Trim End & Trim Start from playhead (Option + Brackets), no need to cut, select then delete.

Credit goes to a guy who’s name I can’t remember but who was featured in a MacBreak Studio a while back.

Reply
Paul says:

August 29, 2016 at 6:26 am

Can’t get slow motion playback to work. Hitting L will go through degrees of fast-forward, hitting K will bring it back to 1x and then stop.

Reply
- Larry says:
  
  August 29, 2016 at 7:03 am
  
  Paul:
  
  For slow-motion forward, press both K and L at the same time. For slow-motion reverse, press both J and K at the same time.
  
  Larry
  
  Reply
Franck Goldberg says:

July 15, 2019 at 7:07 am

Any ways for the timeline to move with the playhead when playing back. I have to press the space bar to do so, that’s not good when trying to evaluate a long portion of editing for it’s general flow.

Reply
- Larry says:
  
  July 15, 2019 at 8:22 am
  
  Franck:
  
  Nope. This has been my top personal request to Apple for the last four years.
  
  Larry
  
  Reply
Suzi Pond says:

August 19, 2019 at 7:42 am

HI Larry,

Do you know of any way to get a 40% playback forward speed while viewing in the event browser? The K-L is too slow I’ve found to mimic a 60fps on a 24fps. The customizations don’t appear to offer it. Thank you!

Reply
- Larry says:
  
  August 19, 2019 at 9:34 am
  
  Suzi:
  
  There’s no way that I know of to do this. Speed changes are created in the Timeline, not the Browser.
  
  Larry
  
  Reply
Patrick Brangers says:

August 26, 2019 at 12:23 pm

FCPX–Can I playback multiple clips in an Event without creating a project?. iMovie supports this feature — no need to select multiple clips, iMovie begins playback at the first clip and the playhead jumps to the next clip, and the next, and the next etc. until the last clip.

Reply
- Larry says:
  
  August 26, 2019 at 1:31 pm
  
  Patrick:
  
  While you can not play multiple clips at the same time in the FCP X Browser, automatic playback from one clip to the next works the same in FCP X as it does in iMovie.
  
  Larry
  
  Reply
Yayoi says:

October 17, 2019 at 2:26 am

i’m experiencing major issues with audio in FCPX. it will play a few clips much louder than the rest. but when i go back a few frames and play it again, it sounds normal. however, once i save a MP4 file and play it on Vimeo, the loud clips are there again. i was told to remove Background Rendering and uncheck all Playback options. i also Deleted (Unused) Generated Library Files. well, that worked for about half the clips. but there are still places where FCPX plays a clip louder than it should (it sounds like someone raises the volume temporarily) and when i go back a few frames and replay it, it sounds normal. thank you. this is driving me nuts.

Reply
- Larry says:
  
  October 17, 2019 at 8:37 am
  
  Yayoi:
  
  Hmm… I may not be able to help. But my first suggestion in these cases “weird behavior” is to trash your FCP X preferences:
  
  https://larryjordan.com/articles/trouble-shoot-your-apple-final-cut-pro-x-system/
  
  See if the ideas in that article help. Otherwise, continue working with Apple Support.
  
  Larry
  
  Reply
  - Yayoi says:
    
    October 17, 2019 at 1:02 pm
    
    thank you, Larry! i will try your suggestions. or, i may just re-cut the audio portions where it does that–raising the volume on its own. it’s in about 20 places so i can locate the original footage and use the audio portions from it to see if that resolves the problem. again, thank you!
    
    Reply
Victor says:

February 20, 2020 at 3:48 pm

Hi Larry, I’m trying to create a shortcut for playing *only the audio of a subrole component,* when expanded. It’s the same as placing the mouse pointer inside a subrole/component and clicking space, playing only that audio. This would allow the user to use Command_Arrow Up/Down to solo the audio components when editing dialogue and then quickly, non-destructively, delete each one (by pressing delete), similar to soloing and playing tracks in a Pro Tools session. Right now, the only way to play back the audio in a single component is using the mouse to hover inside the clip. I’ve searched the Keyboard Customizer but can’t find a command. Any ideas?

Thanks and keep up the great work.

Reply
- Larry says:
  
  February 20, 2020 at 4:11 pm
  
  Victor:
  
  No suggestions, though it is a good idea. I looked at the available keyboard shortcuts and none do what you want to do. If it doesn’t exist as a keyboard o menu command, we can’t add it. If it is menu command, but no keyboard command, you can create a custom keyboard command, as outlined in this article:
  
  https://larryjordan.com/articles/create-custom-keyboard-shortcuts/
  
  Larry
  
  Reply
Dmitry says:

May 17, 2020 at 11:24 pm

And where is there an analog of the comb l > shift+L (+0.1x to speed), shift+J (-0.1x to speed)?

Reply
- Larry Jordan says:
  
  May 18, 2020 at 7:29 am
  
  Dmitry:
  
  The Skimmer (shortcut: S) provides the ability ramp from very slow to very fast, but there isn’t a keyboard shortcut that does this.
  
  Larry
  
  Reply