Final Cut Pro X: Create, Apply or Remove Effects Presets [u]

[ Updated Aug. 16, 2020, with a variety of wording changes.]

Creating the perfect effect takes a lot of time. Wouldn’t it be great if, once you create an effect, you could save it to reuse again later?

Good news! Final Cut Pro X provides exactly that: an Effects Preset.

Image Courtesy: EditStock (www.editstock.com)

Here’s an example. In this image, I’ve added:

• Color Presets > Dry
• Stylize > Vignette
• Transform > Scaling
• Transform > Position
• And used the color wheels to increase saturation in the midtones

Whew! All to give the image an “old-timey” look, which fits perfectly with the story.

CREATE AN EFFECTS PRESET

Once you’ve created the effects combination you want to save, look to the bottom right of the Video Inspector. There is the Save Effects Preset button.

That opens this window. At the top, I named this effect “Old-Time Memory”.

All presets need to be stored in a category. Click the Category menu and choose where you want the presets stored. While Color Presets would work, I decided to create a new category, so I chose New Category at the bottom of the menu.

This displays a small window where I can name the category. All we are doing here is creating a folder where this effect – and any future effects – will be stored. The actual preset name was entered earlier in the Name field.

In the Attributes section, check the effects you want to save with the preset. In my case, I want to save the look, but not the changes I made in the Transform menu. The image on the left shows all the applied effects, while the image on the right shows my final choices; I’m keeping the effects, but not keeping the changed Transform settings.

Notice the yellow diamonds in the Keyframe column? These indicate that an effect has keyframes applied to it.

If the effect you are saving includes keyframes – and in my example, I’m excluding them – these bottom two choices are relevant:

• Maintain timing. This does not adjust the position of the keyframes when you apply the preset to a new clip.
• Stretch to fit. This adjusts the position of keyframes based upon the duration of the original clip compared to the duration of the new clip. For example, if the original clip was three seconds long and you apply a preset containing keyframes to a new clip that’s six seconds long, the duration between keyframes will be doubled. If you apply it to a clip that’s only 1.5 seconds, the duration between key frames will be cut in half.

If you don’t use keyframes, you don’t care about the Keyframe Timing setting.

If you do use keyframes, most of the time you will probably want to choose Maintain Timing; however Final Cut gives you the option to adjust keyframe positions based upon clip durations.

Click Save and you are done.

APPLYING A PRESET

To apply a preset, open the Effects Browser, go to the Category you saved the effect into and apply it, the same as any other effect.

REMOVING EFFECTS

You have three options when you need to remove effects from a clip:

• Select the clip, then manually remove effects using the appropriate Inspector.
• Edit > Remove Effects. This removes all effects applied to the selected clip, or clips.
• Edit > Remove Attributes. This displays a dialog allow you to select which effects, that are currently applied to a clip, you want to remove (see screen shot). Blue boxes indicate effects that are applied to a clip. Uncheck a box to remove that specific effect.

While you can manually remove effects using the Inspector,  the Edit menu options are much faster. In any case, select the timeline clip, or clips, to which you want to remove effects, then choose the appropriate option.

DELETING A PRESET

Effects are stored in the Library of your Home Directory. But, rather than dig through the Library to find these files, the easiest way to delete them is to right-click the effect you want to remove and choose Reveal in Finder.

NOTE: For the record, custom effects are stored in: [Home Directory] > Library > Application Support > ProApps > Effects Presets.

Then, select and delete the effect you no longer want, the same as any other file. Be careful not to delete any files in this folder that you did not create!

Even after you move this file to the Trash, it may still appear in Final Cut. Once you quit the app and relaunch it, any deleted effects will be removed.

NOTE: Any effects presets, or custom effects in general, that are applied to clips in the Timeline will NOT be removed when you trash an effects preset. Once applied to a clip, effects stay applied, unless you remove them from each clip manually.

SUMMARY

Effects presets can save us a lot of time when we are reusing effects across multiple clips, or multiple projects. And creating them only takes a few seconds. Now you know how.

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