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:

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:

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:

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

  1. stu aull says:

    Waiting for this one Larry – thanks!

  2. Mike says:

    Ok, so if I am using different custom effects on a timeline which Ive renamed, how can I see which custom effects Ive applied to each clip? Only info I can find in the inspector is the general info about color board but no summary of which custom effect name I used. Very frustrating, if there is a way to view Id appreciate it.

    • Larry says:

      Mike:

      Since a custom effect is just a setting, you would be able to see the settings you’ve applied, but not the name of the setting.

      Larry

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