Learn to Make Fast Title Changes
Steve Martin will walk you through a powerful tip in Final Cut Pro X.
If you’ve ever worked on a project with a lot of titles, you’re going to love how quickly you can locate and make changes to your text using Final Cut Pro X’s Timeline Index.
Welcome to Final Cut Pro X in under 5 minutes. I’m Steve from rippletraining.com. If you’ve ever worked on a project with a lot of titles, you’re going to love how quickly you can locate and make changes to your text.
Before we get into that, I’m excited to tell you about out new Final Cut Pro X app that just we just launched and is featured on the Mac App store. If you’re new to Final Cut Pro or an editor that needs an occasional refresher, we’ve created a 20 lesson video course that covers the entire Final Cut Pro workflow from start to finish. I’ve included a link to the app in the description section. Ok, on with the tutorial…
I have open a project of a short film I shot and edited last year called Cupkake. Art the end of the timeline, there’s a stack of title clips that make up the end credits. Skimming over the titles, I’m noticing a few changes I’d like to make. For example, I would like to change the white text to a festive green, and I’ve also noticed that the last name of related cast members is misspelled.
When dealing with layered titles like this, it’s often difficult to quickly identify the titles you want to edit unless you zoom in. A method I find much faster, is to press Command-Shift-2 to open the Timeline Index, then click the Titles button.
A list of every title in your project will appear along with it’s timecode position in the timeline. If I wanted to jump the playhead to the title of my name, I simply click on that item in the list. Notice the playhead is parked on the first frame of that title and the clip becomes selected.
The reason we’re not seeing the selected title in the Viewer is that I’ve applied a fade at the head of the title. Tapping the right arrow key a few times will reveal it. Because the clip is selected I can start editing it. Let’s work on another title. In the Timeline Index I’ll select the title labeled Direction and tap the right arrow a few times.
Pressing V will toggle the title’s visibility to confirm I’ve selected the correct one for editing. I’ll now open the Inspector, scroll down to the Face properties and choose a Gradient fill. I’ll change the blue color tag to a grinch-y green color. To save this text style, click the Style pop-up and choose > Save Style Attributes, then give my text style a meaningful name.
Now here’s the cool part: If I know which title need a grinch-y green color, I simply hold down the Command key then select all the titles in the list. Then from the Style popup, I’ll choose my saved Style. Playing back, all the formerly white titles are now green.
The thing I want to emphasize here is that by using the timeline index, you don’t actually have to directly select any title in the timeline in order to make changes to it. Let’s look at one more option that will save you some time. Earlier I mentioned that some of my cast members names were mis-spelled.
In the list I can see that wherever the last name Eddolls appears, it’s spelled with only one L and should have two.
From the Edit menu choose > Find and Replace Title Text. In the Find input field, I’ll enter the incorrect spelling, and in the Replace input field, I’ll enter the correct spelling. To replace all the titles with correct spelling, click the Replace All button.
Skimming over the titles, reveals that all instances of the misspelled name have been corrected.
Before we get into that, I’m excited to tell you about out new Final Cut Pro X app that just we just launched and is featured on the Mac App store. If you’re new to Final Cut Pro or an editor that needs an occasional refresher, we’ve created a 20 lesson video course that covers the entire Final Cut Pro workflow from start to finish. I’ve included a link to the app in the description section. Ok, on with the tutorial…
I have open a project of a short film I shot and edited last year called Cupkake. Art the end of the timeline, there’s a stack of title clips that make up the end credits. Skimming over the titles, I’m noticing a few changes I’d like to make. For example, I would like to change the white text to a festive green, and I’ve also noticed that the last name of related cast members is misspelled.
When dealing with layered titles like this, it’s often difficult to quickly identify the titles you want to edit unless you zoom in. A method I find much faster, is to press Command-Shift-2 to open the Timeline Index, then click the Titles button.
A list of every title in your project will appear along with it’s timecode position in the timeline. If I wanted to jump the playhead to the title of my name, I simply click on that item in the list. Notice the playhead is parked on the first frame of that title and the clip becomes selected.
The reason we’re not seeing the selected title in the Viewer is that I’ve applied a fade at the head of the title. Tapping the right arrow key a few times will reveal it. Because the clip is selected I can start editing it. Let’s work on another title. In the Timeline Index I’ll select the title labeled Direction and tap the right arrow a few times.
Pressing V will toggle the title’s visibility to confirm I’ve selected the correct one for editing. I’ll now open the Inspector, scroll down to the Face properties and choose a Gradient fill. I’ll change the blue color tag to a grinch-y green color. To save this text style, click the Style pop-up and choose > Save Style Attributes, then give my text style a meaningful name.
Now here’s the cool part: If I know which title need a grinch-y green color, I simply hold down the Command key then select all the titles in the list. Then from the Style popup, I’ll choose my saved Style. Playing back, all the formerly white titles are now green.
The thing I want to emphasize here is that by using the timeline index, you don’t actually have to directly select any title in the timeline in order to make changes to it. Let’s look at one more option that will save you some time. Earlier I mentioned that some of my cast members names were mis-spelled.
In the list I can see that wherever the last name Eddolls appears, it’s spelled with only one L and should have two.
From the Edit menu choose > Find and Replace Title Text. In the Find input field, I’ll enter the incorrect spelling, and in the Replace input field, I’ll enter the correct spelling. To replace all the titles with correct spelling, click the Replace All button.
Skimming over the titles, reveals that all instances of the misspelled name have been corrected.
