organization Archives - Quick Tip King

Speed up your editing time by creating Smart Collections. They are a breeze to set up and will save you from manually organizing your clips. Once you have imported your footage you’re ready to create a Smart Collection.
Select your event and click File>New>Smart Collection.

You can also press “Option + Command + n” to create a smart collection. This will add a Smart Collection folder called “Untitled.”

Rename your Smart Collection appropriately.

Organization is always important to maintain an efficient workflow, so don’t be lazy! For the sake of this tutorial, let’s rename it “Audio.”

Double-Click on your Smart Collection icon.

It will open up a window that looks like this photo seen here. It’s blank! It is time to start adding filters to your Smart Collection.

(Note: You can click on this photo to the left if you’d like a better look at it.)

Click on the “Plus” symbol on the right part of the window to add a filter.

It will bring up a set of options like in this photo. As you can see there are many options that you can add to filter your smart collection. You can do some really useful stuff with some of these setting and you may want to take some time to explore them, but for this tutorial we are going to select “Media Type” so we can make this our audio folder.

Click on “Media Type”

That will bring up an option to customize the filter. By clicking around you can see that you can customize the options to filter to a clip that “is” or “is not” “Video with Audio,” “Video Only,” or “Audio Only.”

Click on “Video with Audio” and Change it to “Audio Only.”

Now you have a smart collection of your audio files. This is especially useful if you import clips later. They will automatically be placed into this Smart Collection. If you have already imported footage, you will see the event browser become populated with the audio clips.

You can customize this as far as you would like. You can even set two filter settings and really narrow down your smart collection. To remove any filters, just click the “minus” or “-” symbol to the right of the filter.

Bright Idea!

If you are updating an event library over many months, add a Smart Collection called “Recently Imported.” Add the “Date” filter and change the settings to be “Date Imported” “is in the last” “x” “days.”

Need help with anything? Drop me a line! Stanley@QuickTipKing.com

You may also want to check out Adding Organization to Your Libraries in Final Cut Pro

Hello there!

Let’s talk about organizing our files within the library viewer in Final Cut Pro X.

This tutorial assumes that you have created a library, imported your footage, and that you are ready to start organizing your clips. The most basic level of organization begins with keyword collections. Keywords is like having a soft folder- nothing changes to the file structure to your files outside of Final Cut-the files are categorized and still available in the top folder.

Adding Keywords is easy! Check out the video above or read on.

Click on the keyword collection icon.

The icon looks like a key and is found directly below the event browser. A window pops up on your screen.

Click on a clip and then start typing into the keyword collection window. Hit “return” to add the keyword.

When you first start adding keywords it will start adding them to your quick keywords. These can be added to additional clips by clicking on the up arrow and number icon next to the keyword. You can also push “control + the number associated with the keyword” to add the keyword to the desired clip.

Now your clips are categorized!

Check them out, click on the different keyword collections and you can see just the desired clips that you set for each keyword.

For an advanced tip, you can select an in and out point of your clip (keyboard shortcut of “i” or “o,” respectively) and set those as a keyword collection.

FCPX will add just that selected section into the keyword collection. You could use this to your advantage by setting a keyword of “Best of” and put in just the good clips.

OK, you’ve organized your clips, but what if you want a further level of organization? That’s where folders come in!

First click File>New>Folder

A folder is added to your library under your event. The only thing that can be put into the folders is keyword collections or smart collections. You cannot individually put clips into the folder.

Drag and drop a keyword collection or smart collection into the folder.

You’ve just organized your files! Wasn’t that easy? These few simple steps can save you many minutes down the road of your edit.

As a review, the file organization structure looks like this:

Hard Drive>Libraries>Events>Clips

You can organize it into:

Hard Drive>Libraries>Events>Keyword or Smart Collections>Clips

You can organize it even deeper into:

Hard Drive>Libraries>Events>Folders >Keyword or Smart Collections>Clips

Collections can not exist without Clips. Folders can only organize Collections. Clips can not be placed directly into Folders.

While Folders and Collections are optional they can add much more organization to your workflow.

Bright Idea!

Use a folder to organize your audio keywords!

Name your folder “Audio Files” and underneath it have the keyword collections of “Music” and “Sound FX.”

Was this tutorial helpful to you?

Please send us any questions or comments!

Tutorials in 90 Seconds or Less!

Final Cut Pro Can Organize Your Clips For You with Smart Collections

Adding Organization to Your Libraries in Final Cut Pro X

As a review, the file organization structure looks like this: