Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Using the skimmer and playhead
Working with both the playhead and skimmer in the Timeline may be a little confusing to begin with, and your
first instinct may be to turn skimming off. However the two work really well together and you can take advant-
age of the skimmer's speed to quickly locate material inside a lengthy sequence. For example, when you've
used the skimmer to find the point in the Timeline that you want to view, you can click the mouse to jump the
playhead to the skimmer's position or press the Spacebar to play the sequence from the same location.
Another way to work with the skimmer and playhead together is to use them to toggle between two different
clips in the Timeline. You can use this to juxtapose the two clips in the Viewer to see if they would cut together
or to compare the before and after result of a filter applied to a clip. To see this in action, park the playhead on
the first clip and then move the skimmer to the second clip on the Timeline. If the cursor is inside the Timeline
window, the Viewer displays the clip at the skimmer position (in this case, the second clip). If the cursor is then
raised above the Timeline window to the Toolbar, the Viewer displays the clip at the playhead position (the first
clip).
Keyboard navigation in the Timeline
The playhead can be moved to specific points within the Timeline by using the keyboard's arrow keys or by
typing numerical values into the Dashboard. Pressing the down arrow on the keyboard moves the playhead for-
ward to the beginning of the next clip in a sequence, and pressing the up arrow moves it backward to the previ-
ous clip. The Home and End keys on an extended keyboard can be used to jump the playhead to the start or end
of the sequence, and nudging the playhead frame-by-frame is also possible with the Left and Right Arrow keys.
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To move the playhead forward by one frame,
press the Right Arrow key.
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To move the playhead backward by one frame,
press the Left Arrow key.
•
To move the playhead forward by ten frames,
press Shift+Right Arrow.
•
To move the playhead backward by ten frames,
press Shift+Left Arrow.
Pressing the plus and minus keys followed by typing a numerical value jumps the playhead from its current pos-
ition by the amount you specify. Pressing either of these keys lights up the Dashboard's timecode field in blue
and displays a playhead icon with a back or forward arrow, depending on the key you've pressed (see Figure
5.17). To move the playhead, simply type a numeric value in minutes, seconds, or frames and press Return.
Figure 5.17
The playhead icon in the Dashboard.
For example, pressing the plus key, pressing 4, and then pressing Return moves the playhead forward by four
frames. Pressing the minus key, pressing 4, and pressing Return moves the playhead back by four frames. To
move the playhead by seconds rather than frames, enter a period after the number. If you press 4, followed by a
period, and then 7, the playhead moves by four seconds and seven frames. Entering two periods moves the play-
head by minutes. If no periods are entered, Final Cut Pro recalculates the number you enter based on the Pro-
ject's frame rate. For example, if the Project's frame rate is 24 fps, entering the number 30 is automatically cal-
culated as one second and six frames. You also can move the playhead to a particular timecode in the Timeline.
To move the playhead to a specific timecode location, click the Dashboard's Timeline field (or press Control+P,
enter a timecode location, and press Return).
