Final Cut Pro/Establishing System Settings

There are two menus that are important to look at before you begin importing video and editing in the timeline: the User Preferences and the System Settings.

First let's take a look at the User Preferences:

Go to FINAL CUT PRO > User Preferences

User Preferences
There are five tabs under the User Preferences control panel.

Levels of Undo
This can be set from 0 to 99. The default is 10. I generally prefer more than ten, but I also don’t need 99 levels of undo. The higher the number you pick, the more memory you are devoting to saving your history of edits. For now, set the Levels of Undo to 30

List Recent Clips
The list of recent clips pop up menu is located on the lower right corner of The Viewer window. You can set this to be as high as 20, but the default of 10 clips is usually fine.

Multi-Frame Trim Size
This number determines how many frames forward or backward the trim buttons work in Trim Mode. Along with the multi frame button in Trim Mode, there will always be a +1 and -1 trim button, so feel free to try different number you feel might suit you. You can set this to be as high as 99. Try 10 to start.

Real Time Audio Mixing
The number of tracks that can be mixed and that you can listen to in real time is dependent on your processor speed, the number of audio filters used in your sequence, your hard disk data transfer rate, and the amount of memory allocated to Final Cut Pro. This number can be set up to 99; its default is 8. Typically eight is enough to begin projects with, although if you add a lot of sound effect tracks and music tracks, you may want to bump this number up to 10 or 12. It is a handy adjustment to have available, but generally 8 is enough.

Audio Playback Quality
Unless you are performing a detailed audio mix at the end of your editing process, set this to low to enable you to hear the greatest number of mixed tracks and audio filters in real time. When you are recording your sequence to tape, Final Cut Pro uses the high setting regardless of what you have selected for the playback quality.

Audio Outputs
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