Keyboard Remapping in Final Cut Pro

Keyboard shortcuts are great to make your editing work faster and more intuitive, but often the presets are not what seem natural. Especially for those used to working on other operating systems you may find the integration of default quick keys difficult. Thankfully changing the keyboard shortcuts is fairly easy in Final Cut Pro, and is called Keyboard Remapping.

When you are in Final Cut Pro go to Tools and select Keyboard Layout. From here go ahead and click on Customize. You will be given a window with a long search bar that looks common from Apple programs. Here is where you can search for a command you would like to apply a new keyboard shortcut. For example, if you are trying to apply a new shortcut for Save you would simply type “Save” and it would come up.

The top of this window has a series of tabs for different keyboard shortcuts, such as Control and Apple or Shift and Apple. There will be a depiction of a keyboard for you to view. Go ahead and click on the command you are trying to assume and either drag it onto one of the preset tabs, with keyboard combinations like Control and F, or onto one in the keyboard to assign it. You can work with this menu as much as you like until you feel satisfied with the new keyboard set-up. From here you can go ahead and set the changes as the new shortcuts and they will appear as such until you change back to the default or alter them further.

Once you are in this window it is pretty self explanatory, and can be a quick way to assign keyboard combinations that are more natural to you. This may not always be the thing you want to do because standard keyboard shortcuts are what will be default on any other system you work with. It is better to learn the default shortcuts as much as you can before you go and start to alter them. If you are going to customize them you need to make sure that you do it on a computer that you intend on using for almost all of your editing work.