Keyboard Maestro and Preference Manager Problem/Solution
This is just an "FYI" kind of post.
A few days ago I was editing an old FCP 7 video. I had used the SendToX app to bring the FCP 7 XML data into FCP 12.4. This process works very well and I've done it many times. This particular project had a lot of freeze frames in it. FCP 7 freeze frames don't import correctly via the XML, so I have to re-insert them into the time line. These freeze frames all came from short video clips. The steps to replace those missing freeze frames is this:
- Select the clip in the Browser
- Press "Q" to put it in the timeline above the story line.
- Click in the timeline to highlight the clip
- Press OPTION-F to generate the new freeze frame.
- Delete the remaining pieces of the video clip that are not needed.
- Drag the new freeze frame into the timeline where it belongs.
After I had replaced several freeze frames this way, I realized that if I could automate steps 2, 3, 4, and 5, I could save a lot of time. I searched and found an app called Keyboard Maestro that claimed it could build macros for any app on Mac. I downloaded it, installed it and built a macro to do this. However, I found that it really did not work the way I wanted it to, and it was going to take more time to figure it out than it would to just keep on editing the manual way. So I deleted the Keyboard Maestro app by dragging the app to the trash.
I continued editing and a few minutes later I needed to copy effects from one clip to another. The procedure for doing this is:
- Select the clip in the timeline that has the effects applied.
- Press CMD-C to copy the clip to the clipboard.
- Select the clip where you want to PASTE the effects.
- Press SHIFT-CMD-V to paste the effects into the clip.
However, the SHIFT-CMD-V keyboard shortcut didn't work! Nothing came up on the screen. I went to the EDIT menu in the too bar and found that I could paste the effects from there, but the keyboard shortcut did not work!
Any time FCP doesn't do something right, the first troubleshooting step is to shut down, restart FCP and delete the preferences. You do that by pressing and holding Option + Cmd while launching Final Cut. I did that and found that the keyboard shortcut STILL did not work. The next troubleshooting step is always a full restart of the Mac. After a restart, everything was back to normal. Whew! Keyboard Maestro had done something to the keyboard setup that broke this keyboard shortcut.
We often suggest deleting preferences as a first step in troubleshooting a problem with FCP. That can be a problem if you have your workspace set up in a special way. Resetting everything is a pain. I use an app called Preference Manager to manage my preferences. This is an app that saves your preferences for many apps. The main screen looks like this:
The app allows me to choose what I want to backup within a set of preferences...
The app also allows me to save several different backup sets.
When I delete my preferences, all I have to do is RESTORE the backup from this app and all my workspace settings, window locations, etc. are right back where I originally set them. Huge time saver.
This post is just an "FYI" type of post. I hope the information I posted here comes in handy for you down the road.
[Edited by Moderator]
