FCPX and the Placebo Save Effect
Final Cut Pro X is fantastic. #
There. I said it. I’ll say it a different way: I Don’t Miss Tracks One Tiny Bit.
I read a lot of posts from a lot of new FCPX users, and by far - one of the things that baffles folks (outside of the missing tracks - but that’s a whole ‘nother topic) is the lack of a save command.
You see, FCPX auto-saves your work. Silently, obediently. To some: annoyingly. But whatever. This is how the program was written.
Hitting Cmd-S in FCPX has no positive effect. It has a negative one though: you get an error message. This, I would submit, is a design flaw - one Apple should definitely correct, since 99.9% (no citation needed, right guys?) of their other apps and apps by third-party developers all use Cmd-S to save the current document. Natural, habitual usage of a Mac these days includes (if you are wise) an autonomic Save keystroke every couple of minutes.
If you have this (good) habit, then FCPX will drive you batty until you unlearn it.
I have another solution, and I hope a few of you might get some use/relief out of it.
A Placebo Macro. #
What I did is trivial: First, I created a “do-nothing” macro in Keyboard Maestro and assigned it the keyboard trigger of Cmd-S and restricted it to run only while FCPX was active. This effectively 'swallows’ the keystroke, and prevents it from getting through to FCPX.
This was great, but it was missing something: feedback. Most apps, when you Save, the File menu flashes briefly or some other visual or auditory signal lets you know that your save was successful. I had misjudged how important this feedback was, and left it out of my simple solution.
My second revision was just as simple, but included a Mac OS Notification that said “Project Saved.”
This was enough to satisfy the two requirements: make FCPX stop beeping on “save” and let the user know that their efforts were fruitful.
(Note: if you don’t have KM, this is easily replicated in a number of ways using your Macro/Productivity app of your choice (e.g. Alfred, FastScripts, etc.)
- Create an AppleScript with the following code:
display notification "Project Saved" - Save it as an script in your User Scripts folder for FCPX (mine is here:
/Users/robwest/Library/Scripts/Applications/Final Cut Pro X - Assign the keyboard shortcut Cmd-S to run this application using whatever method your macro/productivity app uses. Be sure to add the command only for the Final Cut Pro X application, or else you could disable save across all your apps!
Feel free to refine any of the above steps - make your notification fancier would be one such thing I would do. Some macro apps let you natively create OS X notifications. If yours does, do it that way and avoid the script!