Keyboard Shortcuts for Film Editors

One of our customers, a professor at a film school, suggested this tip:

For those of you used to using industry standard editting software like Final Cut and Avid, you can map “j”, “k”, and “l” with modifier keys to back/pause/forward.  Since you need the j/k/l keys for actually inputting text during transcription, you’ll need to use modifier keys (Ctrl, Command, etc.).

On the Mac you would use the “Command” and “Option” keys to set up something like this:

• Command-j => Play Backwards at Custom Rate 1.x
• Command-Option-j => Play Backwards at Custom Rate 2.0x
• Command-k => Pause
• Command-l => Play at Custom Rate 1.x
• Command-Option-l => Play at Custom Rate 2.0x

In Windows you would use the “Ctrl” and “Shift” keys to set up something like this:

• Ctrl-j => Play Backwards at Custom Rate 1.x
• Ctrl-Shift-j => Play Backwards at Custom Rate 2.0x
• Ctrl-k => Pause
• Ctrl-l => Play at Custom Rate 1.x
• Ctrl-Shift-l => Play at Custom Rate 2.0x

You can obviously tweak these to suit your workflow.

Note that by setting Command-l/Ctrl-l to “Play at Custom Rate 1.x” you can toggle back and forth between the fast speed and the slow speed.  If you set it to “Play” instead, hitting Command-l/Ctrl-l would only continue playing at the current play rate.  So if you’re already at 2.x, the play rate won’t change.

An alternative approach would be to set Command-Option-l/Ctrl-Shift-l to “Change Play Rate” by 1.x.  Then every time you hit Command-Option-l/Ctrl-Shift-l the play rate would increase to 2.x, 3.x, etc..  And you can hit Command-l/Ctrl-l to get back to the 1.x rate.  This would more emulate the behavior of FCP.

For instructions on how to set up shortcuts: http://www.inqscribe.com/docs/keyboardshortcuts.html

Comments are turned off in this blog, but head on over to our Facebook page for to leave comments: http://www.facebook.com/InqScribe