14. Video Effects
In This Chapter
Part of the fun of playing with a program like Final Cut Pro is the ability to modify the look and feel of your video clips. Sometimes, this is about fixing or repairing mistakes made in production. At other times, it’s about purely aesthetic exploration.
Final Cut Pro includes dozens of filters to apply to your video. You can use these filters to create subtle, naturalistic effects (such as blurs or light flares), and you can use them to create wholly unnatural effects (such as kaleidoscopes or overlapping background squares).
Many filters can simply be applied and left alone. Others have a variety of settings you can employ to customize the effect and better integrate the results into your particular program.
You can also add multiple effects to a clip and control the order in which they are applied. Applying multiple filters exponentially expands the flexibility and creativity available to you.
The Effects Browser
Video filters are found in the Effects Browser. There are eight categories of video effects: Basics, Blur, Distortion, Keying, Light, Looks, Stylize, and Tiling. Take some time to explore and preview the different effects.
Some, such as those found in the Looks category and some of the effects in the Basics group, are essentially color correction presets and are discussed in more detail in Chapter 15, “Color Correction.”
To open the Effects Browser
• Click the Effects Browser icon, or press Command-5.
The Effects Browser opens 
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Click the Effects Browser icon to open the Effects Browser.
The Effects Browser displays all the effects available to you (including third-party plug-ins if you have any installed). Each effect is displayed as a thumbnail preview and with a descriptive name.
The Browser has two parts: the stack, where the list of effects is displayed, and a sidebar containing category names.
You can find specific effects either by searching for a particular name or by browsing through the various categories.
To find specific video effects
• Do one of the following:
• Type the name of the effect you’re looking for in the search field at the bottom of the Effects Browser 
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Search for a specific effect by typing in the search field.
The stack is filtered to show only effects containing the letters in the search field.
Clear the search field by clicking the circled X at the right edge of the field or by pressing Escape.
• Click one of the category names in the sidebar on the left side of the Effects Browser, and scroll through the main stack area on the right 
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Click a category in the sidebar to filter the list. Hide or show the sidebar by clicking the Show/Hide Sidebar button in the lower-left corner of the Effects Browser.
The stack is filtered by category.
Previewing Effects
You can preview what each effect looks like prior to adding it to your project. This enables you to experiment with a variety of effects quickly.
To preview an effect
• Select a clip in the Timeline, and then do one of the following:
• Hover your pointer over a transition icon in the Effects Browser to skim across the effect preview 
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Skim across Effects icons to see a preview, or hover over the icon and press the Spacebar to play.
• Position your pointer over an effects icon, and press the Spacebar.
The Viewer loops a sample of the effect applied to the selected clip.
To apply an effect
1. Select a clip in the Timeline to which you want to apply the effect, and then do one of the following:
• In the Effects Browser, double-click an effect.
• Drag the effect from the Effects Browser to the clip in the Timeline 
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Drag an effect to any clip to apply the effect to that clip.
The effect is applied to the clip.
Modifying Effects
Once you have applied effects to a clip, many effects have parameters you can modify to customize the result and tailor it to work with your particular shot.
To modify parameters in the Inspector
1. Select the clip in the Timeline with an effect applied.
2. Open the Video Inspector by doing one of the following:
• Click the Inspector button in the toolbar, and click Video at the top of the Inspector.
• Choose Edit Effects from the clip’s Action menu.
• Press Command-4 .
When effects are applied to a clip, their controls appear in the Effects category of the Video Inspector.
3. In the Effects category, identify the effect you want to modify and select from items from pop-up menus, drag sliders, and click checkboxes as desired.
Effects are rendered in the order in which they appear in the Video Inspector. If you apply a Black & White effect after adding a colored Frame effect, the colors in the frame are going to be displayed as gray . If, however, you apply the Frame effect second, the clip will still be desaturated, but the frame will retain its custom colors .
The order in which you apply effects impacts the way in which the results are displayed. In this example, the Black & White filter is applied after the Frame filter.
In this example, the Black & White filter is applied before the Frame filter. Notice that while the video is desaturated, the frame retains its color.
To reorder effects
• In the Effects category of the Video Inspector, drag the name of the effect above or below the other effects in the list .
Reorder effects by dragging them by their name in the Video Inspector.
The filters are reordered.
To disable an effect
• In the Effects section of the Video Inspector, click the blue activation checkbox to the left of the effect name .
To disable an effect without deleting it, simply click the big blue activation checkbox.
The blue checkbox turns black and the effect is disabled.
To reset an effect
• Click the Reset button to the right of the effect name.
The effect is reset to its default settings.
To reset all effects
• Click the Reset All Effects button to the right of the Effects section header.
All effects are reset to their default settings.
To delete an effect
• In the Effects section of the Video Inspector, click the name of the effect, and press Delete.