Color Grading in Final Cut Pro X with a Trackpad
In a previous post, I showed you how to set up a trackpad with AudioSwift and MIDI2LR to edit photos faster in Adobe Lightroom. Now, we’re going to apply the same concept with Final Cut Pro X (FCPX) to color grade videos with simple touch gestures in our trackpads, instead of clicking each individual parameter with the mouse pointer. We’ll be using virtual MIDI sliders and XY pads with AudioSwift and a free macOS application called CommandPost. This is how it works— we call AudioSwift with a four or five finger tap. The mouse pointer freezes and a small Console window appears on screen. The trackpad is transformed into a MIDI touch controller with different sliders and XY pads. Using keyboard shortcuts, we choose a Color Wheel or Color Board and start touching the trackpad to change a FCPX parameter like saturation, brightness, temperature, etc. AudioSwift sends MIDI messages that CommandPost translates into FCPX actions. Once we finish, we press the Esc key to turn AudioSwift off and unfreeze the mouse pointer. You can either use a Magic Trackpad 1 or 2, or the built-in trackpad in MacBooks for a portable solution. AudioSwift works from macOS 10.11.6 and up, however, CommandPost needs a higher macOS version to work with FCPX. Just to let you know, my background is in music and I developed AudioSwift for music production. I’m not a FCPX, CommandPost or color grading professional. What we’re going to do here is to get you started, by showing you how to set up everything using configuration files, that you can tweak later to your preferred workflow. So let’s start… Download the files for this tutorial. AudioSwift Configuration & Overview Download AudioSwift from here. Open the installer and move the application to the Application folder as it says. Launch AudioSwift and if you’re on Mojave or Catalina, it will show you the following message. Click Open System Preferences. NOTE: if this message window doesn’t appear automatically, go to the Privacy tab under System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy Tab. In the left column, go to Accessibility and add AudioSwift to the list by clicking the plus sign. You’ll need an administrator password to do it. Once AudioSwift is added to the right column, close the window and open the app again. The app icon will appear in the top menu bar. If you’re new to AudioSwift or MIDI, let me give you a quick overview. AudioSwift transforms the trackpad into a MIDI controller and it’s an app that works in the top menu bar waiting to be called. With a four or five fingers tap, AudioSwift is turned on and the Console window appears. We touch the trackpad to send MIDI messages and hit the Esc key when we finish. AudioSwift comes in five controller modes, but we’re going to only use two: the XY mode and the Slider mode. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface and it’s a communication protocol that connects electronic musical instruments and computers for making music. The MIDI messages are transmitted from AudioSwift via three virtual MIDI ports, and each port has 16 MIDI channels. The ports are then connected to CommandPost that translates the messages to FCPX actions. There are different MIDI messages and we’re going to use two of them: the trackpad will send Control Change (CC) messages and the keyboard will send Note On messages. IMPORTANT: if you’re already an AudioSwift user, save your current settings before we continue or otherwise they will be lost! Let’s import one of the configuration files we downloaded before. Go to the AudioSwift icon in the top menu bar and click Preferences > General Tab. At the bottom under General Settings click the Load button, look for the file AudioSwift.plist where you saved it and select it. AudioSwift will restart. The main window in AudioSwift is the Console, which appears every time we tap the trackpad with a four or five finger tap and disappears when you hit Esc. Go to AudioSwift and click Show Console. If you want the console to be always on screen, click the top right star. AudioSwift also has a utility window to learn the different MIDI zones in the trackpad. To open it, go to AudioSwift > Show Trackpad. Place both windows in your screen where they won’t interfere. Let’s check out the CommandPost setup. CommandPost Configuration & Overview CommandPost is a free macOS application that allows you to speed up the workflow in FCPX with customizable tools. You can read some of the professional features it has in its website. One of them, is control surface support for many devices including MIDI controllers. Download the latest CommandPost beta version for this tutorial (1.0.7 beta 22) instead of the official download file from their website, because it has the MIDI enhancements needed for AudioSwift. When you run the installer, it will ask first for your permission to let CommandPost control your computer. Just like you did with AudioSwift, it’s the same process as before. If for some reason it shows you an error message, click continue, close the debug window that appears and proceed with the permissions process. Then restart your computer. Once the computer restarts, launch CommandPost. A setup window appears with a couple of more instructions to follow. When you finish, close the window and restart the computer one last time. When CommandPost is launched, there is one icon in the Dock and one in the top menu bar. If you click the one in a Dock it will only show you a Debug window. We won’t use it, just close it. Click the icon in the menu bar and go to Control Surfaces > MIDI tab. Although there is a dedicated AudioSwift tab, it’s only for information purposes; all the settings will be made in the MIDI panel. Make sure to check the Enable MIDI Support box. Then, under Application choose Final Cut Pro. Click Import Settings, select Replace or Merge and look for the configuration file CommandPost.cpMIDI you downloaded