Creating custom metadata fields and views in FCP X

- In this movie, we'll look at how to create custom metadata columns in Final Cut Pro X as well as how to save out custom metadata views for easy and efficient access. All right, so I'm in my Final Cut project here, and I've got quite a few clips, and right now I'm looking at them in filmstrip view. All right, so I just have the thumbnails, and I can hover scrub, and I see the names of each of these clips, but I don't have too much more information than that. So where do we look for more information about these clips? Well, you probably are already well aware that we can go to list view, and if I expand this, you can see that I have quite a few columns of information displayed by default.

If I would like to display more, I just right-click on the heading, and here's a master list, and wherever I place a check mark, I am going to be able to see that within my list view. If I want to take away things, I just uncheck, and it's gone. Another place that I can display information about my clip is in the inspector. All right, so let's go ahead and just choose one of my clips. I'll choose this one right here, and I'm going to come over to the inspector, and I'm on the Info tab.

And you can see that right now I'm looking at these pieces of information, and some of them might be the same as that that I looked in list view and some are different. For example, if I come down to Camera Name, we have Camera Name here, and we also have Camera Name here. And whatever I input in the inspector, shows up in list view over here and vice versa. So what values am I looking at over here exactly? Well, this set of metadata is related to the Basic view, which is displayed here.

I can switch this view, and different selections of metadata are displayed within each of these options, so I'll just choose a couple of these. Here is the metadata displayed in the General view. so about twice as much. Extended, even more. And then I have Audio, and so on, and so forth. Now, if I want to change what I see in each of these views, I can. All right, so I'm going to go back to Basic, and I'm going to come to Edit Metadata View, and here along the left side are all of my views that I can start with by default, and each one has a different set of metadata associated with it.

So if I go back to Basic, all I need to do is put a check mark next to the properties that I want to include within the Basic view, and you can see that this list is massive. Right now I'm looking at All Properties. You can break this down into Video Properties, Audio Properties, and so on. So I'm going to go back to Video Properties, and let's just add Frame Size and Location Name and Created By, so we've added those three pieces of metadata to the Basic view. I'll say OK, and now select the clip.

You can see that at the bottom I have Created By, Frame Size, and Location Name. All right, so pretty easy to customize these views. If you want to add your own metadata field, that's easy too. You just go to this drop-down menu, and you choose Add Custom Metadata Field. In here, you fill out the name and description, Interview keywords, and then under Description, Keywords spoken by interviewee. And OK. All right, so I've added this custom metadata field within Basic view, so it's included right away, and it's also added to the master list.

So if I want this to appear within any of these other views, I just need to go back to Edit Metadata View. And if I want it to appear within General, for example, I just select General, and then I'll just search for it. Okay, so there it is. There's my property and description, and I'll just select that, and so now if I go to General view, you can see the Interview keywords is included there as well. Now, finally, if I want to create a brand new metadata view, I can. So here are our current views.

There are only seven, but I can make a new one, and what you want to do is start with one of them, modify it, and then save it out as a new view. So let's see. I'm going to go ahead and start with Basic, and then I'll go to Edit Metadata View, and let's see. I'm going to subtract a couple of these, so I'm going to take off Aperture Value, and let's see if I want to remove any of the other ones. We'll go ahead and simplify it just a bit. Okay, and then I'll add a couple more as well.

You can add metadata fields from this drop-down as well. So I'll choose Add Custom Metadata Field. So I've already got Interview keywords. I'll also do Interview subject. Okay, and we'll do Talent Release and Release form signed and OK. All right, so instead saying OK, which will modify the Basic view, I can come down this drop-down menu and say Save Metadata View As, and I'll just call this Basic + Interview, and I'll say OK and OK.

And now you'll see that it's one of the options, so I can very easily go back and forth between these various views, and I have my new view with my new information here at the bottom. All right, so that's working with custom metadata and metadata views in Final Cut Pro X. As you can see, you can really add and modify any type of metadata information that you want.