From the course: Media Composer 8.7 Essential Training: 101

The Command palette - Media Composer Tutorial

From the course: Media Composer 8.7 Essential Training: 101

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The Command palette

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- [Narrator] In addition to the standard buttons that are part of the Media Composer interface, there's a tool that gives you access to a long list of additional buttons, and in fact additional features. And it's called the Command Palette. It's an incredibly useful part of the interface, and I just want to take a moment to introduce it to you. I'm going to the Tools menu, and I'm going to go to Command Palette. See this is Command+3 or Control+3 if you're on Windows, as a keyboard shortcut. The Command Palette has every single button available in the interface. And these are all grouped into different categories. And the Command Palette has three modes: You've got the Button to Button Reassignment, which allows you to drag any of these buttons into a blank space in the interface. You can see here, for example, I've got a few empty buttons. It has an Active Palette mode that means these buttons actually do what they say they do. So here for example I click into the Source Player monitor, and go to the Play category of controls. I can click Play. That's a slow motion shot which explains the audio. So if you want to locate an option or a control or a feature in Media Composer and you just can't remember the keyboard shortcut for it, or you can't remember where the button is or where the menu is. You can just go to the Tools menu, bring up the Command Palette and switch it to the Active Palette mode. There's also a Menu to Button Reassignment option. This allows you to click a button in the interface, here's one for example, and then go to any menu you like and assign the menu option to the button. So here, for example, if I go to the Audio Mixer, I have now assigned the Audio Mixer to that button. There's a lot of different options in this palette, and here, for example, we've got a Blank. And then we go to Button to Button Reassignment, I'm going to take the Blank and drag it onto that button, and restore it to its neutral state. Now, Media Composer makes great use of the keyboard. And I want to show you how to use the Command Palette to create your own keyboard shortcuts. So I'm going to go to my Settings list. I'm going to go into the Keyboard Settings, and let's just move this so we have both items on screen. The buttons on this keyboard display function in exactly the same way as the buttons in the rest of the interface. So I can hold down the Shift key and see some blank key options here. This is using the Shift key with the other keys. So it's really just the Shift key only is available as a modify key when you're creating your own keyboard shortcuts. Or I can see the keys that are available without the Shift key. Right now it looks like my function keys along the top are mostly available. And it's worth noting that on Mac OS these days, by default, the function keys are disabled. You need to go into the Keyboard Preferences in Mac OS to turn on the option to restore the function key functionality. Otherwise they do things like adjust screen brightness and playback music and so on. So let's say I want to assign one of these Command Palette options to a key on the keyboard. Well, let's say for example, I want to add a marker, which is just a little colored mark that I can use to locate content. I can just set this to Button to Button Reassignment, and drag the Add Marker Button over to F1. And now if I close this Keyboard Setting, and close the Command Palette, here in my Player I can press the F1 key, a marker is added. You'll notice I get the option to add a note. So let's say this is a note. We'll come back to markers later on, and now I've got a marker in that window. As you become more familiar with Media Composer, you're probably going to want to personalize it more and more. And my simplest advice is that if you do anything more than five times, you probably want to make a keyboard shortcut for it. And now you know how.

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