FCP7, guidelines & locking clips in canvas

[RobbieSea]

Hey guys

Im making a video & it involves a lot of keyframing, moving clips etc etc.

Firstly, are there any guidelines that i can place on my canvas to make it quicker & easier to line up multiple clips? Like you can in photoshop?

Also is there a key i can hold when moving clips around in my canvas that will stop it from moving up or down, or left / right depending on what i want, so its locked in place? For example, if i get 2 clips lined up perfectly & then decide i wanna move it a bit to the left, its so painfully time consuming having to do it veeeery slowly so that the clip doesnt move up or down at all, if you get what i mean? I havent exactly got a steady hand either so this is particularly annoying when trying to work quickly & smoothly.

I do alot of stuff with moving screens & i always like to keep a little black line separating the clips whenever they move etc, like this:

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b238/euoh/Screenshot2012-11-05at180343.png

I personally think it looks cool but it is so so so time-consuming trying to get the gaps (black lines) to stay the same size as clips move around the screen. Any advice on doing this quicker would be great too cause i currently spend hours tweaking little dots in the crop section of my viewer & its driving me mental.

Thanks!

 

[LethalWolfe]

Hold down Shift and start moving the elements and you'll be locked into the axis you are moving on (so if you start moving up/down you'll only be able go up/dow and if start moving left/right you'll only be able to move left/right). You can also select multiple the layers you want in the Canvas window by holding down Shift and then use Option+Arrow Key to move it all up/down/left/right one pixel at a time.

There are no built in guides (other than title/action safe) but you can put down colored solids and use the crop tools to turn them into guides. In the Viewer window go to the button in lower right that looks like a movie frame with the letter "A" inside of it and choose Matte->Color solid. You can also use this, or a slug, to create the black borders between the pictures (much easer than trying to consistently maintain a gap).