Tuesday Tips: One-Sided Zooming

Normally dragging either handle on the end of the Timeline’s scroll bar will zoom the view in the same way as using the Command-Minus/Plus shortcut does. But there’s a hidden feature…if you hold down Shift when dragging on a scroll handle then the opposite side gets locked.

It’s easier to show than describe so here’s the Timeline window before Shift-dragging on the right-hand handle:

and then after:

You can see that the first visible frame of the sequence on the left hasn’t changed.

Martin Baker is the founder of Avid2FCP/Digital Heaven and an Apple Certified Trainer for FCP. During his 13 year editing career, as a freelance and at the BBC, he worked on a wide variety of edit systems including linear, Lightworks, Avid DS and Avid Symphony before switching to FCP in 2003.