Sync Buses

Sync buses keep the same part of a grade identical across many clips, live. Change the look on one clip and every clip sharing that bus updates instantly — ideal for matching interviews, multicam angles, or a whole scene.

The idea in one minute

• There are 8 buses, numbered 1–8 and colour-coded.
• A clip belongs to one bus at a time.
• A bus owns a stage set — the list of grading stages it keeps in sync (e.g. Bus 1 = Tone + Color Wheels). This set is shared by every clip on the bus.
• Put a clip on a bus and it auto-adopts that bus’s stage set and look — no per-stage setup on the 2nd, 3rd … 40th clip.

Anything not on the bus stays local to the clip, exactly as before.

The Sync panel

The Sync section (top of the inspector) has two rows.

BUS — the eight numbered squares plus ×. Click a number to put this clip on that bus; click × to take it off (its current look is kept). The lit square is the clip’s current bus.

STAGES — a pill for every grading stage. Each pill does two things:

• Click the name → turn that stage on/off for this clip (a quick bypass without scrolling to the stage). If the stage is on the bus, the on/off travels to every clip on the bus.
• Click the link icon → add / remove that stage from the bus’s stage set. Adding it also turns it on. Because the stage set is shared, this changes what the bus covers for all member clips.

A pill tinted in the bus colour is part of the bus; a plain pill is local.

The small toolbar (right of STAGES): turn all stages on / off for this clip, Copy this clip’s grade, Paste settings, and clear the bus’s stage set.

Typical workflows

Match a set of clips to a hero grade

1. Grade your hero clip.
2. In Sync, put it on Bus 1.
3. Link the stages you want shared (e.g. Tone, Color Wheels).
4. On each other clip, just click Bus 1 — it adopts those stages and the shared look automatically. One click per clip.

From then on, tweak Tone or Wheels on any Bus 1 clip and they all follow.

Add or drop a synced stage later

On any Bus 1 clip, click a stage’s link to add it to (or remove it from) the bus. Every clip on Bus 1 updates.

Take a clip off the bus

Click ×. The clip keeps its current look but stops syncing.

Re-use a bus later — or start it fresh

A bus keeps its stage set and look for the whole Final Cut Pro session, even when no clip is currently using it. Remove every clip from Bus 1, put a new clip on it an hour later, and the new clip adopts the bus’s previous setup — handy when you’re re-cutting a scene and want the established look back with one click.

If you want a bus to start clean instead, use the clear bus button in the STAGES toolbar (it empties the bus’s stage set), or restart Final Cut Pro — buses reset when the app quits.

Copy / Paste

Copy grabs this clip’s whole grade (values + on/off, plus Base / White Balance animation). Paste applies the chosen stages onto the current clip — pick Values, On/off, or Both, tick the stages, and optionally include animation. If a pasted stage is on the clip’s bus, the change propagates to the bus like any other edit.

note

• Buses are per project — clips only sync within the same Final Cut Pro project.
• A bus remembers its settings for the session even with no clips on it; clear its stage set (or restart the app) to start it fresh.
• Duplicating a clip (FCP copy/paste) carries its bus membership, so the copy joins the same bus automatically.
• Only Base and White Balance carry keyframe animation through Copy / Paste.