Paste Attributes

Paste Attributes makes other clips look and sound like the one you copied. Set up one clip, then give the same settings to the rest in one undo step.

Menu: Edit ▸ Paste Attributes
Keys: ⌥⌘V
Agent tools: paste_attributes

Paste a clip’s attributes

Select the clip that has the settings you want and press ⌘C.
Select the clips that should take them.
Press ⌥⌘V, or choose Edit ▸ Paste Attributes.

The item is available when Frame Job clips are on the clipboard and something is selected. If nothing would change, Frame Job beeps. The paste is one undo step, called Paste Attributes.

If you copied several clips, only one of them counts: the one that starts earliest. At the same start it’s the one on the front-most track.

What travels

Settings travel in four groups, and a group is only copied when both clips have it. A movie’s settings pasted onto a text clip bring its picture settings and leave the text styling alone, and its sound settings go nowhere.

Each group replaces the target’s whole group, so it isn’t a merge. A shadow on the target disappears if the copied clip had none.

Group	What travels	What the target keeps
Video	Everything about the picture: position, scale, rotation, opacity, crop, corner radius, blend mode, shadow, reflection, filters, spotlight, obscure regions, chroma key, Remove Background, Text Behind Subject, Hide While Silent, motion presets, motion blur, the grade and its look, and the drawn cursor’s settings	Nothing, apart from an adjustment clip’s qualifier
Audio	Everything about the sound: volume, Mute, fades and their shapes, pan, Mix to mono, channels, Keep pitch, ducking, noise reduction, voice isolation, EQ, hum removal, gate, de-esser, leveller, compressor, limiter and voice effects	Nothing
Text	Font, size, colours, alignment, spacing, case, outline, backdrop, text box width, reveal animation and word caption style	Its own words and their timings
Shape	Fill, stroke, gradient, corner radius and arrowheads	Its kind, its size and the end points of a line

A look’s .cube file comes along too, so a grade pasted from another project keeps its LUT.

What stays on the target

Paste Attributes copies how a clip looks and sounds, not what makes it that clip. The target keeps:

its place on the timeline and its length
its speed, including a speed ramp
its actions, so nothing animated travels
its transition
its name and label
which halves are switched on

Graphic properties don’t travel either. Use Paste Graphic Properties for those.

Adjustment clips and qualifiers

A qualifier belongs to an adjustment clip, so it follows the kind of clip:

Pasting	The qualifier
Onto an ordinary clip	Is dropped
From an ordinary clip onto an adjustment clip	Stays as the adjustment clip had it
From one adjustment clip onto another	Is copied

See Copy a grade for moving a grade between clips.

When a paste stops

Some picture settings can’t land on some kinds of clip. When one can’t, Frame Job shows an error saying why and changes nothing, even on the other selected clips.

The target	Can’t take
An adjustment clip	Blur, sharpen or pixelate filters, a blend mode, Remove Background, Text Behind Subject, motion blur
A nest clip	A blend mode, Remove Background, Text Behind Subject, motion blur, Hide While Silent
A text, shape or graphic clip	Remove Background
A movie clip or freeze frame	Remove Background with its subject set to Foreground, which only an image clip can take
Any clip except a text or adjustment clip	A crop that would leave nothing of it, such as one copied from a much larger source

To get past one, take the setting off the copied clip, copy it again and paste, or select only the clips that can take it.

With an agent

paste_attributes can do two things the menu item can’t.

Choose the groups. groups names which ones travel, out of video, audio, text, shape and graphic, so ["audio"] pastes the sound alone and leaves the picture settings. Left out, it behaves as the menu item does, and graphic only travels when it’s named. An empty list won’t run.
Skip what doesn’t fit. A named group that either side lacks normally stops the paste with an error. With skip_missing on, a group the copied clip lacks is dropped and a clip that can’t take a group is skipped, so a mixed selection goes through. It’s off by default, and only applies with groups.

See Tools: copying and nesting.