Maximizing Your Final Cut Pro Workflow with the Option-Shift-3 Shortcut: Audio-Only Multicam Switching

What Option-Shift-3 Does

In Final Cut Pro, Option-Shift-3 runs Cut/Switch Multicam Audio Only. It turns on audio-only mode for multicam cutting and switching. After you press it, when you cut or switch angles in a multicam clip, only the audio changes. The video stays on whatever angle it was already using. It doesn't hide video in your timeline.

The Three Switching Modes

Option-Shift-1: cut and switch video and audio together.
Option-Shift-2: cut and switch video only.
Option-Shift-3: cut and switch audio only.

How to Use It

Edit a multicam clip into your project and open the Angle Viewer with Shift-Command-7.
Press Option-Shift-3. The Angle Viewer highlights angles in the audio color to show audio-only mode.
Play the project and click an angle in the Angle Viewer (or press its number key) to cut to that angle's audio.
Option-click an angle to switch the audio of the current section without adding a cut.
Press Option-Shift-1 when you want to go back to switching video and audio together.

Tips

A common workflow: cut the picture first in video-only mode, then make a separate pass in audio-only mode to choose the best microphone.
If one angle has the clean audio for the whole shoot, set it once with audio-only switching and then cut picture freely in video-only mode.
Check the highlight color in the Angle Viewer before you click so you know which mode you're in.