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Using Empty Compound Clips as a FCP 7 Sequence – No Need For Projects
OK. I want to know why this is a bad idea.
I’ve been playing around with creating empty Compound Clips in my Events and using them as FCP 7 “Sequences” since from reading the manual they act just like a Mini-Project. Here’s why I like this (I’ll call them “Sequences” to keep it simple):
– You can keep everything in Events now that you don’t need a Project which means one folder to rule them all
– You can easily add keywords to the Sequences to organize them and arrange them in folders which act like the bins in FCP 7
– Since you can’t set In and Out points in a timeline, you can just copy and paste the clips you want to export into an Empty Compound Clip which makes it easier than exporting the clip to Compressor and adding In and Out points there
– You can go to the Info Tab of your Sequence and change the settings you need just like a ProjectIt’s late (or early to some) so I’m sure I’m missing something here and that’s why I want to find fault in this. I know you know longer have the “Sharing” tab in the properties but I can live without that. It just seems to me that Compound Clips are FCP 7 sequences so why do I need a FCP X Project at all?
tony
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29 Replies
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Sounds like a great idea, Tony. Lots of benefits there. I’ll definitely be experimenting with this approach, thanks!
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] “I’ll definitely be experimenting with this approach, thanks!”
Please do because I want to find some negatives if they are out there so it doesn’t come back to bite me later. I’m beginning to wonder if these new Compound Clips are meant to eventually become the “Sequences” we’ve been used to and then they’ll get rid of Projects altogether. And then the Project Library would just show you the “Sequences” that only pertain to that Event. Compound Clips also seem to be a good foundation for things like multiclips.
And the way I have my client folders organized is each job gets its own folder so each job would get its own Event. Seems much simpler than having to worry about a Projects folder, too. And once we can manually set where to save each Event we’ll be in business.
tony
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So here is a screenshot of very simple test Event, 2011_04_07 TEST FCP X PROJECT, so that you may understand me better
I have 4 Main Folders I created in the Event: AUDIO, FOOTAGE, GRFX and SEQS and then created a Keyword Collection that corresponded to each Folder name. From there I just assigned keywords to each kind of clip.
And as you can see I labeled the Compound Clip “Test Sequence 02”, gave it the “Sequence” and “Commercial B” keywords and now every Sequence I do for Commercial B will be right there. I can even put the “Archive Edits” keyword on it when I decide to retire that Sequence.
Obviously I can get much more detailed with the Keywords but this is a start.
tony
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I really like what you’re doing there – looks a great way to get organised.
Do you reckon this could be a template structure that can be adapted for new Events? I like to work using project templates in FCP7 (I often use PostHaste for this) because I know my bin structure is going to be more or less the same from project to project (boy, the “old” language suddenly feels a bit weird!).
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
Just found this in the manual which validates your theory completely:
Effectively, each compound clip can be considered a mini project, with its own distinct project properties.
The manual compares them to FCP7 nests, but actually they are far more powerful as you are suggesting.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
On this same topic, this from the manual seems to me to be a terrible idea:
After importing your source media files into Final Cut Pro, you may find that you need to create additional Events to organize your media. For example, after importing media shot for a specific client, you may decide to split the media into Events defined by the location the media was shot in; or split the media by the time of day it was shot, such as morning, afternoon, and evening.
Excalt how you don’t want to be organizing your media, surely?
Meanwhile, I have to say I am really warming to your idea the more I work with it!
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
One question about what you’ve done here – why have you made folders to put your Keyword Collections in? Isn’t this just duplicating the same thing? Surely a Keyword Collection is a “folder” in most practical senses? (OK, I know it’s not exactly that but for the purposes of this discussion …)
Based on your starting point, this is where I have now reached with my media (and compound clips aka “sequences” of old!) organized by Keyword, which effectively makes them folders.
So instead of your system of having a folder called Commercial A with a Keyword Collection inside, I just have the keyword collection which in turn would house all the different versions of Commercial A. I would then use folders to house Commercials A-D or whatever.
Or am I missing something about your approach? (I wouldn’t be surprised!)
Really great tip on the Compound Clip thing – it’s suddenly opened up the whole thing for me so I can definitely see my way through to a workable workflow – for my needs at least.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] ”
Excalt how you don’t want to be organizing your media, surely?”
I think more likely their examples are just stupid. More realistic examples might be to split them based on Acts or scenes if your working on a movie. Or splitting your B-roll out to a seperate event.For me it makes more sense to have an Event=FCP project. Logically I can’t even figure out why you might want to “split an event” or create a new event, since from the interfaces POV it’s all just sort of folder structurs. So why split an event when you can create a folder or keyword group or whatever.
-mattyc
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I reckon that by and large we would want to be creating new Events based on where we want particular jobs to be stored, do you think? I doubt that we’d generally want to have a plurality of Events for one job.
Simon Ubsdell
Director/Editor/Writer
http://www.tokyo-uk.com -
[Simon Ubsdell] ”
I reckon that by and large we would want to be creating new Events based on where we want particular jobs to be stored, do you think? I doubt that we’d generally want to have a plurality of Events for one job.”I’d think the same thing too. Why would I essentially want multiple media folders for the same project, when I could just as easily have one
-mattyc
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