Can’t merge clips in timeline created from previously merged clips

[Nick Thompson]

Can anyone help on this please? Any ideas or thoughts welcome!

[John Pale]

Many people make multi cam sequences, which behave like single clips and can be adjusted after the fact, if you need to.

[Nick Thompson]

Thanks John, I appreciate the input.

Nick

[Greg Janza]

“Create Multi cam sync sequence” should be used for any and all syncing in Premiere. The merged clips option should never be used.

If you don’t have matching timecode with your media then simply select sync by audio. The multi cam sync function in Premiere works very well. I’ve yet to come across a clip that won’t sync.

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[Nick Thompson]

Why should the merged clips option never be used?

I’m fairly new to syncing on Premiere, but this article says that many of the reasons people didn’t like to use merge clips to sync in the past have actually been corrected.

I have a lot of footage to sync and I’m also going to be the one cutting the film so I want to make sure what works right for me technically and creatively.

Thank you so much for your help.

[Nick Thompson]

Hi Greg,

I would really love any more advice you have on this topic, re: my questions above in response to your original message. Anything helps, thank you.

[Greg Janza]

Hey Nick-

That Frame.io blog post is good. It has a lot of relevant info on best practices with audio syncing. The main reason folks have avoided using merge clips is that it’s a destructive effect. So if I merge a video clip with a secondary audio file the resulting merged file is a newly created file that no longer has any connection to the originating secondary audio file. And therefore, I can’t match frame back to the original audio file from the merged clip.

This isn’t true with multi cam source sequences. I think people get hung up on the naming convention. But in reality a multi cam source sequence is just a modified source clip. You can use it just like you would a normal source clip. You also retain all connections back to the originating media in case you need to go back and use it. In your timeline you can toggle how it gets edited in -either as a multi cam clip or as the source media file.

You’ll see posts about how the sync function in Premiere doesn’t work or doesn’t work well enough. Those types of posts can be chalked up to operator error most of the time. If you have usable audio on your video files and you marry those files to secondary audio tracks, the” create multi cam source sequence” feature should work 99.9% of the time.

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[Spenser Fritz]

To all the future people experiencing this problem:

I couldn’t merge a clip that had a previously merged clip in it. I had merged my four tracks of audio so I could drag them into premiere vertically. I Synced up everything on a timeline but it wouldn’t let me merge the video to the allready merged audio. The workaround to select all the merged audio clips in the timeline, right click, click “Render and Replace” It basically creates new audio files that are identical but are now no longer a merged audio clip. Giving you the ability to merge the audio to the video!