Editing with nested sequences… good or bad idea?

[James Strawn]

No, in fact it sounds like pretty good idea. This is what nested sequences were designed to do and it should not affect performance at all. It’s still just playing the original sequence, you’re just seeing it contained in a different place. Why do you need to re-cut all the original audio back in at the end? Are there no natural braking points where you can separate all of one sequence from the next?

Software Quality Assurance – Digital Video at Adobe Systems

[Jonathan Wing]

It shouldn’t present any problems. I work with nests all the time especially for complicated sequences such as that, or sometimes long-form projects where you want to work on separate scenes in their own sequence and them piece them together later on, using nests.

The one caveat is for going online, if you are working with transcodes. Nests are a little annoying for the process of re-linking to raw footage for color/finishing. It would be nice if Adobe would add a feature where we could right-click on a nest and “decompose” the nest right on the timeline, as needed, which could also be helpful for a whole slew of other reasons.

But generally speaking, to answer your question: performance wise, working with nests is totally fine.

[Joshua Pearson]

Thanks for the replies fellas… i will proceed.

James, I thought we’d have to re-cut all the audio back in because there doesn’t seem to be a way to “uncollapse” (FCP7 speak) or “break apart” (FCPX) or “decompose” (Avid?) a nested audio clip containing 8 tracks of audio. What happens if we try to export an OMF or AAF of nested audio tracks? We haven’t tested that yet.

[James Strawn]

I want to tell you it will work fine, but there were some issues around that in the past and I can’t say for certain what the status is in 2014.2. I can’t get in there and try it myself right now either, so please let me (us) know what your result is fi you get a chance to try it out.

[Joshua Pearson]

One of our guys says it mixes all the tracks down to a single track… but we’ll have to try it again.

[Joshua Pearson]

Also, while i;m on the subject of nested sequences, when first cut into a timeline, a nested audio clip will not display a waveform… we found that we have to “render audio”, which, if its a long nest, can take a while… is that the only way to get a nested waveform to display?

[Ryan Frias]

In regards to carrying 8 audio/iso tracks in your timeline… if you will be working with a post sound crew, they can “expand” to all the other ISO mics/tracks/channels based off one audio that you give us in the AAF/EDL provided that the metadata is maintained throughout the process. I’ve been involved with many workflows where the picture editor just carries the single “mix” channel (which could be channel 1 of 8) from the production mixer. This creates less clutter in the timeline and allows you to get your dialogue tracks under 4 audio tracks, which plays nicely with EDLs for the post sound department.

In Pro Tools, they call this the Field Recorder Workflow where we can take any single channel from an AAF and spill out the other recorded channels on our end.

[Shane Ross]

Editing with nested like this is ONLY advisable if you are doing everything in Premiere Pro…and doing it yourself. If you need to send this out to audio for a mix, sending them an AAF won’t send the individual 8 audio tracks, only the stereo mixdown nest. NOT a good thing for them to work with. The export won’t break the next apart and give them the 8 individual tracks.

You can’t export properly for color correction outside of the editing application, you’ll have to do it all in PPro.

I never advise editing with nests, as it makes sending anything out for separate work impossible…if not extremely challenging. If you are doing everything inside PPro yourself…fine. But anything needs to go out…don’t do it.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Alex Udell]

[Jonathan Wing] “It would be nice if Adobe would add a feature where we could right-click on a nest and “decompose” the nest right on the timeline, as needed,”

isn’t this what “flatten” does? I’m using it for multicam right now.

Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX

[Joshua Pearson]

“Flatten” only works on Multicam clips, not nested timelines. You can right click on the nested timeline and turn it into a multi cam clip “enable” and THEN flatten it but you have to choose one angle to flatten to, including audio, so that won’t work for me.

I guess what I am envisioning is a way to “break apart” a nested sequence into its video clips and ALL its audio clips which would magically proliferate downward and push other conflicting audio clips out of the way (downward?) to avoid collisions. All just for the ease and speed of dealing with as few audio clips in the timeline as possible while editing, if so desired.