Moving Large Irregular Blocks of Clips on Timeline

[Nick Meyers]

try using ripple delete, and ripple paste commands.

SHIFT X will cut the selected block and copy it into the clipboard, and at the same time remove the gap left behind.
SHIFT V will do a ripple, or insert, paste, inserting this block between other blocks.

this means you don’t over-write your other blocks.

when you have everything in the right order it should be simpler to tidy up the blocks & overlaps,
by moving the audio to new tracks.

nick

[Patricia Magyar]

Thanks so much for replying. Yeah…here’s the issue though. Let us say, for example, that where I am inserting this new block the end of the new adjacent ‘block’ has a longer video track than audio and the one I am pasting has audio that starts before video, (I hope this makes it possible to visualize) when I SHIFT V..the paste pushes everything together so there are no gaps and they join flush on both ends of the pasted clip (assuming this is an insert and the right side of the insert is also not even (and the way I edited I wanted the gaps there to fill in later) and then all is awry. I don’t want to have to redo the whole project but clearly I am missing something.

[Patricia Magyar]

Thanks for that…..I figured it out thanks now thanks to more closely following your suggestion 🙂

[Nick Meyers]

a little hard to visualise exactly without seeing it, but i think i get the idea.

i thought maybe you had large areas of “air” around your building blocks, but maybe you haven’t?
you probably just need to create gaps, either before or after you paste.

one very simple method is to use the TRACK tool.
that’s the forward pointing arrow in the tool bar,
or just hit T for track

this will select all clips forward from where you click, on the track you click in
if you hold SHIFT while you click, you select all clips forward on all tracks.
it can get a little tricky with long overlaps.
remember holding APPLE while you click means you can hunt and pick your tracks and the start points where you grab them.

so make a true gap, with space available on ALL tracks before you paste.
after you paste, you can use the track tool again to shorten or lengthen the remaining gaps,
but if you are shortening them, you may need to bump the audio down to new tracks so you dont overwrite existing audio clips

the other method is to use the RIPPLE tool, which offers more control, but i think track tool will be easier in the short term.

FWIW:
if you have placed special markers on the timeline, the ripple tool, and using ripple paste & delete, will move the markers accordingly, (in FCP7 and up)
The track tool wont.

hope that helps,
nick

[Patricia Magyar]

Hi again,

Now when I do this and it pushes all the clips forward on the track is it going to maintain spaces along the way (air?) where I have them or will it make them all contiguous?

I just messed something up and it has taken a really long time to correct as I was not aware of the impact of what I did on clips ‘far down the line’ until quite some time later. I don’t want to do something silly again.

Thanks again.

[Nick Meyers]

yes, it simply pushes ALL the later timeline events “down-stream”,
clip AND gaps.

you should make a COPY of the sequence before you start messing with it again!

nick

[Patricia Magyar]

Thank you for the patient help (I’ve nearly pulled all my hair out 🙂 Yes, yes, a COPY, of course! I am a writer by trade and am gradually attempting to incorporate visual media into my work. Funny-I must save my word documents every five minutes lest I lose a precious sentence and, then, failed to do that in FCP… when a few bad keystrokes not recognized immediately can cost a whole lot more time than remedying or than rethinking a few words!

Best,

Patricia