Nested Sequences

[Shane Ross]

I’m not sure why NESTING was invented…maybe it is akin to COLLAPSE in the Avid realm, where we’d collapse a series of shots into one clip so we could drop on an effect that would then affect everything in that. But collapsing was problematic because when you went to online you needed to uncollapse to do the online properly.

Then FCP came along with NESTING, and it was supposed to be better because you could edit the sequence separately and the nest would update. Only, it wouldn’t all of the time. It was spotty at best. So, because of that…

NESTING IS EVIL.

Vile, horrid, crap. It really needs to be avoided at ALL costs. There is absolutely no reason to do it, and 15,000 reasons not to do it.

1. If you have 5 nests in a master sequence and you want to make a change in one, you need to open the source sequence, and if you make a change, it may or may not update in the sequence.

2. You need to leave the master sequence to make a change. When you could very easily just have copy-pasted your smaller sequence into this one and you’d have everything there…no need to go elsewhere.

3. Making a trim on the nest itself won’t change the original sequence…and you really can’t see what you are doing.

Many more. So…why nest? What does it get you?

1. Hmmm…I can’t think of any reason why you’d want to nest. To make the main sequence look neater? Sorry, you might have to supply this answer, I personally don’t know. OH…you can apply a filter to the nest and it affects everything in it! That’s it. That’s all I got.

Never nest. There is no point. I work on projects where we have different sequences for every act (separated by commercial breaks) that we work on and edit…and then when we are done, we cut the sequences into a main sequence… the show build. In Avid, you can copy/paste or load into the source side. In premiere, it’s best to copy/paste. Then you have all of the clips at your disposal. Make changes all day long. Does it affect your smaller, original sequences? No…but why should it? Now you’ve built the show…you are nearing the final stage, so cut on this to make all your final changes. OR…copy and paste the acts back into another sequence and work on that.

NESTING IS EVIL. I think I said that. IMHO…avoid at all costs.

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

[Tero Ahlfors]

[Shane Ross] “OH…you can apply a filter to the nest and it affects everything in it! That’s it. That’s all I got.”

Or if you get a layered photoshop file that has a bunch of adcopy and graphics. It’s easier to mess around with those in their own sequence and then bring it with the rest of the commercial. I don’t use nesting in editing.

[Trevor Asquerthian]

You never use multicam?

Multicam = nesting

[John Pale]

There are some effects that require using nests to properly adjust things (mostly involving Track Mattes), but other than that, I generally stay away from nesting. Just seems like its inviting wonkiness.

[Tero Ahlfors]

[Dave LaRonde] “Well, that’s why God made After Effects, I think.”

If it’s simple enough and I don’t need any AE tools I’m doing it in Premiere.

[Joseph Freeman iii]

Thanks Shane for your reply.

My new SOP will be to avoid all nested sequences in Premiere Pro.

Thanks for your insight.

[Shane Ross]

[Trevor Asquerthian] “Multicam = nesting”

No, it isn’t. Not in the way the OP is talking about.

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

[Herb Sevush]

[Shane Ross] “NESTING IS EVIL. I think I said that. IMHO…avoid at all costs.”

While I agree that nesting as an organizational tool is a bad practice, nesting for effects is sometimes essential. For instance you can’t do a warp stabilize on a clip with a speed effect so the easiest solution is to nest the clip, apply the speed change in the nest timeline and then apply the stabilize to the nest in the original timeline.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf