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Project linking to other projects
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If you are pasting to compound in one event and the media is from a different event, you will need to wait until thumbnails are generated. open the background tasks (command-9) and you can watch this process (or just watch the % marker next to the tc window).
In short, give it a minute, it should work.
Jeremy
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[Simon Ubsdell] “It sounds like you could be right on this nbut it does seem a bit screwy – why would they want to have this sort of limitation?
My feeling is that in the course of time we’ll see Projects disappear and a more flexible implementation of Compound Clips take their place.”
I don’t think it’s that easy. Compound clips are a clip container and Projects are more than that.
Projects hold lots of info including render files, Roles, as well as the timing and effects. If Projects were just a compound clip, that’s how they would have to be defined for XML export, meaning, every XML would start with everything being inside a compound clip instead of a sequence.
That said, I am all for compound clips in the Browser as it allows less projects in the project window. They are great organizational tools, and can be a really effective way to reduce some clutter.
Plus it allows one to send just a project or just an event to another person, you don’t need both, which is nice. You can send exactly what you want or need.
More speculation, but I think eventually FCPX is going to have a project/event sharing system built right in to it. The infrastucture seems to be somewhat there.
Jeremy
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The “Compound Clip as FCP 7 Sequences” has been discussed a lot on here. It took me awhile, but I finally found a big flaw, for me at least.
FCP X autosaves after every change you make. But since your Projects and Events are separate files it only autosaves the file it needs to. EX. You make a change in the Event it autosaves your Event; you make a change in a Project it autosaves just that Project.
The issue of having Compound Clips as sequences mean that every change you make to the Compoud clip it autosaves the Event file since there is no real Project file. And since Event files are always much larger than project files, FCP X will dramatically slow down on average systems on large Events with this approach since it’s constantly saving a big file after every change.
If someone has figured out a way around this, please share. SSDs would help but are too expensive an option right now.
tony
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[Jeremy Garchow] Projects hold lots of info including render files, Roles, as well as the timing and effects. If Projects were just a compound clip, that’s how they would have to be defined for XML export, meaning, every XML would start with everything being inside a compound clip instead of a sequence.
Isn’t all this information held inside an Event as well.
Within events compound clips (clips with a spine) have the same attributes as the “sequence” tag within a project. (Within a a project they inherit the format of the project sequence)
So projects are more than a compound clip, they’re a subset of an event with a special compound clip called a sequence that can’t be embedded in other compound clips, and that is displayed in the project browser.
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[Rob Mackintosh] “Isn’t all this information held inside an Event as well. “
Most if it, yes, but a Project is different. Events don’t have a constant time across all clips, for example, as clips do in a timeline.
In my testing a Role won’t load in to the Role attributes unless its in the Project, but perhaps I missed something. I can do more testing with that.
Thinking towards the future and as fcpxml matures, I think a project as compound clip will be a bad idea as the target app won’t know what’s a compound as a sequence, or a compound as as compound. This will make it harder for track based apps to figure out what is what. With projects, the target app knows it’s a sequence, not a compound with everything in it. Sequences usually don’t work as a container quite like a compounds do, as far as I know. If they did, why aren’t after effects, or FCP sequences simply called “nests”?
My point is that Projects are more than compound clips and compound clips have different attributes than Projects.
Compounds condense down to one video and two audio tracks, projects don’t have those limitations.
Projects can’t have a filter applied to the whole thing as can happen with compounds (along with transforms et al). I think they are different and should be treated as such, and probably need to be treated as such if fcpx wants to connect to the outside world.
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The workaround, if you want to work this way, would be to have each large sequence in a separate event as a compound clip, referencing media in other events. I’ve only tested this in a limited fashion, but it seems to keep the event file size under control. You would want limit to each event to one compound clip.
I created two identical sequences (4 clips, cross dissolves, generator, on primary storyline, one title connected) one in a compound clip within an event, the other as a project.
I was adding media from another event. The .fcpproject and .fcpevent files ended up around the same size, and increased by a similar amount as each edit was made.The fcpxml was identical, apart from the “project” uid, the location of the file, the “sequence” tag was replaced by “clip” in the Event and it had a name attribute.
By changing the location from Final Cut Projects to Final Cut Events and replacing the “sequence” tag with “clip” I was able to reimport the Project XML as an Event containing a compound clip.
This doesn’t seem to work if you copy and paste a sequence from a project to a compound clip within an event. An original media folder is created within the event folder and the clips used in the sequence are copied or an alias is created to the media in the original event (depending on your import settings in preferences).
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