searching events names

[Mark Smith]

To be clear, you want to search in an event by name , say for a clip name, or something else?

[Joe Marler]

[Roger Sherman] ” I’m organizing a feature documentary by keywords and events. I’d like to be able to search events by names but it seems FCPX does not do that”

The Browser search field will search for clip name, file name, camera name (if entered as metadata), notes field, favorite name (if you renamed the favorite in list mode), or marker name.

It will not search for event name, folder name, or keyword name.

The FCPX database is planned around using relatively few events, not so many that you’d need to search for the event names. They will normally just fit on the library sidebar. In general you don’t need a large number of events to organize footage, and in fact you could theoretically put everything in one event and use keywords for organization.

Up until the advent of library-wide smart collections you couldn’t even search across all events, so the event imposed a “fence” in the search scope. Now you can create a library-wide smart collection that searches across all events but this might be a little slower for a huge library.

When creating the library smart collection, if you press the plus button then select “keywords”, you’ll see a scrollable list of all keywords in the library in alphabetical order. If you can’t remember a keyword or what event it’s in, this is a good way to find it.

The “filter HUD” allows you to perform an intersection search (ie logical AND) on various keywords. Press plus button, select keywords, select “Include all”, click “uncheck all”, then select a few keywords that share clips and it will show only those clips that exist in all selected keywords. E.g, if you have a keyword collection for “happy” and a keyword for site name, and a keyword for children, it will show you only the ranges of happy children filmed at a particular site.

If you enter the keyword name in the list view notes field, that will be searchable. This can be done once for each batch of keyworded clips. E.g, in list view click on keyword name, do CTRL+A to select them all, then in the Info Inspector at upper right, enter that keyword name. Thereafter those clips can be searched by that name.

Simon Ubsdell described how to use library smart collections as the centerpiece of a search system in “One Smart Collection to Rule Them All”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=36&v=sjuCfJFhdo0