“Ungrouping” Compound Clips in timeline

[Willy Pimentel]

Command -g should do the trick

Willy Pimentel
Motion Graphics Editor
Macbook Pro 2011 thunderbolt/ TBolt Display/ 2 SSD Hds /Lacie Tbolt

[Eddie Adams]

For what? Ungrouping a compound clip, or group/ungrouping clips to “Create Storyline”? Because neither of those seem to be options on the Primary Storyline, only on secondary story lines.

[Willy Pimentel]

My apologies: Command g creates storyline or group and command Shift g Ungroups it or Break apart Clip Items ….

[Eddie Adams]

brilliant! thanks.

[Bill Davis]

An easy nemonic is to think of the G key as the GROUP key, and the modifiers roughly determine what it groups and ungroups.

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[Brett Sherman]

Slightly off topic. But, I wish there was a way to “explode” the compound clip in place in the timeline. Make adjustments and then “implode” it again. “Ungrouping” just turns it into individual clips and then there is no easy way back to turning it into a compound clip again without reselecting everything.

[Bill Davis]

That would surely be nice.

But the fact that the interface designers didn’t put in a simple “undo-redo” function might mean that what’s happening under the hood in the relational database is more complex than it may seem at first.

I remember wondering back when compound clips were introduced with their required reflection back to the Event Browser, that some users would likely try compounding things – then taking those things into new timelines and trying to RE-compound them – at at some point, you’ve kinda created a snake trying to eat it’s own tail.

Which seldom ends up well.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Bret Williams]

It would be very nice. Avid has done that since I first used it in 1996.

[Rob Lagerstrom]

[Brett Sherman] “”Quote””

I just tried using Cmd+shift+U to ungroup a compound clip. All I got was a system “ding”. I then, for the heck of it did cmd+shft+G and it unpacked itself on the timeline (unlike clicking the ungroup icon which just opens that compound clip in a new timeline.

[Robert Jenkson]

In FCPX, select the grouped/compound clip and click on the “Clip” menu. Take note of “Break Apart Items” which is Shift-CMD-G.

When you select multiple clips you want to Group, you cannot use the Clip menu. Instead, right-click them and take note of “New Compound Clip…” which is OPTION-G.