[Alice Barci]

Thanks, very silly, I should have seen that.

[Alice Barci]

Okay, I believe I understand the process now. I’m sure this has some major advantages for a lot of editors, and once I get a hang of it, I hope I will feel the same way.

Thanks for your help!

[Alice Barci]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for your reply, and I really appreciate your passion for the program. I completely understand and am aware that I simply do not know how to work with X yet, and that it cannot benefit me until I do. I know I must completely rethink my use of the program and not rely on my old habits.

That being said, I still can’t understand how I am supposed to efficiently work on this project without being able to arrange these clips I want to work with effectively.

I don’t know how to best describe my problem than how I did earlier: Essentially I have roughly 15 hours of footage, all synced up with corresponding cameras and sounds, divided into these different projects labeled by day. I can easily navigate through these projects with my notes and the literal timeline they follow.

But now I want to edit this into a 3 minuted thing. While going through the whole footage I’ve made markers at points I want to use. They correspond to my notes I have taken on paper. Now I am looking for a way to organize all these markers and sections I want to use, and I can’t figure out how. I want to label them and prepare them for future use, just as you say. But I want them to remain synced with their counterpart camera and sound.

With the new workflow of X and whatnot, I can’t imagine there not being a solution to organizing synced clips. Again, I understand that I am thinking on old terms, maybe I’ve been editing “wrong” all this time before making the switch. But how on earth do I organize these damn clips I want to work with in an X-friendly manner? I’m sorry, I just can’t get over wanting to find a way to make this work! If this option just doesn’t exist, what am I doing wrong that I can’t figure out how to work without this option? I just keep putting stuff in my new timeline that is increasingly looking like chaos!

Thank you for your continued efforts to help me understand this.

[Alice Barci]

Bill, it seems to me that what you are describing is what fcp used to be able to do with the “make independent clip” option. What I would have formerly done was select the sections I wanted to use, turn them into independent clips and store them in folders in the browser (WITH synced sound and corresponding B camera shots) and then use them in the timeline as needed. Ideally that is what I want to be doing now as well. How does that work in x? Applying keywords to clips sounds like a savvy tool, but physically dropping things in folders seems like a more convenient way to work (that requires only tying a single keyword – the folder name). Like calling my main Folder “Interviews”, my sub folder “Frank” and my clips “Frank talks about ladies”, “Frank blows his nose”, “blank stare” or whatever they may be. So convenient, so simple.

Sorry if I’m just not “getting it.”

[Alice Barci]

Hey Bill,

Thanks for your suggestion. Unfortunately that won’t work for me since the footage I’m working with in the projects is already synced, and I don’t want to re-do all that by working off the clips in the events. It also seems a little more complicated thn just copying and pasting.

Thanks also Bret for your suggestion.

In the end, however, my problem remains that when copy-pasting I find that the footage in the new project timeline won’t play smoothly. It’s incredibly jumpy and unwatchable. I’m not sure what’s going on there. Any ideas?

[Alice Barci]

Cool, I was wondering about those green connections. That’s great, thanks!

[Alice Barci]

Thank you so much, that P did the trick!

But of coure that just begs the question: what happened to the pen tool? I just came across a spot where the external audio didn’t get a sound that the internal mic caught, and wanted to blend in just that portion from the internal mic. I tried control-a but that didn’t give me any options

And what exactly is the purpose of the control-s/double click?

Thanks!!

edit: nevermind, I found the option-k and option klick command, hooray!

[Alice Barci]

I double clicked but this isn’t working. I still can’t move the clip without moving the audio. There are weird black boxes there too which seem to act like clips, but are just kind of pauses. In fact, I can’t seem to move anything – I tried putting clips in different levels but it won’t allow me, they just keep snapping back to their position (even with snap disabled). This must surely be some kind of setting the person who originally synced this applied.

I’m attaching a photo. The two clips I double clicked are the ones I want to move to the left (to where I cut the audio). What are those damn boxes? Why is the timeline so idiotic and doing all that snapping and being generally uncooperative?

Thank you