[Nick Meyers]

im (a little) surprised MM doesn’t work.
i have had it successfully trim clips in nests.
i wonder if there is some other problem.
do the clips have reel #s?

it seems as if you or someone has been NESTING clips to sync audio & viedo rather than MERGING or LINKING.
that’s nuts, but unfortunately still a common mistake.

and the bad news is, there is no way to see inside the nest that i know of,
and no universal de-nest.
but you can make the de-nesting process a little easier

here’s my how-to:

—————————————

NESTS: How to De-Nest

Q:
I’ve been editing from Sequences I’ve loaded into the viewer,
and now my timeline is all NESTS, not CLIPS!
How do i get back to having clips in the timeline?

OVERVIEW

• Open the nest from the timeline into the viewer.
• From there, make a subclip.
• A new “Sub Sequence” appears in the browser TRIMMED TO JUST THE SECTION USED.
• You then Apple-drag that back to the timeline.

PROCESS

Once you get in the swing of this, it can all happen relatively quickly, assuming you have simple sequences.
Complex sequences involve more, work, and in particular split edits require more detailed approach.

• Make a copy of the sequence,
• Make a new bin in the browser and put the copied sequence in it. (Add some asterisks to it so it’s name sits at the top). Open the bin in it’s own tab, (option double click on it).

• Open the first nest into the viewer.
In a simple timeline, that’s just a matter of parking on the nest, and hitting return. Otherwise, select the nest and hit return, or OPTION Double-clcik on it, or even just drag it into the viewer
• Apple U to make a sequence subclip or “Sub-Sequnce”
the new trimmed sequence subclip appears in the browser in the new bin.

• Apple 1 to go back to the viewer.
• Down arrow to take you to the next clip,
• Apple U again.

Each new “Sub-Sequnce” gets labelled “Sequence Name – subclip” then “Sequence Name – subclip1” etc.
They’re sequentially numbered, so they sort in the original order.

If that is not the case you’ll need to number each “Sub-Sequnce” as it’s made.
Don’t worry about detailed names, simple 1, 2, 3 is all you need to keep them in order

• When you have a few, you can drag them back to the timeline.
Hold APPLE before you release the “Sub Sequences” into the timeline, and you will get the CONTENTS of the Sub Sequence, not a Nest

• Delete the “Sub Sequences” from the browser, and continue.

TIPS:

Don’t do too many at once.
Do three for starters, then build up to twenty or so. Take it further if you feel you can.
NB: you’d have to stop a series when you come to a gap in the timeline

Apple dragging
The trick to Apple dragging multiple Sequences:
Select,
Drag from browser,
Line them up on a track above the nested versions.
You should be able to see clearly if they are lined up correctly. Having snapping turned on is essential for this.
NOW hold Apple.
If the nests contain multiple edits, you will see the “ghost image” of the nests you’re holding change from single nests to multiple clips.
NOW let go.

After you’ve dropped them there, double check close up before you do the next group.

Check your Work
Before saying the job is done, verify that everything has landed where it should have.

Drag the entire track of original nests up to new track above everything else.
Re-size them, or reduce their opacity.
check the original nest against the de-nested clips.

When satisfied, DELETE the nests and SAVE your project.
You may well see a significant reduction in you project file size, as lots of nests made from long sequences can really bloat a project.

SPLIT AUDIO

There’s a bit of a gotcha if you have split edits on your nested sequences:
The new “Sub Sequnce” only takes the duration of the picture.

A couple of things you could do include:

1. Do picture in one pass, then sound in another
DRAWBACK: Audio and Video will no longer be linked
2. Re-create the split, using the edits in the Nested Sequnce as a guide.
DRAWBACK: Given that the nest contains many cuts, you may well lose important edits

A more thorough workaround:

Go thru your timeline finding any audio splits and blade them off
Also be on the lookout for any NON SYNC nested audio.
Move those sections to a clean set of tracks.

Go through the de-nesting process for your picture.

When done, go through the timeline again and individually attack the nested audio splits.
You cant do them in batches as most likely there will be gaps between them
At most you could do 2.

[Nick Meyers]

basically,
you wont get the benefits (speed of export, small file size) of exporting a reference movie
unless you have rendered everything in your timeline.

and that includes the olive-grey “Full” quality RT effects.

by default that is not ticked as a renderable item in Sequence menu > Render All.
so go in there, and tick “full”,
render all (option R)
and THEN export your reference movie.

oh, yes, the ref movie also contains AUDIO,
so that takes a little while to process and does add to the file size.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

that’d be one approach, and it’d pretty much do the trick for a simple sequnce,
but i’ll offer another.

y’know, a lot of people wouldn’t even see the difference.
i know i do, and i care about it.

another thnig that bothers me is when i see interlaced motion effects on progressive footage.
that would include any keyframed pan n scans or zooms, or wipe transitions, etc.

my method for dealing with these along with interlaced footage is to nest my entire final sequence,
and de-interlace that.

as far as that goes, Nattress had the best de-interlacer for FCP, in my opinion.

cheers,
nick

[Nick Meyers]

do you mean you NESTED the sequences??

if so, then all you have to do is to double click on the nests in the current timeline, and they should open up as the original sequences.

if you mean you EXPORTED the timeline and baked everything into a file, then there’s not much you can do.
(other that just go with what you have and hope Bono or whoever doesn’t turn up in LittleRock)

nick

[Nick Meyers]

it’s all good, Ray 🙂

maybe there is a permissions issue with your original files? or perhaps they are locked??
anyway, it’s working for you.

nm

[Nick Meyers]

“FCP will actually make the copy for you. ”

???
no it doesn’t!
it updates the original file and you cant open it again in FCP5.1, or whatever.

if you want to keep the 5.1 version, then YOU have to make a copy somehow.

2 ways:

duplicate the file the finder before you open it. append a 5.1 or 6.04 or whatever to the file name

open in FCP, do a SAVE AS and append the version number.

1st method is safest.

i suspect you know this Ray, but your wording gave the wrong impression.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

HI Rich.

my experience is that if i open a v514 project into v6, my speed modified shots come out screwy.
if you dont have too many it can be easy enough to fix them.

otherwise, just keep TWO versions of FCP on your system.
to do that copy the app in the finder, and change the name of the copy to FCP 5.14. (or whatever)
the upgrade will only write over the app called “Final Cut Pro”

when you want to open an old 5.14 project you have to open the app first, then Apple O,
or drag the project file onto the app icon in the dock.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

Final Cut Pro has a pitch shift filter in it.
it’s really bad, but i dont think it goes out of sync.

the controls are pretty hard to work out (there’s the obvious “Pitch” slider, then about 50 other things, that no-one knows what they do!)
best way to figure out the settings is to export some bars & tone & Confomr them in CT.
bring them back in, and lay them up agasint some true 25fps tone in a PAL sequnce.
apply the pitch shift to your conformed file and experiment with the pitch slider.

yes all PAL viewers watch telecined films 4% faster…
as do a lot of cinema viewers!
cinema managers like to speed up their projectors to A) minimise lamp time, and B) maximise popcorn buying time.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

“this what is done to get 24fps feature films into a 25fps PAL friendly format. ”

that’s true, but these days they pitch correct the audio using the best processors available.

nick

[Nick Meyers]

2 possible causes:

1. you have “limit capture / file size” ticked in your FCP system settings

2. your drive is formatted MS DOS

the first is not a huge problem, but you are asking for trouble, so best to turn it off.

the second (wrongly formatted drive) IS a problem.
you cant fix that without erasing all the media from it.
so you’d have to copy all the media across to another drive before you re-format it.

nick