A while back while talking about why I like Final Cut Pro X, I devoted a whole post to Compound Clips. If you’re familiar with nested sequences, it’s like that but on steroids.
And there’s tons of ways you can use them. Up top is one way I’ve been using it while cutting Strike (bigger picture). The story has very definitive sections. I’ve been editing the assembly of interviews based on that. Now that I’ve whittled it down, I want to start reorganizing sections. So I grouped all the clips in a section into a Compound Clip. Now I have a birds eye view of the whole film, and can easily rearrange sections. Plus, I can also see where the bloat is and cut some more.
Just as easily as I created the clips I can ungroup them and restore my timeline.
FCPX 10.0.6 just came out. It’s got a lot of improvements, and one of the big ones is better Compound Clip (which I will now call CC) syncing. Up to now, you could create a CC in the Event, or on the timeline. But if you drag a CC from an Event to a timeline and then make changes in the Event, they wouldn’t sync to the timeline. Similarly, if you make a CC on the timeline, you can’t bring it to an Event.
10.0.6 changes that. Changes in an Event show up in the timeline. CCs on a timeline show up in the Event. Plus there’s lots more goodies. This Philip Hodgetts post covers them all.
