I'm confused about compound clips in the browser ...

I need some help because I’m confused about favouriting and applying keywords to footage in the browser to the original media.

I’m trying to create keywords, favourites, rejected media in the browser and then bring this into my timeline.However I normally make sure the first thing I do upon importing is make a compound clip of each piece of footage and then use this in my timeline instead of the original media. I consider this a safeguard to stop myself losing the ability to apply a filter or effect across the entirety of a piece of footage; for instance, if I need to colour correct or match a piece of footage I can go back in and apply it to the one compound clip and not each piece of footage which I’ve now spread out all over my timeline.

SO what I’m thinking is that I should

1. import footage
2. make compound clip from each clip
3. reject the original media (hiding it from the browser)
4. begin to favourite, reject, keyword etc from the COMPOUND clips, ignoring the original media.

Am I correct? Is this the *right* way of doing it?

I don't necessarily think there is any 'right' way to do things, specifically in this case. I wouldn't do what you do but if that's your preferred method of working then the steps you outlined above is probably the best way of accomplishing it.

I'm confused as to why you are making each clip into a compound. That seems like a waste of time. When you apply an effect or keyframe a clip in the Timeline, that has no effect what so ever on the master copy in the Browser. I think you're misunderstanding how FCPX works.

And applying effects has nothing to do with keywords, ratings and such.

william.caversham wrote: ...I’m confused about favouriting and applying keywords to footage in the browser to the original media...I’m trying to create keywords, favourites, rejected media in the browser and then bring this into my timeline...

In general the optimal FCPX workflow is you rate and keyword media in the Event Browser then bring a subset of that into the timeline for fine tuning. Except for keywords viewed from the timeline index, ratings and keywords don't transition to the timeline. So the timeline index is a sort of bridge from the Browser to the timeline but FCPX as currently designed does not bring all Event Browser metadata into the timeline.

However editing workflow is not always purely sequential. Sometimes editing the timeline must begin, then later new metadata flows in. In general FCPX is not currently designed to incorporate this new metadata into an existing timeline. In some specific cases the 3rd party tool Merge X can do this, and the developers are working on a more comprehensive implementation:

www.merge.software
www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/news/2098-free-...lect-on-the-timeline

william.caversham wrote: ...I normally make sure the first thing I do upon importing is make a compound clip of each piece of footage and then use this in my timeline instead of the original media. I consider this a safeguard to stop myself losing the ability to apply a filter or effect across the entirety of a piece of footage; for instance, if I need to colour correct or match a piece of footage I can go back in and apply it to the one compound clip and not each piece of footage which I’ve now spread out all over my timeline....

If you need to color correct the entire clip you can just open the clip from the Event Browser and do that: Clip>Open Clip. Then any ranges from that clip added to the timeline will have that correction.

The same applies to a multi-cam clip: you can color correct and color-match each angle in the MC, then multiple ranges from the MC clip added to the timeline will all be corrected. Since ratings and keywords on the parent clips are not inherited by the MC clip, it's often good to reject the parent clips and only apply ratings and keywords to the MC clip with Angle Editor enabled.

However this is not the only possible workflow. If several ranges from one clip in the Browser are edited into the timeline, you need only color correct the first one. You can then easily copy/paste that correction to all the other clips in one step. You can locate those widely-separated ranges in the timeline by searching on the clip name in the timeline index. You select those in the timeline index then do SHIFT+CMD+V to paste those attributes into multiple target clips in one step.

I think the concept is that after he's edited the compounds into the timeline, perhaps using the same clip, like an interview multiple times, applying the effect to the compound in the browser will apply it to all the shots in the timeline. It seems a lot of work to me when paste attributes is available.

Or as stated previously, open the clip in its own timeline from the Browser, apply adjustments there to the master clip.