Storyline

Can anyone please tell me how to move my clips down to the "storyline" without taking my video out of sync? These connected clips are killing me in FCPX.

Right-click the connected clip, select "Overwrite Primary Storyline", but only works with video content, not audio content. Don't ask me why.

Or hit "P" for the Position tool (it's an arrow with no tail), which overrides the magnetic properties. This works with all content. Did a ton of this just this morinng.

May I guess? Music video?

I see a green clip (default role color for music) that appears to be connected to the *gap* in the primary storyline.

There are four clips with which the said gap has been overwritten, there is a secondary storyline containing long clips, and above that various shorter connected clips, some of which have a cinnamon role color, which isn't a default.

I just wonder.

With FCPX, there is no wrong or right. Anything goes, except when it starts to suck. Right now I see no purpose for the gap.

If you brought in your music track as the first clip with "q", it had automatically been connected to that placeholder/gap/slug/pause. From there on, as I see it, there are exactly two reasonable techniques to proceed:

1. Choose the gap, type ctrl+d (= change duration), then "1", then hit return. The gap now has the length of one frame, and the music track / reference audio stays connected to it. You can still use "e" (= append at end) because the next clips will go to the primary.

2. Activate the blade tool and hit "b" to the rhythm of the music, making numerous through-edits on your gap. Later on, you can easily select the portions and delete them ("d") with your browser clips. Tip: check the replace commands, customize them, they let you replace from start or replace from end without even selecting a range in the timeline, which you had to do everytime (with r, x or i+o) before you wanted to use d. You just need to skim over the clip / gap section you want to replace and then type "opt r", huge timesaver.

Now of course you already seem to be way in. No problem. Should take you two minutes to clean things up. First, of course, you could overwrite the grey sections of the gap (practically all) with final decisions of the "connected" clips (opt cmd down) Then, for whatever reason you created the secondary storyline, either keep it or break it apart. And so forth.