Forcing clip to show on top

Hi all,
could any of you give me some advice on the following:
I want to create a video showing a matrix of 9 video's which in turn grow to occupy the whole screen and then shrink back to their original size and position. I tried doing that with layered keyframed clips but the problem is, any video but the top one in the timeline will be overlaid by one or more of the underlying clips. Is there a way to force a clip to always show cover the other clips (in the output video, that is)

Would it be possible to post some screenshots illustrating what’s happening?

Yes, no matter how much you enlarge a clip that is below another, the one on top will always be seen.

I'd put markers on each clip, labels the markers as "Grow" and "Shrink".
Then I'd Blade them at those markers.
Between each set of grow/shrink markers, I'd drag that to the top layer.

Dinky wrote: ... Is there a way to force a clip to always show cover the other clips (in the output video, that is)

The tools you have are (1) Clip position in the stack; top one has priority, (2) Clip opacity, which can be keyframed, and (3) Blend mode:  www.rippletraining.com/blog/final-cut-pr...modes-final-cut-pro/

You mentioned growing/shrinking elements, but it's possible to do a compelling tile-oriented splitscreen other ways. See this example of a 64-layer splitscreen in FCP:  www.fcp.co/final-cut-pro/articles/1472-b...t-in-final-cut-pro-x