Editing a compound clip does not edit all instances of that compound clip?

Hello All,

The best way to describe my question is to illustrate a scenario:

1. Create a compound clip involving a few clips
2. Use the blade tool to sever the compound clip
3. Go inside the left part of the severed clip and ad another clip or image, etc.
4. Go back to the main main timeline and go into the right part of the severed clip
5. The edits do not appear in this "instance" of the compound clip

Now, I think I understand what is happening here; when I severed the CC it effectively created two new compound clips that are uniquely editable. What I want, however, is not this behavior, as my situation will illustrate:

The project I am working on involves picture in picture with 3 cameras (two commentary windows and the event being commented on). To synchronize the 3 different viewpoints I created a compound clip. There are several hours of footage, and I am editing it down to a few minutes. Thus I have used the blade tool on the connected clip, trimed the pieces, rearranged them, used crossfades etc. (and since the connected clip synchronized the 3 cameras, each "chunk" is properly synched as it should be). Now, the problem is that if I now want to change the dimensions of the picture and pictures and animate them or some such, I was expecting to just go into that "root" compound clip and change it, having it propogate to all the pieces I cut up...but this is not the case - I would have to go into each and every piece and hand craft the same edits for every one. Is there a way to have this function the way I want or some other technique I should be using? Maybe I need to use nested compound clips or some such.

Thank you.

The thing that confuses me is that when I am editing one "instance" of the connected clip (say a small trimmed region of the original clip), it shows me the full connected clip in the timeline, with the areas outside my trimmed region greyed out. When I make an edit, say to the picture in picture crop dimensions, it shows me in that timeline what the change looks like throughout the whole connected clip, not just my trimmed region. When I go back to the main timeline, however, the crop change only affects the trimmed region, and not the "root" connected clip (and thus all of the other trimmed and rearranged versions of it).

As I understand things compound clips in the timeline are not in a parent/child relationship. The timeline clip is, in effect, a copy of the original clip. Changes to one copy will not effect other copies. Using the blade tool effectively turns one copy of a compound clip into two.

That is my understanding... I may have it wrong.

Well, based on what I am seeing it seems like you are indeed correct. Thus, I am looking for something that IS that kind of relationship, as apparently just a normal compound clip isn't it (despite the above-described leading me to think it was).

I'd make all the changes first, then cut up the CC. In fact, I'd not even make a Compound Clip, since these are all sync'ed. I'd consider a Multicam Clip, get it edited, sized, etc, then CC that and cut it up.

The "Gotchas" section of this page explains exactly what I needed: www.geniusdv.com/news_and_tutorials/2011..._nesting_in_fcpx.php

Oh wait; that didn't work! I created a CC in the Event library, but still it's "children" in the timeline to not inherit from it (as in it just makes a destructive copy, and not a child)...what the heck; is there no way to do this?

Oh, and Ben I agree that its best to set things up as well as possible initially in the CC, but it certainly seems like there are scenarios where the goal I am seeking is desirable. Consider that after a project is all done (one like i specified above), the boss says he wants the Picture in picture to be 50% bigger; I'd have to go into all my 45+ trimmed pieces and such and change it (since i cut pieced, rearranged trimmed, etc); instead of just going into the "parent" and changing it once.

Would be great if you could create some kind of link. But for me the default is fine and I would be in real trouble if every time I edited a compound clip it would make the same changes to its copies.

At present it works pretty similar to the way it was in Final Cut 7.

What we REALLY need is the ability to Paste Attributes, this would ba an esy fix to your picture in picture conundrum.

You know what...you can! I just tried it and it works (paste effects). Unfortunately there is no way to do it for all the sub clips in a connected clip at once, but at least I can do it for each picture and picture "layer".... not great....but not bad!

I would put my main video in the Primary Storyline.
I'd put my PnP clips as connected clips above it.
I'd then make all my PnP connected clips their own Compound Clip.
When I need to resize and move the PnP clips, I just do the one Compound Clip, everything inside it is effected equally the same way.

scotopia wrote: Oh wait; that didn't work! I created a CC in the Event library, but still it's "children" in the timeline to not inherit from it (as in it just makes a destructive copy, and not a child)...what the heck; is there no way to do this?

Yes you can Paste Effects but sadly you get everything your copied, including audio levels.
BenB's method is the way to go if every PnP is exactly the same.

Hello,
Scotopia, you may consider this post where I tried to explain in my approximative english that mixing a compound clip in a multicam clip could create this parenthood/childhood relationship you are looking for :
fcp.co/forum/4-final-cut-pro-x-fcpx/5432...toupdating-sequences

Maybe just a workaround, never tried this on a real big project... But you can try it.

Dawar I just tested this and you are absolutely correct; this will help me so much in the future! I don't know why, but adding that extra abstraction of being inside a "dummy" multiclip enforces an event library / timeline parent-child relationship regarding the CC content within it. I think this is an awesome thing to do know that should be documented somewhere.

scotopia wrote: D I think this is an awesome thing to do know that should be documented somewhere.

Look at page 352 of the Final Cut Pro X User Guide (2012-12-31 version). This is also covered quite well in the Final Cut Pro X: 10.0.3 New Features pdf. At $0.99 it's a hard value to pass up. Lots of good info. www.dingdingmusic.com/DingDing/Manuals.html

I just gave manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/final_cut_pro_x_user_guide.pdf a read but I didn't see anything expressly mentioning parent-child relationships...I could have just missed it though. At any rate, what I mean is like it should be a separate kind of note, not just buried in multi cam stuff (because in truth, multi cam has nothing to do with what I was seeking, its just kind of a hacky work around). There should be a note specifically about parent-child relationships (or even better, in the future a checkbox or some flag you can set on event library media like "Create destructive copies" or not). As a comparison logic studio makes it clear what to do if you want to create destructive copies, or parent child inheritance for audio clips, and this does not require adding an extra layer of hierarchy (which also probably has performance implications).

I guess, coming from a background of computer science and audio engineering, having destructive copy creation as a opposed to event library -> timeline parent / child relationship as the default behavior seems like a really poor design choice, both on user expectation (it fooled me) and on performance (what is better: 10 objects in memory, or 10 pointers to 1 object in memory).

scotopia wrote: I just gave manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/final_cut_pro_x_user_guide.pdf a read but I didn't see anything expressly mentioning parent-child relationships...I could have just missed it though.

The bullet on the top of page 352 of my version of the PDF states

"When you add a multicam clip to the Timeline, you create a direct and active relationship between the “parent” multicam clip in the Event Browser and the “child” multicam clip in the Timeline." and is followed by a diagram of the relationship.

scotopia wrote: I guess, coming from a background of computer science and audio engineering, having destructive copy creation as a opposed to event library -> timeline parent / child relationship as the default behavior seems like a really poor design choice, both on user expectation (it fooled me) and on performance (what is better: 10 objects in memory, or 10 pointers to 1 object in memory).

I'd quibble about your use of "destructive". If modifying a clip in the timeline also modified the clip in the event browser you'd turn non-destructive editing into destructive editing. What happens when you happen to be using the same clip multiple places in the timeline and don't want the same effect/modification applied to all?

As for your memory/pointer comments... I doubt most editors would care one way or the other.