Re: Am I misunderstanding nesting?

I suppose so. But if the source file of a clip changes then all clips referencing that source file will reflect that change (in theory, in practice I see that can sometimes be a little quirky). That's how I'd expect the nesting to work.

In our case we're dealing with each program part as a separate sequence (as we have to do that for Color and just carry on that way). So when all is said and done (in theory) we put the parts in another sequence as the finished ep. Then, if when we're reviewing that episode we see something that needs attention, we would go to that part's sequence (as that's the master for that part of the episode) and make a change. That change however isn't reflected in our output master. The other option is that we edit the part by double-clicking the nest in the episode sequence, but the limitation there is that the change we make there exists only there. If that output sequence were to be deleted, or we were to come back later (to make DVDs for example) and look just at the parts, we'd have lost any changes we made in the nested part.

Given what a nested sequence is, this functionality doesn't make sense to me, even given the clip independence thing. The sequence is more akin to the actual video content (file) than the clip as it exists in the bin.

Coming from Avid, this functionality doesn't even exist (although given the non-relative nature of it, I suppose it does, in the form of editing one sequence into another and collapsing it).