PRE COMPOSE A TIMELINE?
by BonesOne4
on
Oct 8, 2007 at 4:35:51 pm
Hey all, just wondering if there's a way to precompose a timeline like you can in After Effects so that all of your elements are composed of one file. Im finishing up a short movie and have a lot of content in my timeline and its starting to get hard to keep track of it all. Please let me know. Thanks
Re: PRE COMPOSE A TIMELINE? by BonesOne4 on Oct 8, 2007 at 4:42:11 pm
Oh, awesome. Thanks a bunch Bret Ill give that a try when I get home. Can I find the nesting function if I just select a number of clips at once, then control click to bring up a sub menu....can it be found there?
Re: PRE COMPOSE A TIMELINE? by Bret Williams on Oct 8, 2007 at 4:56:09 pm
Its not in the contextual menus. Just select the items in the seuqence you'd like to nest and choose option+c. Its also under the sequence menu. "Nest items."
Much like AE it will ask for a name of the sequence and will create a new sequence in the bin.
Nesting is kinda flaky and doesn't always do what it's told. If you render a nested item, then change something within the nested sequence, it doesn't always update automatically. Sometimes you have to force it to update by unrendering it. I usually just change the opacity and then change it back.
Also, another gotcha. If you copy and paste or option drag your nested sequence, the new copy is like a little orphaned sequence without a home. It has no relation to the first, and doesn't exist anywhere but the timeline it's in. Not in a bin or anywhere. So - if you want multiple copies of a nested sequence within a sequence, don't copy and paste. Always drag it from the bin into your sequence.
Another gotcha... If you duplicate a sequence, all the nested sequences will now lose their connection to the original nested sequences and become little orphans as well.
So, FCP isn't AE. But, if you're careful it can almost mimick AE version 3.0.
Re: PRE COMPOSE A TIMELINE? by Bret Williams on Oct 9, 2007 at 12:41:00 pm
Not sure I understand that, but maybe FCE is just missing the option+c command to nest a portion of your seqeunce automatically. So, if you can drag a sequence from a bin INTO a timline of another sequence, then you can still nest. So if you needed to nest just a portion of your sequence, you'd have to create a new seuqence, copy the chunk of stuff you want to nest from the first sequence, and pasted it into the new one. THEN drag that sequence into the first one and move it into place.
