I have 3 clips that i would like to run at the same time. I would like the left side to have the larger image and the right side with smaller images. Is there a proper way to do this in FCP so that the images look propery scaled. Possibly in Motion?

Just stack your three clips on top of each other in the timeline then turn on your image and wireframe views from the View menu, then you can move and scale and rotate your clips and they will scale proportionally, you can also use the crop too to change their shape.

but if you want to get them scaled to an exact position, yeah motion would help more as you can turn on "grid" in the view tab, showing you more accurate canvas plotting.

but i'd go with Nate's way if you don't need it to be exact...

Actually there are so many way of doing it in FCP with precision I don't know where to start.

1) Easy solution, You could just throw a layer of colour matte on a new top layer, crop it to 50% left or right and 50% transparency, then move the layers around underneath until they line up with this new 50% marker line you have. Delete the matte layer when you have got the pictures set

2) Personally to acheive a great look, I would use this matte as an alpha channel (with the transparency back up to 100%, and ensure it is white of course).

Then you can move and scale the fill image around during the clip duration, without worry!!

You'll need other matte layers for the other two boxes and the rendering will be lots longer, but the effect can be really great. Blur the mattes for soft edges, push-pull transitions will work to get the boxes on and off, as long as you add them both to the matte and fill layers.

3) Or you can nest layers, and crop the nest to 50% on the main timeline.

There are bound to be other ways to do this too.

Hope this helps. Let us know.

Nate's method is really simple but I guess it depends on how exact you want these clips. I'm going to try the other methods listed above just so I know them. You may have to utilise the crop function if you want one side a large clip and the other side 2 smaller clips?

One the same subject - is it best practice to fit the clips (say two in the '24' style) in the title safe frames?

Also wondering whether it's possible to have a clip that's set to one side (after a second clip on the other side had faded out) to increase back to full size and fill the frame correctly. I'm trying this in motion and using the centre function via key mapping alongside the scale process - usual method?

Go into the motion panel of the clip viewer window. Change settings as desired.
Much easier than the rest of this. Also, you can use mattes [such as the garbage matte filter] if you want to have less than the full frame, rather the sliding off the screen or cropping.

As for title safe zones, we can't answer it for you. It's completely up to you.
On CRT displays [and to a lesser degree on the newer TVs], the image overscans and you will lose some of the edges.

Title safe: on almost every TV, this area will be displayed in full-- perfectly safe
Action safe [outer line]: generally this will be shown, but shouldn't be crucial stuff, like text you have to read
The whole frame: Well, you still would want something here, rather than black on the nicer/newer TVs that don't overscan, or for an internet release.

So.... you can pick. I'd suggest keeping crucial stuff in the title safe area, important stuff in action safe and still having some more stuff in the rest.

Go into the motion panel of the clip viewer window. Change settings as desired.
Much easier than the rest of this. Also, you can use mattes [such as the garbage matte filter] if you want to have less than the full frame, rather the sliding off the screen or cropping.

As for title safe zones, we can't answer it for you. It's completely up to you.
On CRT displays [and to a lesser degree on the newer TVs], the image overscans and you will lose some of the edges.

Title safe: on almost every TV, this area will be displayed in full-- perfectly safe
Action safe [outer line]: generally this will be shown, but shouldn't be crucial stuff, like text you have to read
The whole frame: Well, you still would want something here, rather than black on the nicer/newer TVs that don't overscan, or for an internet release.

So.... you can pick. I'd suggest keeping crucial stuff in the title safe area, important stuff in action safe and still having some more stuff in the rest.

Sorry Daniel - I missed your reply.

Pretty much what I was after - I wanted the clips to have a nice black border rather than fill out to the extremities which would appear cut off on certain TV's - 24 is an obvious example (as are the seventies thriller classics):

http://www.distraction-economy.com/uploaded_images/24_ss1-755706.jpg

Just discovered the crop function too - cheers! I guess this can be used to artificially create the wide angle lense/2.35:1 format? I'm going to be using these methods over the next week or so for a project which should suit multi clips perfectly.
Also, the attempt at pulling one of the small clips back to full size (and centred correctly) worked very well via the scale function.
I've yet to try the matte and fill layers method however.

Cheers.