Projects in FCP X

[Philip Fass]

Still trying to break my FCP 7 habits....

With 7, I'd use one sequence per chapter of my finished documentary, then make and export a master sequence comprised of all the other sequences.

As I understand it, there's nothing like that in X. So my entire documentary would have to be built as one Project, basically the equivalent of one master sequence. Is that right?

[Ben Fullerton]

I don't have a tone of experience in FCP7, so I don't have much know ledge of how it was done.

But the way I get around this is that I take advantage of the ability to have multiple projects easily organized in folders in the project library and the ease of copying and pasting from one project to another. So rather than just dump everything into one project, which gets really hard to mentally organize for me, I'll start a folder called "Project Blah Blah", or whatever the whole project is called. Then, however I want to break it out into pieces, I'll just start different projects for each; and I'll have one master Project called "Project Blah Blah", where everything will eventually get copied to. So in the folder, there might be a project called "Intro", where I can just work on and focus on the intro, without having to see anything else. When it's ready, I'll just copy and paste it into the master project. If I'm working on a dialogue bed to run as the backbone for a section of a doc, then I'll have a separate project for that where I can just focus on that, chop it up, put it together, turn it into a compound clip. Then when I like it, I'll just select the compound clip, copy it, back out to the Project Library, select the master Project, and paste it into the right place.

It's the best way I've found so far, and honestly work really well for breaking larger project into smaller chunks, while still be able to almost instantly transfer the work done into the whole project.

[Philip Fass]

I like that approach, Ben. It gives me almost the same benefit as I had with sequences. Thanks.

[Steve Benner]

Create different projects in folder as stated above, then create "Compound Clips" which will collapse the whole sequence into one clip that can be edited if needed. Just copy and paste these connected clips together in the Master Project.

[Ronald Jackson]

Interested in this, 'cos I need to compress lots of small projects into one large one. How does one "copy and paste" a project , or part thereof, in FCP X?

Ron

[Ben Fullerton]

Just go into a project, select what you want to carry over, Command-C to copy. Then back out of that project, and go into the destination project. Put the playhead where you want the source material to start, Command-V to paste, and there you have it. Super quick and simple.

And one other little trick that I realized not too long ago that can help speed things up, is to make good use of the little forward/backward arrows in the upper left corner of the timeline area. I thought they were only for backing in and out of connected/multicam clips, but they apparently just have a memory of whatever has been active in the timeline. Mean, if you're bouncing between two projects, you can immediately just go between them. If you open Project A, then back out into the Project Library and open Project B, you will then be inside that, and the little back arrow will now be lit up as an option. By clicking that, it will jump your right back to Project A in the timeline, in which case the forward arrow will be active, and you can jump back forwards to being inside Project B.

Nothing revolutionary, but something I didn't realize before. So I was always backing all the way out to the Project Library and double clicking to go inside the next project. This is simple, but saves quite a bit of time when hopping between projects.