Is there a recommended "best" workflow for editing a feature length film in FCP?

Thank you very much for your help, Luis and Tom. I’ve learned a lot from both of you over the years in reading your responses to others in this and other forums. Always incredible information from both of you.

After I saw Luis’s response confirming the compound clip option, I started to experiment with a test scene that I also copy and pasted as a compound clip into the rough edit of the film. I clicked on the compound clip within that timeline and opened it up to experiment with editing it there — I still had the memory of this workflow from Legacy FCP. I was confused when a black section appeared in that timeline. Then I saw Tom’s response which confirmed this is normal behavior. In the main sequence you seem to drag to get rid of black space, or drag the other way to reveal the clip if you have changed the timing to the sub-sequence.

One thing I haven’t figured out is exactly the relationship between the compound clip and the original scene project. I will plan on using Tom’s workflow of editing the scenes by double clicking on the compound. I am wondering if edits made here will also be reflected in the original scene projects. Is the compoud clip a new clip independent of the project or are they forever connected? There might be an occasion when I wanted to do an in-depth restructure of a scene, and would prefer not to open it from the master timeline. But my suspicion is that changes made in the original project would not affect the compound that is in the master project. If I did restructure something from the original project I assume I would then make a new compound of that project and replace the previous version of the scene in the master project.

One other thing I think I will do in order to stay organized and make sure I don’t edit a scene in the wrong place and end up with two conflicting versions: instead of just having one event for all of the scene projects, I will create two. One will be called something like “Scenes Moved to Master Project - Do Not Touch” and the other one something like “Scenes to Edit - Not Yet Moved to Master.”

Thank you very much.

Best,

Eric Thal

Thank you very much for your help, Luis and Tom. I’ve learned a lot from both of you over the years in reading your responses to others in this and other forums. Always incredible information from both of you.

After I saw Luis’s response confirming the compound clip option, I started to experiment with a test scene that I also copy and pasted as a compound clip into the rough edit of the film. I clicked on the compound clip within that timeline and opened it up to experiment with editing it there — I still had the memory of this workflow from Legacy FCP. I was confused when a black section appeared in that timeline. Then I saw Tom’s response which confirmed this is normal behavior. In the main sequence you seem to drag to get rid of black space, or drag the other way to reveal the clip if you have changed the timing to the sub-sequence.

One thing I haven’t figured out is exactly the relationship between the compound clip and the original scene project. I will plan on using Tom’s workflow of editing the scenes by double clicking on the compound. I am wondering if edits made here will also be reflected in the original scene projects. Is the compoud clip a new clip independent of the project or are they forever connected? There might be an occasion when I wanted to do an in-depth restructure of a scene, and would prefer not to open it from the master timeline. But my suspicion is that changes made in the original project would not affect the compound that is in the master project. If I did restructure something from the original project I assume I would then make a new compound of that project and replace the previous version of the scene in the master project.

One other thing I think I will do in order to stay organized and make sure I don’t edit a scene in the wrong place and end up with two conflicting versions: instead of just having one event for all of the scene projects, I will create two. One will be called something like “Scenes Moved to Master Project - Do Not Touch” and the other one something like “Scenes to Edit - Not Yet Moved to Master.”

Thank you very much.

Best,

Eric Thal

Thank you very much, Tom. Once again, a huge help. I'll look into experimenting with scene-specific events. That seems closest to what I would do with Legacy FCP. I have used snapshots in other apps, but not in FCP. That might be a great archiving system. Thank you for the suggestions.