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Replacing clips in the timeline with enhanced versions, for the final edit

My question is about the best way to go about replacing clips in a FCP timeline with enhanced versions of the same clips (deinterlaced, upscaled, and in some cases stabilized) in the final edit. My source material is SD analog (Hi8) footage that's been converted to DV format. The two "easy" answers aren't so easy:


  1. "Enhance all the clips up front and use them from the start." That's not practical due to the sheer volume of source material—there are so many clips that both the time required to enhance the clips and the space necessary to store the massively larger files is prohibitive.
  2. "Export the final edit and then enhance that." The problem here is I've found I get better results from the enhancement software (Topaz Video AI) when feeding it the DV format source clips than when I give it an export from FCP. I presume this is because the source material (which isn't in great shape) is further degraded by being transcoded during export, with interlacing artifacts especially becoming more pronounced. This has proven to be the case even when exporting to a ProRes format. So I'd really prefer to enhance the DV source clips (although I'm open to tips that might improve the export quality to make this option viable).


From my experimentation and searching on the 'net, FCP X doesn't appear to have a way to replace a clip in the timeline with another version of the clip while automatically maintaining the 'in' and 'out' edit points—that would have to be done manually for each replacement clip, which would also be extremely time consuming. Multicam clips looked like they might be a solution, as the 'in' and 'out' points get applied to all angles, but as they can only be created in the browser (not the timeline) it appears the assumption is one will create the Multicam clips before placing clips in the timeline (which again means there's no straightforward way to add the enhanced clips after finalizing which clips appear in the final edit).


Has anyone found a way to accomplish replacement of clips in the FCP timeline while maintaining 'in' and 'out' points? I've found this question asked by others in multiple forums in years past, and no one seemed to come up with a working solution, but perhaps someone has since found a way.

iMac, OS X 10.11

Posted on Jul 16, 2023 6:33 PM

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Posted on Jul 17, 2023 12:22 AM

The solution to your problem should be Relinking. If it works then you don’t have to worry about inor out points. Relinking just makes your clips in your FCP library point to different media files.


Sometimes relinking may fail if the new files have different characteristics from the old ones, especially if the audio channels are different (eg one is mono, the other stereo or one has audio and the other doesn’t), and the new files must be at least as long as the old ones, but may have different frame size.


I suggest you try relinking just one or two clips and see how that goes.

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Question marked as Best reply

Jul 17, 2023 12:22 AM in response to Andre Molyneux

The solution to your problem should be Relinking. If it works then you don’t have to worry about inor out points. Relinking just makes your clips in your FCP library point to different media files.


Sometimes relinking may fail if the new files have different characteristics from the old ones, especially if the audio channels are different (eg one is mono, the other stereo or one has audio and the other doesn’t), and the new files must be at least as long as the old ones, but may have different frame size.


I suggest you try relinking just one or two clips and see how that goes.

Replacing clips in the timeline with enhanced versions, for the final edit

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