complicated file mangement question

This will be a long question. Patience is required. Any help will be appreciated. This is my first big FCE project and I am self-taught.

Thirty something years ago a friend of mine shot a 16mm B&W movie of a concert of a band I was in. It was never finished. I now have digital transfers of the twelve reels of film that survived. They were never labeled or cataloged in any way. They have no sound or sync. Each reel is now a clip as follows:

NTSC-CCIR 601
20 MB/sec
uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2
29.97 fps
720x486
creator- Quick Time Launcher

For clarity I will refer to these transfer files (there are twelve) as the reels/ even though I know they actually clips. Each one of these reels contains dozens of shots of the show. Three cameras were used. A true dogs breakfast of epic proportions. The stuff is, however, quite amazing and I really want to put this thing together.

My problem is breaking up the reels into separate movable clips that I will then manually locate on the timeline to sync up to the soundtrack. (A soundtrack was separately recorded. It exists as a wav. file which I have). I keep getting render issues when simply loading the reels into the timeline and attempting to cut the clips into smaller clips.

My aim is to end up with all my new smaller clips, labeled and cataloged in the browser, ready to drop in the timeline and move around as I wish. Thanks in advance.