Organizing Events?

No, there isn't.

You are not alone sonic, please take a minute to fill out a feedback form and request a feature- you find the form by going to the menu "Final Cut Pro > Provide Final Cut Pro Feedback"

No worries. Cheers

I am very new to video editing and I have the same problem, i.e., separtating out discrete events from one big event. I had my 8mm film converted to video format as I thought it would be simpler to edit the film in the digital domain. To aid in the conversion process I put several smaller reels of film onto one large reel. The video converter program placed all of the clips into one event. Now I would like to split the one big event into separate events so that I might rearrange them and place them into a coherent story.

Since I am just learning FCP X, I was searching for a way to do this. Has anyone tried making one event into a compound event and would this buy me anything?

It sounds as if you have one long clip in the event. You break up the clip by marking selections and putting the selections in a project in the order in which you want them.

The real problem is that I have 8 reels - read 8 events - each one containing potentially hundres of clips. It would be nice to be able to restore those clips and organize them occording to something like places or birthdays or trips or junk. I can do this this on a film editor by physically cutting and splicing. It should be possible to do it with a digital editor. I found out that it can't be done in iMovie but I was told at the Genius Bar that it was possible in FCP. However I have found that you can't do it in FCP either and if the only way to organize my video is to put the clips in order in a project, well then I guess I will do it that way. And since iMovie will do it that way too, I might as well save the $200 and revert back to iMovie. Darn!

Eight reels does not mean eight events. There is no reason why they should not be in a single event.

You cut digital video very much the sane way as you do film. You make selections. The selections can be keyworded. Each keyword is a collection of similar material that get group together. The same selection can be in multiple keyword collections depending on content. All of this is done in the browser before anything is edited into a project.

We cannot teach you how to use the application on a forum. We can help you with specific questions, but you'll have to learn the basics of working with it. You can take classes. There are a number of books on using FCP. There is online training.

Tom - Thank you very much for the insight. The key word here is" keywords". I'd forgotten about using that as a solution. I make use of keywording extenively in Lightroom for photographs. I'll try it out.🙂

Well put Tom.

Gpken, it took me a while to wrap my head around keywords, but now I see they are far more powerful than folder organization. One might think of keywords as "virtual folders" or even "folders full of aliases." Picturing them in this way helped me grasp the concept and power when I was struggling with it (and resistant to the change.)

I am finding that Using keywords really works well for me. In particular the ability to search for combinations or exclusions is very powerful.

Thanks again for all your help