Nested Clips

It is also possible to create clips and convert them to nested edl. This is done by first creating a clip using the standard cut, clipboard, paste, and/or edit panel buttons. Now, using the resources clip folder, select a clip to be nested, and use the right mouse button to select a clip. This activates the clip popup menu. Select the Nest to media menu item, and the clip will be converted to a Nested: Clip and put in Media folder. Conversely, you can select a Nested: Clip, use the EDL to clip menu item, and the clip will be reverted to a Clip. This works similarly to the group / un-group editing features of many graphic design editing programs, but in this case the groups are rendered compositions (figure 6.7).

Nested clips can be proxied and when they are, the resulting files are placed in the user's $HOME/Videos directory by default. This can be modified by changing

Settings → Preferences → Interface tab, Nested Proxy Path.

Figure 6.7: Nested clips in Timeline and Resources window

Notes:

creating nested clips is a complicated internal process for CINELERRA-GG, especially for managing audio tracks. Therefore you need to make sure you have your project set up as you expect before you start nesting with the Nest to Media command. Below are several things to remember.

• The creation of the nested clip is based on the settings in Settings → Format. Be sure that the number of audio tracks and channels is the same as we want to have in the nested clip. In addition, it is better to make each audio track independent from the others (which could be linked in more than one channel) using the option: Audio → Map 1:1
• You can do any editing on the nested clip once it is loaded to the timeline. For example we can start an OpenEDL session to make the changes. Once out of the OpenEDL session it may be that the changes made are not visible in the original nested clip. You can fix this by doing RMB on the nested clip in the Resources/Media window and choosing Rebuild index. This process may take some time depending on the size of the media; because of the additional time required to do this, it is not done automatically in order to allow the user to make the decision as to when they are done editing enough and need to see the exact results in order to save time.
• Because of the way the timeline thumbnails are displayed, after editing using OpenEDL of a nested clip, the thumbnails of the video track may be redrawn and may look different and out of sync with the way they did originally with respect to the audio waveforms. This is simply a result of the redrawing of the video track which is independent from the redrawing of the audio tracks. The playback is still synchronized.

Usage Examples of Nested Clips

Example 1:

You want to make a flashback/rewind at the end of your video that represents a quick summary of the entire video in black and white. On he timeline, you have 60 seconds of edits with clips, cuts, zoom in, zoom out and any other edits. Now you want to get this 60 seconds compressed to 10 seconds, play in reverse, and in black and white at the end of your video. You would copy the 60 seconds in a clip, nest the clip in the Clip folder of the Resources window and drag it to the timeline. You will see only a clean clip without all of the edits that were used to create it because nesting display a clip without having to actually use the Render menu. Now you can add a Reverse effect, Color3way plugin for black and white, and use the Speed auto to get the 60 seconds down to only 10 seconds.

Example 2:

You are working on a complex project with a team in a separate location. You create some sub projects, i.e. sequences, that you or the team will use in the Master project to merge the sequences in the right order and to make the final color correction steps.

In each of the examples you can see the benefit of nesting to create clean looking timelines because of the automatic rendering capability of nesting.