Labeling clips in Timeline - Rookie question

Thanks in advance. I've searched this forum and FCP help, but haven't found what I need.

Editing on FCP 5.1.4 on Macbook Pro.

I captured a 15 minute clip with, say, 40 interviews. I then created a new sequence in the Timeline of, say, 20 candidate useable snippets. Now, I want to label 10 or so of them as one of the 5 color labels, but once I label one of the snippets in the timeline, ALL the clips in the Timeline also get labeled. How do I label just the clips in the Timeline I want?

Thanks,
Richard

You'll have to break the master-affiliate clip relationship before you apply the label. Go to Modify - Make Independent. This link is a bit quirky, though. The command only works on one clip at a time.

One workaround is to Cut (APPLE-X) all those clips from the timeline. Create a new project file (SHIFT-APPLE-N) with settings matching your currently one. Paste (APPLE-V) all the clips into that new timeline. Now Cut and Paste them back to the old timeline. All the clips will now be Independent and not affiliate clips and you can label one without touching all of its affiliates.

I think your approach may be a bit limiting, though. The Color labels just aren't sufficient for in-depth organization purposes. If you want to organize clips, you might want to use the "Sequences as Bins" approach, ie. using multiple, clearly labelled Sequences to organize clips by category. Or just create more bins.


www.derekmok.com

Hi DEREK: thanks so much for you quick reply. Never heard of "make independent", but after looking it up on FCP Help, I think its too tricky to do.

Instead of color labeling the possibly good clips, I guess I'll use the rather inelegant method of taking the candidate good ones and move them up to V2.

Thanks, Richard

ouch... i won't be breaking the master clip affiliate if i was you... I already have problems with some clips that had the master clip affliate relation broken- i can't do a reveal master clip on some clips i have in a sequence.

Derek is right, using the color labels for this purpose is a bit limiting. The sequence as bins approach is the way to go for interviews (since you'll have them arranged in a particular order as well. As for the colored labels, i usually use them to label my b-rolls for documentaries, so i can do a quick scan through my bins in thumbnails, and i can see straight away, the shots that i will want to use.

I think the best way to organize this is to go through the entire Master clip & create sub-clips of the interviews which creates new icons in the browser. Just load your master clip into the view (double-click it in the browser), set your In / Out, hit "Command/U" and rename the clip. Repeat that for all the sub-clips. You can then label the sub-clips with a color in the browser and just those clips will be colored in the timeline.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.