Break Those Long Clips Into Subclips

When you do a “capture now” to bring an entire tape into your system and it winds up sitting in your Browser as a single long clip (i.e., camera starts and stops have not broken it into numerous distinct clips), you may find it awkward to work with. Same thing for long source clips you import. If a clip is anything more than 10 or 15 minutes long, it can be very awkward to set ins and outs and they will seem to be almost on top of one another. It is also cumbersome to quickly scrub such long clips.

When I am in this situation, I watch the entire clip in the Viewer with my finger on the M key to set markers. This gives me a chance to thoroughly review all the content and, since I hit markers at the start of each take and hit markers at the end of each take, I wind up with some rough clips marked out. Notice then how, in the Browser, you can twirl down the “disclosure triangle” (yep, that’s what they’re called) that now appears next to the clip and you can see all the markers. Select one or more of those markers and hit CMD U…

You’ll see that for each marker you select, this shortcut will create a new subclip with head of the subclip starting at the selected marker and ending at the next marker (if there is no later marker, it will end where the original clip ended). If you have named your markers when you made them (or renamed them in the browser), these will now be the new clip names. These subclips can then be opened in the Viewer as if they were separate clips and they are much easier to work with.

Making it easier to wrangle clips makes your job easier and lets you work faster. Remember it this way: don’t let long unwieldy clips COMMAND YOU, take command of them with CMD U!