[This article was first published in the July, 2005, issue of
Larry’s Final Cut Pro Newsletter. Updated Feb. 2011. Click here to subscribe.]
I got a call late in the evening from a prime-time network show asking about how to use markers in a Multiclip. They weren’t working the way the editor was expecting. So, I did some research and here’s what I found.
Multiclips are new with Final Cut Pro 5 and allow you to see multiple camera angles at the same time. Apple did a really great job in implementing this feature and I’m looking forward to writing a tutorial on how it works for a future issue. What a multiclip does is combine a series of related shots into a single new clip where you can see all the images at once.
However, the editor that called me was puzzled, because what he wanted to do was add a marker to a source clip and have that marker travel wherever the source clip went. But that’s not how multiclips work.
A multiclip is a totally different clip from the source clips it contains. So, any markers in a source clip are ignored when you create a multiclip.
However, any markers you put in the multiclip itself, by typing M in the Viewer, are retained as clip markers when that multiclip is edited to the Timeline. This allows you to indicate particular shots, or music beats, or whatever else you want to flag when the multiclip is edited into your sequence.
Any clip markers in a multiclip in the Timeline show up in the Viewer when the multiclip is loaded back into the Viewer.
Markers are a great way to flag specific locations in a clip, or the timeline. I use them constantly — they are like my yellow sticky notes in Final Cut Pro. So, to summarize:
UPDATE – FEB, 2011
Markers were updated in Final Cut Pro 7. Click here to read more about their new behavior.
