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576 Part VII Fine-Tuning Your Edit
Nesting Sequences
Final Cut Express allows you to treat sequences as clips. You can open sequences in the
Viewer and set In and Out points, and you can even edit sequences into other
sequences. Putting one sequence inside another is called nesting a sequence. The
sequence inside another sequence is the nested sequence. The sequence that contains
the nested sequence is sometimes called the parent sequence.
Nested sequences can be used in the same way as clips. You can add audio and video
filters to them, set their opacity and level overlays in the Timeline, work with their audio
in the Audio tab of the Viewer, and adjust their motion parameters in the Motion tab of
the Viewer.
Note: A sequence can’t be edited into itself.
When Do You Nest Sequences?
Nesting sequences is useful in various situations:
 You can edit a movie using multiple sequences; for example, you can create a
sequence for each scene. You can then place all of the sequences, in order, into a
master sequence and output to tape or export a QuickTime movie.
 You can also use nested sequences to reduce the amount of rendering when working
with effects. You can place all of the effects-intensive audio or video sections of your
program into separate sequences, and render them. When you then nest these
sequences into your main program sequence, you can change the In and Out points
of the nested sequences without having to rerender all of the clips inside of them.
 Another reason to nest sequences is to control the rendering order of effects used in
your project. This is useful for motion graphics work. You can apply filters to clips inside
a nested sequence, and then apply additional effects to the nested sequence itself.
Pros and Cons of Nested Sequences
Before you start using nested sequences in your project, it’s important to understand
some of the advantages and disadvantages of working with them.
Pros
 Nesting allows you to reuse an entire sequence of clips over and over. You can
change a nested sequence and the changes are reflected everywhere.
Cons
 Multiple levels of sequence nesting can take a while to display, since they require
additional processing.
 Nested sequences make media management more complicated.
If you decide you don’t want to nest a sequence, you can still edit content from one
sequence to another. For more information, see “Editing the Content of One Sequence
into Another Without Nesting It” on page 579.