Nesting clips into their own timeline in Video by Zaweba
Use Clip > Nest in Video by Zaweba to pack clips into one purple clip you can trim, grade and speed up as a single piece, then break it apart again.
Certain parts of an edit work better as a single unit. A split screen made of four clips, a title sequence built from several layers, or a montage that needs one grade over the top: each is easier to handle as one clip than as a dozen. Video by Zaweba does this with nested timelines.
Making a nest
Select the clips you want and choose Clip > Nest, or press Ctrl+Alt+N. The clips and their sound move into a timeline of their own. On your main timeline they are replaced by one purple clip that stands for the whole group.
That purple clip behaves like footage. You can trim it, speed it up, ramp it, grade it and add effects to it. Whatever you do applies to the nest as a whole, as if the group had been rendered into a single video clip, but nothing has been rendered and every part inside is still editable.
Opening and changing a nest
Double-click the purple clip to open it. Inside is an ordinary timeline with the clips you nested, and you can edit them in any way you like. Change a layer, retime a title, swap a shot. When you go back to the main timeline, the purple clip shows the changes.
If you decide you no longer want the group, choose Clip > Break apart. The clips go back onto the main timeline as they were.
Transparency is kept
Nested pictures keep transparency. If the clips inside a nest only cover part of the frame, such as a title with an empty background or a picture in picture arrangement, the rest of the nest is see through. The purple clip can sit on an upper track over other footage and the layers below show through. That makes nests ideal for packaging graphics.
Nesting stops four deep. You can put a nest inside a nest, and so on, up to four levels. In practice one or two levels covers almost every need, and keeping it shallow makes the project easier to follow.
Jobs nesting helps with
One grade over several clips. Colour correct each shot inside the nest, then put a single overall look on the purple clip. Change the look once and it applies everywhere.
One effect across a section. A blur, a vignette or a shake applied to a nest covers every clip inside it, including the cuts between them.
Speeding up a whole sequence. A montage that runs too long can be nested and sped up as one, keeping the cuts in proportion, instead of changing every clip's speed by hand.
Complex layouts. A split screen or a grid of pictures is built once inside a nest, then moved, scaled and animated on the main timeline as a single picture.
Reusable pieces. A title sequence or a logo animation can live in a nest and be placed in more than one spot.
Keeping nests manageable
Nesting too early is the common one. If clips are still being trimmed and swapped, every change means opening the nest. Nest once a section has settled.
Another is forgetting that effects on the purple clip sit on top of anything inside. If a shot looks odd, check both levels: the clip inside and the nest outside.
Finally, keep the nesting shallow. Four levels is the limit, but a project with nests three deep is hard for anyone, including you a month later, to follow. Name and colour nests clearly so they are easy to spot.
Where it fits
Nesting sits between grouping, which keeps clips together but leaves them separate, and separate timelines, which hold whole versions of an edit. When a set of clips should look, move and be treated as one piece of footage, a nest in Video by Zaweba is the tool for it.
