Apple Final Cut Express 4 - Manual (Page 943)

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Working with
Master and Affiliate Clips
Master-affiliate clip relationships make it easy to manage
multiple uses of media files in your project.
This chapter covers the following:
 Using Master and Affiliate Clips (p. 943)
 Moving Clips Between Projects (p. 951)
Using Master and Affiliate Clips
As you edit, you may generate many copies of the same clip. For example, you may use
different segments of the same clip multiple times in one sequence. Or, if you make
multiple versions of a sequence, each sequence may contain a copy of the same clip,
but the duration of each clip may be different.
All of these clip copies refer to the same media file on disk. When it’s time to recapture,
consolidate your media, or move your footage to another system, reducing the number
of clips you need to manage can save a lot of time and disk space.
For example, suppose you have finished editing your project and now you want to
recapture the media files for your sequence clips at high resolution. If you used the
same clip many times in your sequence, it would be a waste of time and disk space to
capture the same media file over and over for each clip copy.
To simplify media management, Final Cut Express uses a single master clip to control
multiple copies of a clip. The primary purpose of a master clip is to manage the
relationship between multiple copies of a clip and a single media file. The first time you
import or capture a media file, a master clip is created. Subsequently, each copy of the
master clip that you create is called an affiliate clip.