Apple Final Cut Pro 5 - Manual (Page 1380)

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Elements of a
Final Cut Pro Project
When you are organizing your project and media files, it
can be helpful to have a detailed understanding of each
element in a Final Cut Pro project, such as clip types and
properties, bins, sequences, and so on.
This chapter covers the following:
 About Clips, Media Files, and Sequences (p. 29)
 About Icons and Project Elements in the Browser (p. 33)
 Clip Properties (p. 34)
About Clips, Media Files, and Sequences
Understanding the details of Final Cut Pro project elements can help you transfer clip
and project information in and out of Final Cut Pro during logging, capturing, media
management, and project interchange.
Media Files
A QuickTime media file contains a number of tracks, typically one video track and one or
more audio tracks. When you capture or import a media file into Final Cut Pro, a clip in
the Browser is created which refers to the media file on disk. A clip has one or more clip
items, each of which corresponds to a track in the QuickTime media file. When you
open a Browser clip in the Viewer, each of these tracks appears as a separate tab, such
as video, audio channel 1, channel 2, and so on. Clips that refer exclusively to audio files
are called audio clips, and they are identified by a unique icon in the Browser.
Other common media file types you can use in Final Cut Pro are AIFF and WAVE files
(for audio) and graphics file formats supported by QuickTime, such as JPEG, Photoshop,
and TIFF.
Important: Media files are not clips, so you should avoid referring to your media files
on your scratch disk as clips.