Sequences

The Professional Edition has support for creating and editing sequences. A "sequence" is a special type of clip that contains a sequence of clips in order. It corresponds to a simple timeline or cuts-only edited program.

A sequence is created:

A number of Preferences options control the creation of sequences when importing a file, for example whether to include audio tracks separately and what duration stills should have when added to a sequence.

The sequence window is also used when you use View Tape As Sequence or use the Create Real-Time Sequence command, which places clips on a timeline according to the time of day and can simplify lining up multicamera shoots if the camera clocks were set correctly.

Editing sequences

Double click a sequence clip to open it in a special sequence window. When you edit a sequence the clip details panel changes to show Source and Record playback windows with a timeline below.

The Source window (on the left) shows the current selected clip:

The Record window (on the right) is labelled Sequence and shows the entire sequence:

The timeline shows all the clips in the sequence as a continuous timeline, complete with thumbnails and clip name:

The following commands appear in the Sequences menu:

An easy way to list the sequences in a catalog is using the Sequences node in the tree navigator.

Keyboard shortcuts

Many familiar keyboard shortcuts are available when editing sequences, including:

Deldelete selection from sequence and shift remainder up
Shift-Delerase selection from sequence leaving a gap
Enterappend the clip in the source window to the end of the sequence
\insert the source clip into the sequence at the current playhead position or replacing an existing selection, shifting the remainder up
/overwrite the sequence, replacing an existing selection with the source clip. This performs a 3-point edit, ie. if you select in and out points in the sequence to be overwritten then the appropriate amount of material from the source clip will be used.
J, K and Lcontrol playback
I and Omake a selection by marking In and Out points
Shift-I or Oclear the corresponding In or Out pont
Xselect the current clip in the sequence (based on where the playhead is), ie. set In and Out points around the clip
Shift-Xclear the selection
FMatch frames, ie. jump to the frame in the trim window that corresponds to the current frame in the sequence window
Up and Down arrowmove to previous or next interesting time (edit point)
Ctrl/Cmd Pplay the selection in a new window
Ctrl/Cmd + and -zoom in and out of the timeline
Ctrl/Cmd \automatically scale the timeline to fit window width
Ctrl/Cmd Zundo the last edit

See the Sequence menu or hover the mouse over the buttons below the Source and Record windows for details of additional shortcuts (tool tips).

Some of these shortcuts apply to whichever one or other of the Source or Record windows has keyboard focus at the time. Click on the movie player or use Ctrl/Cmd-2 or Ctrl/Cmd-4 to switch between the two windows and observe which tab has a darker background.

Other functions that affect how the timeline is shown are available via the buttons below the timeline, including the size and number of thumbnails that are shown, and whether to use a static playhead when playing the sequence movie.

Printing sequences

There are two ways of printing the clips in a sequence, depening on whether you want to display the original source timecode or the timecode of the clip based on where it is placed within the sequence:

Additional information

The In and Out point of a clip usage in a sequence refers to its timecode within the timeline. If you are interested in source timecode you can drag and drop (or copy and paste) a clip usage out from a sequence into a regular window and it will create a new secondary clip referring to the relevant source.

Once you have created a rough cut sequence in CatDV you can render it by exporting it as a movie. You can also export a sequence as an EDL or Final Cut Pro XML file for subsequent editing in your NLE editing application.

The original sequence editing dialog available in earlier versions of CatDV is still available if you right click on a sequence in the tree navigator and choose Edit In New Window.

Please note that the basic sequence editing provided in CatDV is not intended to replace a regular video editing application. CatDV provides cuts only editing, with no support for effects or transitions and only limited support for separate audio and video tracks, but in many cases this is all you need.


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