Ok, let's try again now.... My current plan for how a project holds clips is as follows.
A clip can consist of simply a video file, or an audio file. It can also consist of both, which would be what you would expect with video which contains audio. The user can of course specify if they only want the audio or video of a clip for a particular purpose. But it can also potentially consist of many hundreds of clips, with transitions between them, spread over multiple tracks, etc. The user should be able to use this type of clip and a clip containing a single video file without distinguishing between them. Why is this necessary? Consider that you are editing a show together. You have a nice, tightly edited title sequence, consisting of lots of short clips, and then the rest of the show is much more loosely edited, in clips that are more like 30 seconds in length. Let's say that we are editing 6 episodes, and each needs different credits in the title sequence, and for arguments sake, let's say that our equipment is capable of rendering everything that we do in realtime. Since we need to modify the title sequence for each show, we keep it around as a project rather than rendering it down to a seperate sequence. However, if we can only use clips which contain one video/audio file then we have one of two situations : 1. We need to modify the title sequence in it's own project, and then render it down to a single clip. This is ok, except for two points. Firstly, we have suddenly started using multiple projects on a single edit, and secondly, we have to make sure that the render is of maximum quality so that the final output is also of maximum quality. or 2. We import the project onto our timeline, and have to be careful not to accidentally move around any of the hundreds of small clips whilst we are moving other things. Moreso, if we decide to move the title sequence from the beginning (say, to add a 10 second clock countdown before it), then we need to be very careful to move _all_ of the clips. By having clips as containers which can potentially hold an entire project, we could simply import the entire title sequence project into our project, and handle it as a single clip. If we need to then modify the title sequence, we would "expand" the clip somehow (I have yet to determine the best way to do this), which would allow the contents of the clip to be edited. Once that was finished, the clip could be "closed" again. Why is this particularly different from editing the title sequence as a seperate project and rendering down to a single clip? Partly because it means that the user doesn't have to change focus - they are working on the main project, they merely double click the title sequence (or some other well defined command to "expand" it), modify it, and then go back to working on the original project. Partly because the title sequence "clip" can be modified seperately for each show, and will be stored in the relevant project file. Finally, the user does not need to remember project names on the disk, which quite often end up swamped in the .avi, .wav, etc. clips. What do you think?
