Final Cut: Sorting using more than one column in the browser

Here’s the browser for a project I’m working on:

You can see that I dutifully entered scene and setup/take information for each clip. The problem is that I want to sort by ‘Scene’ first, then by ‘Shot/Take.’ I found that if I click the ‘Scene’ column, the clips are sorted by scene, but use the name of the clip as the secondary sort factor. I spent time modifying the P2-supplied names of the clips to match their setup and take number.

As I didn’t finish renaming all the clips, you’ll see the sort is in the wrong order. In scene 7, the clip for take 3 of setup 11 appears before take 2; in scene 11, setup 41 appears before setup 40. As you might be able to see, I had multiple takes from over 75 setups to rename, so I turned to the manual for help.

It turns out that you can sort by any number of columns you want. For example, to sort by Scene first, then by Shot/Take secondly, click the ‘Scene’ column heading, then shift-click the ‘Shot/Take’ heading:

These clips are sorted by scene and shot/take.

If you want to add a third sort, shift-click a third column:

As my sound clips have the same scene and shot/take number, I can sort by timecode. As the audio was recorded on a hard disc recorder, the media starts at 0, so the audio clips appear first when the other two values (‘Scene’ and ‘Shot/Take’) are the same.

If you want to reverse the sort on a column, click the arrow:

If you want to reset the sort so that it only applies to one column, click its heading without using shift.

That’s the problem with using FCP for years. You hardly ever check the manual to see if your workarounds (naming the clips in this case) still apply.

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