Learn how the Clip Grid helps you view, navigate, and manage clips in your sequence while working in Color mode.
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The Clip Grid provides a visual representation of your sequence, displaying each clip as a thumbnail in timeline order. It’s designed to help you quickly navigate between clips, select the current clip, and manage your color grading workflow more efficiently. By showing how clips relate to one another in the sequence, the Clip Grid makes it easier to move through your timeline, compare shots, and apply adjustments where needed.
The Clip Grid is a non-editable representation of your sequence, where every clip is shown as a color-accurate thumbnail with all effects, using the sequence's aspect ratio to display the clip as it appears in the Color monitor. It’s intended to make it easy to navigate the sequence you’re adjusting, select the clip you want to adjust, and make color adjustments or do organizational tasks.
By default, every clip that’s not either individually disabled or on a disabled track appears from left to right in sequence timecode order (sometimes referred to as record timecode). All clips across all video tracks are flattened into a single row, with superimposed clips that are edited so their first frame appears at the same sequence timecode from top to bottom, appearing as thumbnails from left to right.
By default, the Clip Grid is arranged vertically in column mode, so a single column of thumbnails shows the clips in your sequence from top to bottom on the right side of the screen. This may take a bit of getting used to, but it‘s very space-efficient on many displays.
You may optionally drag the Clip Grid to the bottom of your display, or to the middle as a horizontal row.
Adjusting the color of every clip in an entire sequence requires you to move quickly. This is why the Clip Grid has been designed to let you see as much of your sequence as possible via user-sized thumbnails, to make it as easy as possible to select the current clip and get to work.
The current clip is the one overlapping the playhead, and it’s always highlighted with a white outline, indicating it’s targeted by any color adjustment you make while in Color mode. If you want to change the current clip, you can:
If you select a thumbnail in the Clip Grid and its image doesn’t appear in the Color monitor, it may be because it’s underneath another clip, in which case you can turn on Solo mode to disable compositing and superimposed clips so you can see only the clip you’ve selected.
The current clip defines the selection for targetable actions. Currently that’s limited to making adjustments and Copy and Paste.
To copy all the operations from one clip and paste them to another clip:
Select the clip you want to copy by doing one of the following:
Copy the operations made to the current clip by right-clicking it in the Clip Grid and choosing Copy, or press Command + C.
Select the clip you want to paste to.
Paste by either right-clicking the current clip in the Clip Grid and choosing Paste, or press Command + V.
There are a variety of ways you can customize the Clip Grid to change the content and size of thumbnails, adjust how many thumbnails are shown at once, or display additional information to help manage your workflow.
The hamburger menu of the Sequence tab at the top of the Clip Grid lets you choose how you want to Set Clip Thumbnails, with options for First Frame, Middle Frame, and Last Frame. This is useful if your sequence contains media whose first frame is consistently unrepresentative.
If the Clip Grid is in the default Row mode, which presents either a single horizontal row or a vertical column, you can select the top edge of the row or the side edge of the column and drag to resize all the thumbnails together. Larger thumbnails make it easier to see and compare the clips you’re working on, while smaller thumbnails let you see more of your sequence all at once for faster navigation.
Disabled clips don’t show thumbnails in the Clip Grid by default. Selecting the Show Hidden Clips button adds thumbnails to the clip grid for clips that were disabled individually or are on currently disabled tracks. While shown, a badge indicates that these clips are hidden. This is purely for reference; when shown in the Clip Grid, hidden clips won’t play in the monitor.
You can organize clips that you don’t want to adjust on a track that you can then disable, to hide that track’s contents in the Clip Grid.
The Grid View button changes the Clip Grid to a multi-column or multi-row grid that lets you see much more of your sequence all at once. Once in Grid View, dragging the edge of the Clip Grid panel changes how many rows or columns you can view at once, while a slider at the bottom of the Clip Grid lets you change the size of individual thumbnails (grid density and thumbnail size are connected; changing one changes the other so that all thumbnails fit together neatly).
The Show Metadata button reveals up to two lines of customizable clip metadata underneath each thumbnail. How much metadata is actually visible depends on the size of the thumbnails in the Clip Grid. Below a certain size, metadata disappears completely.
Right-click or long-click the Show Metadata button to choose which metadata appears from a list; the amount of metadata that’s enabled determines whether one or two lines are needed.
The metadata options are:
The badge options are:
The presence and number of metadata items alter the appearance of the Clip Grid, as the metadata area changes the aspect ratio of each item as it’s presented in the Clip Grid.
Once you get the hang of things, the Clip Grid can also serve as a way of organizing your work, even functioning as a “to-do” list of sorts, using filtering and sorting to reorganize the clips of your sequence in whatever way you need to help you work.
Rest assured that filtering and sorting are completely non-destructive functions that have no effect on the editing of your sequence. They’re just temporary methods of viewing clips in specific ways that can help you work faster.
A list of options in the Filter dropdown menu lets you temporarily hide all clips except those that meet the criteria you choose. For example, if you choose Source, all clips are hidden except those that share the same source media as the current clip. Now it’s fast to make an adjustment and copy it to the other clips in that sequence that need the very same adjustment.
Whenever you filter the Clip Grid, a tag appears to the right of the Filter and Sort controls if there’s room. You can clear the filter by clicking the X button of the tag, or you can open the Filter menu and choose All Clips (Default).
The available filtering options are:
By default, the Clip Grid is sorted by Sequence Timecode, so that all clips are shown in the order in which they appear in the timeline, as edited. A list of options in the Sort dropdown menu lets you temporarily re-sort the Clip Grid by any of the available options. For example, if you choose Clip Timecode, all clips are re-ordered so that clips that were recorded at the same time appear together, which can make it easier to copy operations among like clips when you’re working in a hurry.
Whenever you sort the Clip Grid, a tag appears to the right of the Filter and Sort controls if there’s room. You can clear the sort by selecting the X button for the tag, or by opening the Sort menu and choosing Sequence Timecode (Default).
The available sort options are:
Any selected sort criteria can be set to ascending or descending order.
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