Final Cut Pro X: Mysteries of the Timeline Index

The Timeline Index is a unique feature of Final Cut Pro X that is often overlooked. Which is a shame, because it is a very useful tool. This tutorial provides an overview of what it is and ways you can use it.

The Timeline Index, located on the left side of the FCP interface between the Browser and the Timeline, is closed by default. It displays information about the currently open project in the timeline.

Click “Index” to open it.

There are four main sections:

• Clips
• Tags
• Roles
• Captions

CLIPS

The Clips tab lists every clip in your project, sorted in the order in which they appear in the timeline.

NOTE: The Timeline Index only displays clips in the currently open and active project timeline.

While you can’t change the sort order, you can change what’s displayed by clicking one of these buttons at the bottom: All, Video, Audio, or Titles. As you might suspect, clicking the Video button shows only the video clips in the currently active timeline.

A feature that I like a lot is the ability to add notes for each clip. Transcription software will also often use the Notes field for transcription data.

To change the columns displayed in the Index, control-click any column header. You can also reposition any column, except the Names column, by dragging the column header.

Other things we can do with this section of the Timeline Index:

• Search for text contained in a clip name or note.
• Click a clip name to highlight the clip in the timeline and jump the playhead to the In of the clip

• Select multiple clips in the Index to select multiple clips in the timeline. This can be used to apply an effect to multiple clips scattered throughout the timeline. (See screenshot above.)
• Delete a clip in the Index to delete it in the Timeline

TAGS

I reference Tags for virtually every project I create. The buttons at the bottom display (from left to right):

• All tags
• Markers
• Keywords
• People analysis (a feature I’ve never used)
• To-Do markers
• Completed markers
• Chapter markers

Here are other things you can do with tags:

• Click any tag name to jump the playhead to that marker. This is far faster than trying to scroll around the timeline.
• Highlight one or more tags to delete them. Again, another fast way to delete one or more markers.
• Check spelling on chapter markers.
• Add notes for each marker or tag.
• Search for tag name or note text.

NOTE: You can’t use the Timeline Index to copy markers, though you can select and  delete them.

ROLES

Describing how to work with Roles is whole separate article – which you’ll find here. However in Timeline Index > Roles, you can:

• Enable / disable individual roles
• Group roles
• Isolate roles
• Display subroles
• Enable lanes

I use this feature every week, after importing the final audio mix for my webinar, to export just the mix, and not the individual clips.

CAPTIONS

The Captions section displays caption text and timing. Here we can:

• Select one or more captions
• Select a single caption which automatically opens the text for editing
• Determine the timing of a caption
• Delete one or more captions

What I like best about this section is that it provides an easy to browse a list of every caption and its content in a project. I also use this list to quickly check the spelling of captions.

SUMMARY

While I would like the Timeline Index to be a floating window that I could move to a second monitor, if you haven’t used the Timeline Index, you are missing a powerful tool to help track and organize the contents of your projects.

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