Showing Clip Names In Your Sequence Export

Lets say you want to export a sequence from FCP but have the clip's names over the footage like supers or subtitles. You could manually add text elements over each clip and type in each clip's name but if you have a ton of clips then it would take forever. So here's a nutty way to do it.

01) Save your project or duplicate the sequence in case something goes wrong. To be really safe make a duplicate of your project save file before you do this.

02) Highlight ALL the clips that are going to be in your timeline. (highlight them in the Browser)

03) Hit Shift + D to bring up the "Make Offline" window and choose "Leave Them on the Disk" to make them offline. Don't delete or trash them though.

04) In the Canvas you'll see the big scary red offline screens but you'll also see the missing clip's name.

05) Now comes the crazy part. Export the offline sequence. It'll make a movie file with the red offline screens perfectly timed to your clips.

06) Import that into FCP.

07) Reconnect your clips.

08) Layer the offline exported clip as the top video track and set it to like 20% or less opacity.

(If you want to get a little fancy you can crop [Tap "C" for the crop tool] the offline clip so it only shows the clip's name and then reposition it towards the bottom of the screen.)

09) Export the sequence.

Nuts. But it works.