Nest and Unnest Sequences in Premiere Pro – 5 Easy Ways to Use Them

Learn how easy it is to Nest and Unnest Sequences in Premiere Pro.  In this video, you will see 5 easy ways to nest sequences in Premiere Pro to make your editing workflow easier. 

Today, we’re going to be taking a look at how to nest clips Premiere Pro and how you can reverse that and unnest a sequence and get your original footage back. We’ll also look at some ways you can use nested sequences in your workflow to make your editing life easier.

Nest Sequences in Premiere Pro

So let’s show you first how to actually nest the clip. You can actually nest one clip or multiple clips. Just highlight all the clips that you want nested, and you can right-click and come to where it says Nest.

Now you have an opportunity to name your nested sequence. I’m just going to call this intro and say, OK, over here, my project panel, you can see that now I have another sequence. And this is a nested sequence.

That’s what nesting a sequence does. It combines one or more clips into one group or one unit. So if I double click on my new nested sequence, here are all the clips that I nested in the sequence. I can add more clips here.

I could edit any of these clips, and it will all stay intact in this new nested sequence. So that brings us to one of the first things that you can actually use a nested sequence for, and that is for organization.

All these clips that I nested are my intro, and I had them organized in a nested sequence. So that’s one way that you can use a sequence just for organizing a bunch of clips together. So another point on organization is sometimes a timeline can get pretty cluttered, and you just want to make a section of it

look a little neater. So in this case, here I was doing a product review, this is part of this story and has to do with the uses of the product. So I’m going to highlight that section and right-click and nested in.

I’m going to name it uses nested sequence and say, OK, and I’m keeping all my nested sequences in its own bin. Again, if I double click in, I make any changes here. It will immediately get reflected back to the timeline.

Another thing we can do with our nested sequence since we have it organized and if I want to move the sequence, say you want to change your story. In this case, I’m going to highlight the audio tracks that go with this sequence going to right-click and say, Group, now I’m going to move it over just a

couple of clips just to show you if I hold down command, you see the cursor changing to a blue arrow and it’s pointing to the left, and it could just move my sequence over like that. And there it is.

Put it in between a couple of other clips and everything else is intact. I double click Here are all my clips in my nested sequence. That’s another use.

How to Un-nest a Sequence 2 Different Ways

So if you decide that you don’t want to create a nested sequence, if you just created a nested sequence, of course, you can hit Command Z or come up

to edit and say undo. But if you’ve done some things afterward you’re going to probably want to try one of these other methods. So oneway, if you double click on your nested sequence and you highlight everything and say Command C and go back into your main sequence, put your play had at the start of the nested sequence

and say Command V. And of course, you can delete this sequence here and you have all your original clips back. So the other way that you can unnest a sequence is first, you want to locate your nested sequence in your project panel.

And if you don’t know where that is and you want to locate it, right-click on your nested sequence and go to reveal in Project. And over here in our project panel, here it is. If you just drag your nest to sequence over to your timeline, it drags it as another sequence.

But what you want to happen is when you drag your nested sequence over, you want your clips to come on to the timeline. So up here this blue button that says insert and overwrite sequences as nest or individual clips.

When you click on this and it turns white, and now when you drag your nested sequence over to your timeline, your clips come over and you can put them over your nested sequence and then you can delete your nested sequence on the timeline.

And you can also delete it from your project panel and you had all your edits are back on your timeline before you created your nested sequence. So that’s two ways to unnest your sequence.

How to Animate a Nested Sequence

Another way to use a nested sequence is to animate a series of clips.

I have a still image here on the timeline and some text that comes in. I like to animate just this group of clips, so if I highlight these clips, right click and say nest and name it and say, OK, in a can come over here to my effects controls and click on the toggle animation and created my first keyframe,

I’m going to bring my still all the way out, bring my play head over a little bit here add another keyframe, and let’s slide this over. Just so it’s kind of in the center, and I’ll play that.

There’s my animation. If I double-click on my nested sequence all the clips and the nest sequence here, I would have had to done some sort of animation to each clip. But since it was an animated sequence, I could do the whole thing at once. So that was just an easy example to show animation using a nested sequence.

How to Use the Fade-In Fade-Out Effect with a Nested Sequence

In this clip, this is just a drive I was on.

I want to add some text and I added an adjustment layer to do a little bit of color grading here. Not too much. But what I want to do is I want to fade in and fade out. So I want to add that effect here to this group of clips and highlight all my clips.

Right-click, Say nest I’m going to call it fade sequence and say, OK. And so all my clips are a nested sequence. But now I want to apply a film dissolve add to the front add another one to the back for a fade in and fade out.

And move this clip over a little bit. And of course, I can change where this fades and invades. I’ll play it again. Fading in and fading out. Again, another way to group some clips together and then apply an effect to a nested sequence.

How to Apply a Color Grade Before Editing Clips

So another way to use nested sequences is to nest, either a long clip or a group of clips together before you make adjustments. Now, normally I would do something like You have your clips here, and I’ve already added a lumetri color effect on each of them.

If want to come in here and make cuts, make jump cuts here and there. Move some clips. Make different adjustments. But now, if I want to change the color grade I have to go to each clip and change them individually.

So now a better way would be to highlight all the clips on my timeline and say, nest and we’ll call this color grade and say, OK, now I’m going to drop a lumetri color effect on this nested sequence.

Come in here and do my color grade. Whatever I would like to do, add some contrast here. Play with the exposure a little bit highlights shadows, the blacks and up the saturation a little bit. So now every clip in here has been color graded.

I can go back and double click and they can make more jump cuts and they can move clips around. Like any other adjustments. I can close my nested sequence. And you can see that the duration has changed. And all I need to do is pull this over.

If need to make any color grade adjustments. I can go back into my lumetri color effect if I want to change the exposure a little bit. Maybe I don’t want it quite as saturated. And so any time that I change anything in my color grade, it will affect all the clips at the same time, no matter what order I put them in, or no matter what I did to them.

How to Apply Speed and Warp Stabilizer to a Clip Without Getting an Error.

So here I have a clip you want to slow down the liquid coming out of the bottle and I want to stabilize the clip a little bit.

I don’t mind movement too much. We’ll try and stabilize it. If I right-click on this clip and I come down here to speed and duration, say I want to take it down 40% and say, OK, so that’s slowed it down.

But now I want to stabilize it. I say, I don’t mind too much the motion, but let’s make it a little bit more stable. And I’ve already researched for Warp Stabilizer and bring that on to my clip and we get a warning saying warp stabilizer and speed cannot be used on the same clip.

So to get around this I’ve already applied my speed. I’m going to cut this clip down just for time sake. And now I’m going to nest this clip and we’re going to call it warp nested sequence. I’ve already researched for Warp Stabilizer in my effects panel, I’m going to drag it on to my nested sequence.

And this time, we’re not getting an error message. It is analyzing in background stabilizing. Again, we had our clip that we imported in. We slowed it down to 40% and we nested it and applied warp stabilizer. And we did not get the error. Another way to use nested sequences.

See the previous blog article here ➡️ How to Use the New and Improved Masking in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw

See my photography website here ➡️ https://www.charlescabreraphotography.com