Digital graphic design, image editing, audio editing, and video editing applications (hereafter collectively referred to as media content editing applications or media editing applications) provide graphical designers, media artists, and other users with the necessary tools to create a variety of media content. Examples of such applications include Final Cut Pro® and iMovie®, both sold by Apple, Inc. These applications give users the ability to edit, combine, transition, overlay, and piece together different media content in a variety of manners to create a resulting media project. The resulting media project specifies a particular sequenced composition of any number of text, audio, image, and/or video content elements that is used to create a media presentation.
Various media editing applications facilitate such composition through electronic means. Specifically, a computer or other electronic device with a processor and computer readable storage medium executes the media content editing application. In so doing, the computer generates a graphical interface whereby designers digitally manipulate graphical representations of the media content to produce a desired result.
One difficulty in media editing is that a user cannot conveniently access various candidate clips for a particular section of a presentation. Typically, if a user wishes to evaluate different clips than those included in the composite presentation, the user must select from a large group of clips by iteratively accessing various media libraries.
Another difficulty in media editing is that a user cannot conveniently manage candidate clips (i.e., clips that are not included in a composite presentation) such that the clips can be easily accessed when modifying a particular section of the composite presentation. At any given time, the user may wish to associate one or more candidate clips (e.g., alternative “takes” of a scene, alternative content, etc.) with a particular section of a presentation. Thus, there is a need for a media editing application that allows a user to associate candidate clips with various sections of a composite presentation, thus allowing the user to retrieve the associated clips when evaluating a particular section of the composite presentation.