Fusing a Sequence

The Fuse function is used to literally fuse together all the clips on the Timeline to create a single AVI file on your hard drive. You can also automatically import the fused clip back into the Project Browser so that you can use the clip in future productions or with other techniques such as XSend to Flash (see the "Using XSend" section later in this chapter).

To fuse a Sequence

1.	Click File > Fuse Sequence to open the interface (Figure 13.10). Figure 13.10. The Fuse Sequence interface.
2.	Browse to a directory of your choice and then click OK. The Timeline is now rendered into a single AVI at the location you specify. Once it is finished rendering, it imports this into the Rack you last used, unless you deselected that option.

Tips

• If you're exporting a particularly large Timeline, make sure that the destination drive has plenty of room. Allow 4 GB for every 10 minutes on the Timeline.

• Due to a file size restriction placed on the AVI format by Microsoft, an AVI can't be longer than 4 GB. The Fuse method gets around this limitation by using an Open DML format that is immune to this restriction and can create an AVI of any length on an NTFS partition.

• The Fuse method is also useful when you compile a standard introduction sequence that you want to use at the start of each of your videos. Rather than dumping this to a DV tape or DVD and then capturing or importing it, you can quickly create a single clip that you can store in the Rack of your choice.