I want to shuffle some clips around. Is there a way to do this? I want to basically scramble the timeline so that the clips play randomly and out of order. Does anyone know of a feature or a trick to do this?

Nope....gotta do it manually.

One thing you can try is to create a bin, throw your clips into that bin. Assign numbers to the clips randomly IN FRONT of their name (001, 002...012...099, etc) and then highlight them all and drag them into the timeline, or into the canvas and selecting OVERWRITE.

May I ask...WHY do you want to do this? What is the effect you are trying to achieve? I ask this not to question the sanity of what you are doing (ALL editors are by definition somewhat insane!), but in order to determine if there is some other way to get what you are looking for.

I want the clips to move out of order/scramble so that it may inspire me to make different editing desicions I wouldn't normally think of. It's for a montage and there are four plus hours of clips. Can someone throw me a bone?!

That's a legitimate reason for wanting to scramble the clips. Unfortunately, besides closing your eyes and "eenie-meenie-miney-moe"-ing it, I don't know of any automatic randomizing feature in Final Cut (which is what I use).

That's a legitimate reason for wanting to scramble the clips. Unfortunately, besides closing your eyes and "eenie-meenie-miney-moe"-ing it, I don't know of any automatic randomizing feature in Final Cut (which is what I use).

I would put all the clips in a new bin the browser, open that bin switch it to icon view instad of list view then randomly move the clips around the the bin. if they come out in a relatively descending order, you can select all drag them to the timeline then they will appear in the timeline in that relatively descending order. i'm not sure if that makes sense or even if it's what you were wanting to do - the idea is similar to using icon view to storyboard before refining the edit in the timeline. anyway - sounds like a fun idea. maybe someone should develop a third party plug-in for this...