hey thanks guys,

I've had a go at the trax editor myself and it kinda worked out, I have never worked with clips before so I have to get my head around them first.

about the stability issues if you use multiple references nested into each other, I never had any problems. I've done quite a big project where I had a longish chain of refs. At work they use xrefs in max all the time also in quite a complicated hirachy and it runs quite smooth. I suppose having hundreds of refs will get too much eventually but up to a number of 10 fies stuck into each other it always worked out.

cheers