I might have missed something but I was wondering is there a way to preview effect on a clip before you apply it (eg. clicking on the effect in the browser and then having the active loop in the preview window show the effect applied?)
You can kind of do that, if you are running only one layer. It appears that double-clicking an effect will show it in the preview window applied to the comp (at least that's what mine is doing now).
It's been so long I can't remember if this was always the behavior or if it used to preview it just on the selected clip. Anyways when I'm making changes like that during a live shows I'll copy the clip I want to a free layer. Set the opacity of that layer to 0 (in the event I trigger it on accident), trigger the clip preview by clicking on the clip name, then dragging the effect I want to test out onto the clip. There might be a much easier way to do that, it's just the way I figured out.