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Premiere Pro equivalent to “Quicktime Reference File”
When I used FCP, I would create a sequence with Prores codec settings. Since a lot of my material was transcoded to prores, they played nicely in that timeline.
When going through the editing, effects process and so on, I would render as needed and have a timeline that would play back smoothly.
When I was ready to create a ‘master’ export of the sequence, I would often chose to export a “Quicktime Reference File.” This file would contain collection of pointers to the original media or the render files created by FCP during this process. The export would usually happen very quickly, seconds or minutes at the most, even for long pieces. The resultant file was very small, as it contained very little media but just pointers to the actual media.
I would then have a Quicktime reference file which I could drop into compressor, or a number of other applications to encode it to whatever format I wanted.
Is there an equivalent ‘reference file’ format in Premiere Pro CS 5?
Thanks much for any advice.
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19 Replies
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Yes…load the PPro sequence directly in Media Encoder. You don’t even have to make a pointer file.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions, -
Well sort of.
Quicktime as a media container can be used as source media in all types of content creation tools.
That is a cool feature not readily available in other workflows.
Alex
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True Alex, a QT reference file is more flexible, but since the OP asked about moving a sequence into compressor, I focused on the edit timeline-to-transcode scenario.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions, -
I talk too much 🙂
Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX
Chumney & Assoc. Advertising -
[Alex Udell] “I talk too much :)”
I was thinking more along the lines of me making an excuse for giving an incomplete answer…
🙂
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions, -
Thank you all for this thread, this seems to be the only resource I can find regarding reference files and CS5.
So, can Pemiere CS5 export a reference file at all?
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Tim can correct me if I’m wrong, but what he is saying is that, the nearest equivalent is the Premiere Pro project file, and the sequence within it. In Adobe Media Encoder, you click ‘add’ and then locate the Premiere Pro file, then when it’s done reading the file it presents you with a list of the sequences in the project file.
I’ve used this several times now after Tim’s suggestion. It’s certainly not as versatile as the Quicktime reference file concept, as it only works with Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder, but it’s better than nothing. The rendering time could be very long, depending on the complexity and length of the sequence, because by default it takes the original media and uses that to encode, but I think it would be shorter if you chose to modify the settings to ‘use preview files’ if you have rendered preview files in your original sequence.
Thanks Tim for your input here.
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Thanks for your input everybody, I really appreciate that. This really clarifies things for me as we have just made an Avid to CS5 transition here at the office.
Thanks.
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[Keith Moreau] “Tim can correct me if I’m wrong…”
But I won’t because you’re not…spot on all around.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions, -
Thanks Tim.
More updates to this Premiere Pro ‘reference file’ workflow from my experience.
I did some tests using Prores LT as the preview file format, rendered the entire sequence so there was a green bar throughout the timeline, rather than yellow or red bars, and did encodes both using these preview files and without the preview files.
I found that there was no significant difference in the encode time either using preview files or not, even when I exported using the sequence’s format – in this case Prores LT, which isn’t what I necessarily expected. I expected it to behave a bit like Final Cut Pro and basically copy and assemble the ‘preview files’ into a quicktime file of the same format. I don’t think Premiere Pro did this. For a 13 minute sequence using previews it took 1 hour 23 minutes, with ‘use preview files’ checked it took 1 hour 18 minutes.
So while I can use these Premiere Pro project and sequences as a ‘master’ source, using a non-standard preview format doesn’t seem to speed up encoding, even when it’s the sequence’s native format.
So right now, though I really like Premiere Pro for the workflow, working with varied formats natively, and it’s efficiency in using all the CPU and RAM and GPU available (unlike FCP). In the ‘render’ area, I’m still looking for a more efficient PPro workflow. Right now I feel the encoding workflow is taking too long.
If anybody has more advice or if my testing methodology about using preview files is incorrect, please let me know. Thanks all for this thread.
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