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Dealing with Cache and Conforming delays in multi-machine, multi-user environment
I know this has been discussed, but I’ve yet to find a solution anywhere despite searching forums here there and everywhere.
I teach in one of the many college film programs that recently moved to PP from FCP7. I’m also a filmmaker and editor, and this situation is problematic in that realm as well when moving from place to place and machine to machine with projects on external drives.
The common practice everywhere I’ve taught is that students store projects and media on their own external drives. During class sessions they routinely load projects on the instructor workstation for critiques. In the classroom itself they are rarely at the same computer twice in a given week. When they book our edit suites, they also have to work in the suite that’s available. With FCP7, none of this was a problem at all. Plug in drive, open project, maybe a delay if it’s an enormous project file, but otherwise just get to work or project onscreen for the class. It was, in retrospect, a dream.
Now, we lose hours of class time to the re-“conforming” of media cache files. Setting prefs to “store next to original media when possible” has not been a reliable solution. One also can’t temporarily change the database on a system without deleting or moving the cache database that’s already in play, so simply having students keep their own cache files and database on their external drives is also impossible.
As a filmmaker and editor, I’m also constantly moving between systems – in the doc world this is very common. On my own projects of course time isn’t money, but it’s a major hassle when working for others.
I completely get the function and operation of the Media Cache files and database, and see the advantages of doing this at a system level when one is tied to one system. But when leaving that realm, it’s a nightmare.
I’m basically loving ppro, but this is causing us to look seriously at alternatives – the lost instructional time is just not tenable. Has anyone in a multi-user/multi-machine (not a SAN situation – for a variety of reasons this isn’t an option for us and for many schools) found a solution to this?
Brook Hinton
Moving Image and Sound Maker
Associate Professor/Asst. Chair, Film Program
California College of the Arts -
7 Replies
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Hi Brook,
Remembering to set the scratch disk is a very important lesson for students. Admittedly, managing PPro preferences in a multi-user environment can be fairly clunky.
You can try teaching the students to use the free Preference Manager from Digital Rebellion. It is a 3rd party application that manages user preferences, hence manages where PPro stores the cache files, it also manages other preferences such as keyboard layouts.
https://www.digitalrebellion.com/prefman/
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Thanks for the response, Gerard. They’re actually great with setting scratch disks and other prefs they control – it’s drilled into them on day one. We used preference manager with FCP – though my preference is always to make them learn to do these things the hard way so they undersand it, but then the tool was there for quick fixes.
But my understanding is that the premiere pro version of prefmgr does not open up the option of temporary swapping of the cache database when loading projects on different systems – THAT’s our problem. Students can come up to the podium system or go into an available edit suite, mount their drive on the new machine, set scratch and cache files location and all else needed to correct location on their external, but pp still rebuilds and reindexes – the cache database can’t be changed except to move or delete/create new, neither of which help even if they didn’t cause their own problems. . Using “store cache files with original media when possible” helps a little but is pretty hit or miss. It might not be a problem in a software-training class, but in semester-length classes and thesis situations where work is constantly being critiqued and worked on in multiple locations its a major problem – as it is for editors who aren’t tied to one machine and are working on large, complex projects.
I hope some option to use a project-based cache system is in the works. Meanwhile, holding out hope that someone here knows a workaround. Searching everywhere else has been fruitless. -
I am in a similar position – administering (and teaching in) a multi-user environment. Most of our students store their work on firewire drives. I have found the issues that you describe to be problematic. Here’s what I prescribe to our students:
1. Create a “master folder” on the external drive for a project.
2. When starting a brand-new project, set the “master folder” as the destination for the Media Cache and Media Cache Files. So, as they initially import files into the project, all cache files go the “master folder”.
3. Each subsequent time that they re-open the project, I have them first open Premiere Pro (not the actual project) and create a “dummy project”. No need to worry about project settings, since they’re actually not going to use this “dummy project” to edit. I let them use the default title “Untitled Project” For file location, they use the default. (The computers in our lab are “frozen” with Deep Freeze, so the “dummy project” simply goes away when the machine shuts down.)
4. Using the “dummy project”, they then set the Media Cache and Media Cache Files location to their “master folder” (see Step #1 above) for that particular project.
5. Once Cache locations have been set in the dummy project, they can then open their project file. Ideally (!!), the original project should open and automatically link up with the Cache files that were created in Step #2. Any subsequent imports will need to cache,, but the previously-cached files should work without conforming. There is still a relatively brief ”loading files” process, but this is unavoidable and no different than FCP.
We don’t set the “store next to original media when possible” option as this simply creates more files.
One challenge is working on multiple projects in the same work period. The best thing to do is to close the first project, open Premiere, set the new cache location for the next project, and then open the new project.
I hope this makes some sense. It seems awkward, but once the students do it a few times, they have no problems.
Nat Ives
Manager & Lab Instructor
Communication & Media Studies Production Center
University of Southern Maine
Portland, ME
ives@maine.edu
https://www.facebook.com/CMS.Production -
Thank you – we started to test this idea but got stuck at the move-or-delete prompt for the cache database, which led me to assume the database would still need rebuilding for each project, but this is encouraging news. Do you have them move or delete the existing database at the prompt when changing the location?
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[Brook Hinton] “Do you have them move or delete the existing database at the prompt when changing the location”
We choose “Delete”. I haven’t noticed much difference either way. That seems to be a fairly benign function.
Nat Ives
Manager & Lab Instructor
Communication & Media Studies Production Center
University of Southern Maine
Portland, ME
ives@maine.edu
https://www.facebook.com/CMS.Production -
Great, thanks Nat! We’ll give it a whirl.
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[Brook Hinton] “Great, thanks Nat! We’ll give it a whirl.”
Please let me know how you make out, especially if you find any problems or other workarounds!
Nat Ives
Manager & Lab Instructor
Communication & Media Studies Production Center
University of Southern Maine
Portland, ME
ives@maine.edu
https://www.facebook.com/CMS.Production
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