Best Workflow for Sharing Timelines with Premiere Pro CC

[Mike Jackson]

I just finished up a feature and we did a lot of this, with the director and assistant editor both handing me bins and sequences that I would import.

You can use the Media Browser to dig into other project files, which I love. Just click on them and select the sequences and/or bins you want, and choose ‘import’.

The tricky part is avoiding media duplication. We had the same system, with the three of us working off duplicate media drives. Sometimes when we imported a sequence it would recognize that the clips it linked to were already in the project, sometimes it didn’t, and we’d start to bloat up with duplicates.

There’s a solve, but you have to implement it from the start: In Preferences: Media, you can check ‘Write XMP ID to files on import’. This will tag each piece of media with a unique ID, which Premiere can keep track of. Then it will always recognize duplicate clips.

Keep in mind though, that this is metadata written into the media files themselves. So one person (probably you) needs to import all the media into Premiere, and THEN copy all the media onto the other drive and hand it off to the editor. Then you’ll both be working off the tagged files and everything should be smooth sailing.

[Alex Udell]

Mike Jackson….best explanation of this flow I’ve seen to date!!!

thank you!!

Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX

[Elizabeth Theis]

Yeah, I think the metadata is what was giving us a snag. We were hoping there was a way to tag things, but just be able to import the sequences for timelines that included video files he already has on his hard drive. Is this not a possibility?

[Mike Jackson]

Well, it’s POSSIBLE, but I found the results to be inconsistent. Premiere checks to see if it already has a piece of media in the project based on a number of criteria – I got a list from the kind folks at Adobe while we were working on the feature, and it’s attached below. But as I say, somtimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. And we were working off of duplicate drives with near-duplicate projects.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it improves in a future release, but as of right now, as far as I’m aware, the metadata trick is the only way to guarantee success.

Here’s that duplicate criteria list:

Here are some of the criteria used to determine if we have a duplicate media item:

Media start time

Title

Path

Media boundaries (in and out points)

Clip name

Audio channel mapping and clip gain if the clip contains audio

PAR, frame rate, inverted alpha if the clip contains video

Duration

Sync offset

Metadata modification state

and that’s not a complete list. We also look at internal project structures that you might not be able to inspect via the UI.

[Gillian Marsollier]

Thank you so much everyone! We will give these a try. You are all so helpful 🙂

[Mabel Valdiviezo]

Hello there,
I would love to implement this “Write XMP ID to files on import” feature to my documentary project. But the tricky part is that I am actually migrating and importing an XML from FCP7 and I don’t get the option to check that box because it is an XML import.
(and the reason for the XML import is that I want the logging info with some important info on custom columns from FCP7 to show up in Premiere Pro, which they do BTW).
I guess my other option is to do the XML import of only the footage and then redo all the sync of all the double system footage (tons of it) in Premiere to avoid replication of footage?
But then, I have a one important 45 sequence that I really need and it has clips that have been renamed since then. So sounds like no matter what, this imported sequence will produce replicated clips in Premiere.

Any further thoughts?

Mabel Valdiviezo
Editor

[Andrew Kimery]

CC 2015 (which wasn’t released when this thread was first started) is supposed to be better about not duplicating media when importing sequences from other projects. I would go ahead and give it a shot and see what happens.

[Mike Jackson]

That’s definitely a sticky situation. I have a few thoughts, but nothing game-changing:

– I’d definitely file a feature request with Adobe to add an option to write XMP IDs when importing XMLs. A LOT of editors could use that.

– If your project isn’t too insanely huge, the duplicate media is a pain, but not a show-stopper (if you have a lot of RAM). In my experience, having lots of long sequences was more of a memory and performance hog than lots of media. And as Andrew says, the most recent version of Premiere may handle this issue better.

– Beware of merged clips. I haven’t tried to import them from FCP via XML since the first version of CC, so they may work better now… but in the past, they were buggy as hell and basically failed in horrible ways. So definitely double-check them before you do any work, to ensure they transferred correctly.

[Ludmil Kazakov]

so okay.. can 2 editors work off the same project? without importing the sequences?

[Syahir Ismail]

Hi, I just switched from FCP 7 to Premiere Pro CC 2018.
We also have trouble to resolve this issue with you guys.. where we have 1 Main project with internal rushes & another project from another editor with second Mac and same rushes but inside the second Mac.

Our old method is:
Editor 1 (Main)
Project File: Card 1, Card 2, Card 3, Sequence 1

Editor 2
Project File: Card 1, Sequence 2

Editor 1 will delete Card 1 rushes from his Project File. Import Editor 2’s Project Files and Relink Card 1 rushes to Editor 1’s local storage.
Now Editor 1 will have
Project File: Card 1, Card 2, Card 3, Sequence 1, Sequence 2

Copy & paste clips from Sequence 2 to Sequence 1.
——

Now I just recently find another method:

Editor 1 will open Editor 2’s Project Files from his Main Mac, and Relink the rushes to Editor 1’s local storage.
Save & close project.

Editor 1 open Project File (Main)
Import Editor 2’s Project File (Command + I)
Checked Import Entire Project or Import Selected Sequence
Click Ok

The Card 1 won’t generate any duplication.
If you try to ‘Find in Project’ it will link up to the Card 1 itself.

What do you guys think of this new method & the old ones ?
Hope this helps you.