Collaborative Editing

[Alex Gerulaitis]

[Adi Kerr] “My question is what is the best way to work together on this project? For example, can I open the project file, create an edit, send him the project file, he can work on it, send the project file back to me etc and everything will work OK?”

If the file paths (to source files primarily) are the same – yes. Someone did a detailed review on how to make a Premiere Pro project more portable (for working on it on a different system) – but I am blanking out who did it and where. (Todd? Dennis? Dave? Walter S.? Tim? Ann? Alex U.? Walter B.? Angelo? Could you guys help me out? :))

[Adi Kerr] “Or is there a better way to do it?”

Any service with two-way syncing should make it easier. GDrive does it for sure, DropBox I am sure does it too. I know how to set it up in G-Drive but it could be kind of cumbersome: designate a folder as a “Google Drive Folder” (say, “Premiere Pro projects”, and in Preferences (or “advanced settings”), tell it to only sync “some folder” to this computer, namely the folder with the project you’re working on. If you have a lot of other projects and files in that folder, this may require to move the project into its own separate folder, and set Pr preferences not to put previews and caches into it.

— Alex Gerulaitis | Systems Engineer | DV411 – Los Angeles, CA

[Michael Krupnick]

For linking seamlessly, set all caches and drives to a folder ON THE MEDIA DRIVE in project prefs Use the system drive as backup for the project. Then you can exchange the minimum amount of data to maximum use. Works very well for any sharing enterprise.

[Alex Udell]

Hi…

seemed like most of the headaches involved had to do with working between mac and PC and resolving paths when media is stored in a complex folder setup at the OS level. (involving / vs and other petty annoyances)

Walter Soyka had some goods things to say about this….

If you are going to be working on the same project….and basing that on importing eachothers work into each others local projects…one REALLY BIG hint is…

Import the SEQUENCES you need from the other project and not the PROJECT FILE itself…

By importing the SEQUENCES, PPro will attach the sequence to your existing clip entries. if you import the project, PPro will create duplicate Clip entries in the project panel and things can bloat and get messy quickly.

to prevent the email shuffle….Using AE…I’ve played with making my project folder a DROP BOX location and thus every time I save, being in sync with the drop box and on theory another editing location……..I suppose if you are only doing the project files this would work….but you’d been a pretty big drop box account to handle the media files…don’t think it’s impossible though…..but again….my experiments were only cursory…so don’t take it as gospel…

Alex Udell
Editing, Motion Graphics, and Visual FX

[Walter Soyka]

You’ve gotten some great advice from the other posters.

I’ll add that Premiere stores writes some metadata into supported media files directly when possible, instead of in the project file. That means that markers are saved in the footage and wouldn’t normally translate in your proposed workflow.

I’d suggest you turn off “Write XMP ID to Files on import” in Preferences > Media, and I’d suggest you make all your footage locked (Mac OS) or read-only (Windows) before importing it to Premiere. That should force Premiere to save metadata in the project file, so you won’t have to continually exchange media files to keep markers up-to-date.

Ideally, you’ll keep at least the relative path to media from the project file the same; even better if you keep the absolute paths the same.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
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[Adi Kerr]

Excellent responses, thanks for all of your help guys.