Extremely Large Premiere CS6 Project Files – Over 1 Gigabyte?!

[Walter Biscardi]

[Micha McLain] “The whole “indexing” files is still quite a mystery to me. No other edit platform does this, at least that is obvious. When I’m working on event type projects, I simply have to walk away for hours and sometimes even overnight before I can start an edit. That’s just simply not professional performance.”

You need to put the Peak Files in the same location as the Media to eliminate this need every time you switch machines. Default is to put them on your internal computer. Once you move the project, you’ll have to rebuild them.

This is one of the biggest things to get used to when coming over to Pr from any other NLE. We have 6 workstations networked together and have no issues moving projects around since we started doing this. Even with a portable drive that you move from machine to machine, you’ll have no issues so long as the files are there.

Preferences > Media > Save Media Cache Files next to originals when possible.

Check that so it’s on.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Editor, Colorist, Director, Writer, Consultant, Author, Chef.
HD Post and Production
Biscardi Creative Media

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[Micha Mclain]

Hey Walter. Thanks for the reply. Actually, I have tried that. When I’m working with a direct attached storage, like a firewire drive or such, it works. However, we almost never do that. We have a 24TB RAID connected to a mac pro as a server via ethernet (a common and cheaper alternative to a fiber SAN). However, when connected to it, here’s what happens:

Start project, ingest clips, indexing takes place, start editing, then randomly the indexing starts all over again. Interestingly enough, what this leads to is a TONS of files in my media folders. So much so that typical finder operation are slowed down trying to sort though the mess. However, I’ve noticed this only on long projects with lots of media. Typical 30 second spots don’t do this which makes it hard to understand what’s really going on.

The few times this hasn’t happened, it still bugs me to have all these files mixed up with our clips. I’ve also noticed that when you have the same clip in more than one project, even if they’re in short projects, each project makes its own conform files, yet again messing things up.

Furthermore, I’ve noticed HUGE problems with conform files with MXF files. I’m used to conforming these to self contained prores files with FCP. PP though has actually confused the video and audio from clips in big projects multiple times. What I mean is you lay down “clip 1” for video and audio, yet ‘clip 2’ audio files plays. Again, totally random and I can’t figure it out.

Basically, I’m not happy with my results with PP, but I’m torn because it’s affordable and has a great feature set.

Micha

[Alexandre Brandt]

Hey Walter, I read your post and this will be real helpful for the next projects to come…I lost so much time with freaking media cache files coping. Is there a way to copy the media cache database (which is located somewhere else since I started) to where the original media is ? Or maybe its an overnight operation, I select the option in preferences you said, I delete all the media cache in all folders and then quit the project and re open and it should create new media cache ?

motion pictures + storytelling = ?
-> FILMMAKING !

Producer | Filmmaker
http://www.alexandrebrandt.com

[Yuli Sees]

I had the same problem and it seems that it was due to a corrupted project file. Even when I was simply saving the project as a new one without changing anything, the file size was shifting from 20Mb to 700Mb, with no effects or nothing complicated (5 minutes video). I created a new project and imported the old project (or you can only import the sequence that you need) and that solved the issue. Massive relief – I hope it helps.

[Giuseppe Piva]

Hi David, I have the same problem.. Updated to 6.0.5 but it doesn’t open the project (9GB)… Can you help me please?

Giuseppe

[Jessica Bern]

I too have this problem. I need to get this out to my partner and she is having trouble opening it. It’s ENORMOUS. I’m new to Premiere and I just can’t believe that this is an issue. Can you tell me in more laymen’s terms, what do I do to fix this issue?

Or can you tell me how the heck I can put this inside FCPx, which shrinks these files down to nothing, which is clearly what everyone here needs?

Thanks