Question for the Pro’s out there

[Troy Murison]

Sorry to say, but welcome to Premiere ‘Pro’. EDL and other metadata support for working with other manufacturers is not great. Having said that, try these things which may or may not work:

In FCP, duplicate your final sequence and delete all the audio from the new sequence. Make sure all your video is on one track or export multiple lists for multiple tracks if needed. I always like to make sure the sequence TC is NDF (I don’t work in TV much so that always works for me and avoids any confusion, but that’s up to you) and that the program starts on 1:00:00:00 even. Export a CMX 3600 list from FCP. Disable all the audio tracks (‘none’ check boxes) in the edl export dialog. Also disable all comments, clip names, notes, etc, etc. Enable the ‘generic’ option (for b-reels) and make sure the sort order is in C (master) mode. Name the list with no more than six letters or numbers and avoid spaces. This goes for the sequence name too as that’s what’s used in the ‘header’ of the edl. Import that into PPro and see if it works. More than likely, the timeline will start at 59:56:17-ish (don’t remember exactly off top of my head) or some such TC because PPro assumes DFTC lists (maybe CS3 doesn’t, not sure). Just reset that and you’re off. If that doesn’t work, go back and try stripping off all your effects and transitions from the clips in the FCP timeline and try re-exporting as above. FCP usually will put out a good list, but it’s not perfect either. If that still doesn’t work, there may be some other weirdness going on including the possibility you have mixed TC ‘dropness’ in your sequence which, in any other system is fine and works as expected, but in PPro for some reason still occasionally causes issues in my experience.

I should mention too that PPro’s project settings must match the frame rate of the sequence in FCP (ie: 29.97 sequence in FCP requires 29.97 project in PPro). Otherwise, you’ll have a mess on your hands. If you’re coming from a FCP perspective, you can’t have different frame rate sequences in the same project in PPro as you can in FCP. You must pre-determine and be stuck with a frame rate upon creating your project. Just a heads-up. And, stating the obvious, the FCP project’s metadata is only as good as the logging/capturing was (ie: bad reel numbers, broken code, etc, etc.) so hopefully that’s all good too. Once you’re in PPro, you’ll be in good, if you’re coming from FCP it’ll seem real familiar and you’ll be sailing.

Good luck,

-Troy Murison
Seattle, WA