Reconnecting Media… A lot of it. Mass linking possible?

[Paul Jay]

A Pro, needs professional tools. Lol.
Just quoting adobe!!
Premiere is great but far from finished.

[Tom Daigon]

You comment reflects the limits of your experience.

One of the many requirements of a good editor is organization. That means files are organized into a variety of folders for quick reference and access during the creative process. Dumping all the files into one folder is a sure sign your an amateur or someone who hasnt had to work in a professional environment where other editors need to work on the same project you are or are sent out for color correction,etc.

I have many folders (clips (folder by scene or day of shoot) / audio/b roll/graphics/ animation / Mocha tracking / After effects / )that are all under one Project folder, and when this was handed off to another facility to complete the projects, Premiere Pro couldn’t reconnect media to save its life. It needed to be guided to each folder when it came across a new clip it couldnt reference. FCP would have scanned and reconnected in about 20 seconds.

It sounds like working on one of your projects by another editor would leave a lot to be desired 😀

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digita / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[Alex Udell]

Hi Guys….

It’s not that Ppro doesn’t have relink….

PPro generally uses the respective OS’s search tools for finding media.

Preemptively in workflow, this is why I suggest that people don’t change the name of clips in project panel and use description or some other metadata flagging for useful editor naming.

So when this happens you can:

1) Choose to enter the project with all media offline
2) Select the name of a clip in the project panel
3) Copy (cntrl or cmd C) that name to the clip board
4) right click the clip and choose “relink”
5) then using “find” button on the windows side or the search tool (magnify glass field, if you’ve enabled in the mac os Prefs) on the mac you can paste the name of the clip in and use the search results to relink the media.
6) make sure you are relinking to live media and not the archive paths (based on 2 drive scenario as described in this query)
7) As assets are successfully linked, paths to the media are added as valid and any other project media found in those paths will be linked automatically. so you shouldn’t have to do every clip one at a time.

Obviously, the more scattered your media, the more paths you’ll have to validate. You also have to be careful of naming collisions. so initially, where you have a choice, it’s a good idea to have a naming convention that helps you identify clips uniquely. I say where you have a choice because a lit of file based media doesn’t give you that option.

Hope that helps….

Alex

[Tom Daigon]

Alex, nice work around until Adobe fixes this semi-functional process.
Working on your own small projects is no problem. Working on large shared projects is a nightmare. 😀

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digita / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[Alex Udell]

Tom,

believe it or not,

I actually developed that in a workgroup environment. 🙂

Alex

[Tom Daigon]

I believe it. In that work situation, necessity is the mother of invention. Maybe Adobe will get so many complaints they will fix this vestigial stumbling block. 😀

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digita / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

Tom, I have a suggestion.
I believe the problem is that although the folder structure on the two drives is the same, PP has written something into the metadata of the files on HD1 and since it doesn’t find that on HD2 it’s asking for every file one at a time. Silly? yes, but I think I have a work around:

With the project open and everything linked to HD1, select all your media and “make offline”

then Save As… and copy that project file to your computer. (that way the project file on the main computer wont be saved with everything off line… a nice present for the next editor who opens it.)

Then open the project on your computer, and select all the media and select “link Media….”

PP should find everything in one go.

I don’t know why, but if you send everything offline manually, PP will find all the files automatically when normally it would ask about every file. I’m guessing it’s cause it isn’t looking for the ID in the metadata.

I’ve used this method to reconnect to proxies and color corrected stuff that isn’t even the original file formant. As long as they’re all the same name and in the same place, it’ll find them all.

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

An additional idea, which I haven’t tried, is:

When PP opens the project and asks you to relink to the missing footage, instead of relinking anything, click “Offline All” and then once the project opens select everything and “Link Media…”.

EDIT: I tested this, it doesn’t work.

The only way I can make everything relink at once is by selecting everything in the project panel and right click. “Make Offline”, then “Link Media”

This does seem like a silly little problem, but at least PP is capable of Mass relinking everything. If that feature was actually truly absent that would be bad.

[Tom Daigon]

I appreciate your creativity John. The one thing that might screw up your first solution is that…

1. Editor 1 works on his system (HD1)

2. Editor 1 copies project from HD1 to a portable HD2 which immediately screws things up.

3. Editor 2 get HD2 (messed up) and copies project to HD 3

The project is now 2 hard drives away from the original with no helpful links coming from HD2 which was used just to transport it.

I think it really needs to be fixed, for professional facilities not to cringe at the though of sharing projects with systems external to theirs.

Tom Daigon
Avid DS / PrP / After Effects Editor
http://www.hdshotsandcuts.com
Mac Pro 3,1
8 core
10.6.8
Nvidia Quadro 4000
24 gigs ram
Maxx Digita / Areca 8tb. raid
Kona 3

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

Can you get editor 1 to Offline everything, save as, and email you the project flie?