Simple? Premiere timeline into Avid with linked media?

[Shane Ross]

[Larry Herbst] “export an AAF in Premiere, open it in Avid. Except no matter what settings I use for the “Import EDL” dialogue box,”

Export an AAF…and then import it as EDL? Those are different things. IMPORT AAF…and that may or may not work.

[Larry Herbst] “I’ve tried exporting XML’s from Premiere and importing them into Avid. Similar results.”

Avid doesn’t do XML.

[Larry Herbst] ”
There’s got to be a way that works…isn’t there?”

Export XML. Bring that into Resolve. Then “Deliver” out an Avid AAF. You might need to render the media out to Avid media in order to link properly.

[Larry Herbst] “But I find myself ready to tell the director sorry, I can’t give you the timeline, but if you want me to rebuild it by hand, give me a day and I’ll go shot by shot and eyeball it.”

Why are you doing this? Why not continue working in Premiere? Converting sequences from one NLE to another isn’t a simple process. It’s easier between FCX and PPro, as they both do XML, but even then, you need a third party app designed JUST for that process. There is no app for Premiere to Avid or other way. You’ll have to use workarounds and render out new media.

Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def

[Glenn Sakatch]

This topic comes up all the time. Why should/would it be easy?

You have two competing companies, using two competing products, why would 1 company make it easy to move their information to the other companies edit system?

What would be easy is if Ford and Chrysler would allow me to use parts back and forth from my Mustang to my Challenger without worry…why can’t I do that? Why do they make it so hard?

Glenn

[Larry Herbst]

Glenn: not trying to swap out parts. Not hoping to use Premiere drivers to keep Avid from crashing all the time. EDLs are a pretty standard output item going back decades. The inability to import or export standard files is baffling, similar to not being able to copy and paste text between applications.

Shane: Thanks for your helpful insights. “Avid doesn’t do XML” is telling. I’ve attempted to export an XML and an AAF to Resolve, got a timeline where the video showed up but the audio was all unlinked. Tried exporting that to Avid, and Avid gave me the same No List To Process and warning sign.

A trusted DIT suggested using Automatic Duck, but there doesn’t seem to be a plugin that allows for Premiere-Avid transfer. I could go Premiere to FCP7 via XML, and use the Automatic Duck plugin for FCP7 to export for Avid. Alas, by upgrading to High Sierra so that the Avid would be stable, FCP7 is now locked and won’t run.

It’s fascinating to have all these tools — latest versions of Premiere and Avid, and the entire internet with suggestions ranging back over a decade — and I still may have to reconstruct the timeline by eye/hand.

[Eli Brown]

Larry — how are you trying to import the AAF? It sounds like you are using “Import EDL” rather than just importing the AAF as if it were footage — AAF isn’t an EDL, but a media object. So, use the import dialog box (either through that newfangled browser window, or via “import clip” function in the menu) and select the AAF as if you were selecting a QT movie or a graphic to import into a bin. This will pull up all of your clips (offline) and the sequence into the bin. Open the sequence — it won’t open because of unsupported effects, most likely, but it will duplicate a version that should open (but might give you some weird error messages). You may still have to rebuild the sequence by hand, but you’ll have all the time code information at your fingertips for each clip, at least and they’ll be laid out in the timeline as they are in Premiere. Before you start doing it by hand, though, try to select the sequence and choose “batch import.” If the clips are readily available (say, on the same drive where they were when exported from Premiere and local to your system), it should relink to a fair number of them. Then, you can fill in the rest by hand. Hope that helps.

Eli

Burst Films LLC
also on twitter @postbrooklyn

[Alex Elkins]

I tried to do this not long ago and eventually gave up. The closest I got was using Shane’s suggestion of rendering out fresh clips from Resolve, but that’s obviously not ideal. I refuse to believe that it can’t be done but I wasn’t willing to put the time in to experiment endlessly in the end.

As your DIT friend says, Automatic Duck will work. I used Automatic Duck to move an FCP7 timeline over to Avid about a month ago and it worked pretty much perfectly after fiddling with a few options. If you can find a machine with a working copy of FCP I think this is probably your best option (or if not best then it’s at least the one requiring the least manual labour). The crucial step was to have already imported or linked the files inside Avid first before importing the Automatic Duck AAF.

Alex Elkins // Editor & Colourist
alexelkins.co.uk
@elkstwit