What’s the value of a database? or: How I’m learning to appreciate Avid again…

[Walter Biscardi]

[Russ Johnson] “On the other hand, Walter Biscotti’s account of trying to move a project from Media Composer to Resolve reveal’s the other side of the Avid database’s rigidity.”

While I appreciate an awesome Biscotti with my coffee, the correct spelling of my last name is Biscardi. Funny, usually people spell it Bacardi like the rum, which is awesome too!

These are excellent tests you’re running Premiere Pro as the media management is a true weakness of the application thus far. We are being very rigid in our media management to ensure that nothing gets lost and so far the biggest annoyance is the need to Conform / Generate Peak Files every time we open a project on a different machine. But as we are making sure we have all the media in place BEFORE it comes into the project, everything has been holding well.

But we do get weird Media Pending slates and I really want to see a Transcode / Consolidate function come to PPro on the next release.

Having both Avid and Premiere Pro in your toolbox is definitely a good mix for us. We’re loving the native workflow in CS6 while definitely appreciating the database structure in Avid. Now Avid has to truly break the links to the original media at the end of the transcode process so we can easily send to Resolve.

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

“This American Land” – our new PBS Series.

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[Russ Johnson]

LOL on the biscotti & coffee. Walter (Mr. Biscardi, that is) very sorry for mangling your name. :-{ I’ve appreciated your articles and posts for years, so least I can do is get your name right.

Your idea on getting the media in place and right before it comes into the project is a good tip.

I don’t have a clue about programming, so I’m hoping that putting solid media management into Premiere won’t entail an impossible task. The interface and features are lovely so far, just this hitch about links to media. I find it a little alarming that I can link any media I please to a clip and have all the parameters of it then change in the project window/bin with no effort and no complaints from the program. This ripples through to a sequence of course.

Avid’s database is the foundation of the program, but it seems that it stops or hinders some feature development. It’s a real process to modify the parameters of a clip in Media Composer, but in certain situations, that’s the rub.

[Russ Johnson]

Just a thought. Prelude allows one to add markers with comments and other metadata to clips that Adobe claims become part of the media files and stay with it. I wonder if adding some of this stuff would make the clip/media link any more reliable.

[Daniel Frome]

The funny part is that most editors become used to hacking Final Cut or premiers media management, specifically exactly like what you were doing. I much prefer the database system, and have only used premiere Pro CS 6 on one half hour show project to date. It’s a little scary.

[Gerry Miller]

Russ –

Could you give some more detail on your workflow, and the directory paths of the projects / media files involved? It’s difficult to determine exactly what happend otherwise, although it certainly sounds like a bug.

Thanks – Gerry

[Mike Molenda]

I’m going to second Walter on getting your footage named and organized before it comes in to the project. One of my biggest pet peeves is when I get a project file and every clip is named 00000.THIS and 00001.THAT, and the sequence is called Sequence1 or New Sequence or whatever. This introduces just as much room for human error as it does the potential for software that organizes media by file path to screw up.

One of the things I like to do when I transcode to QuickTime is to use Bridge to batch rename the MOV files – including things like date, card #, and scene/shot/take directly in the file name, so that every name is absolutely unique. And I make sure to write the original file name into the metadata, just in case I have to go back to the original recorded media for some reason.

I used to do this in FCP Log & Transfer, as well. I’m not in front of my CS6 machine at the moment; does Prelude allow you to rename files as you ingest? If not, that sounds like a pretty darn good feature request to me.

Can you give us some more information on what happened with the original mis-link? Like what is the proper file path vs. the one Premiere pointed to? This sounds like it could be a Prelude issue as much as a Premiere issue. For instance, maybe something got lost in translation from the Prelude project to Premiere.

I have issues with Premiere’s bin management (bringing in duplicate master clips with XMLs, clips in a sequence being directly dependent on clips in the bins, etc), but I’ve never had a file relink improperly without doing something crazy like screwing with the project’s folder structure. So I’m curious to know what might be going on here…

[Russ Johnson]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the replies. Mike you make some really good points that I couldn’t agree on more about file names (see below), etc. I’ll try out your suggestions and also look into Bridge, but it does sound similar to Prelude (which I’ve used only once).

In the original scenario I ingested/transcoded files in Prelude from AVCHD files (camera original file structure archived on a Raid 1) to ProRes 422; these went to file folders with unique names based on time of day and date generated by Prelude in a project folder on the root directory of a media drive. I didn’t add any metadata to the media in Prelude. Next in Prelude, I selected: File> Send to Premiere and in Premiere put the clips into various bins.

Next morning I started the project and noticed that one of the clips was bringing up the wrong media. The clips did have the same name, that is: 00001.mov, but the media was in two different folders (differently named) and in fact, two different projects. I made the clip off line and then linked it to the correct media and I haven’t had this happen since.

However, just as a test, I found that I could take any clip in this project offline and then relink it to any media I chose, including media files on different disks, with different names, durations, frame rates, codecs, time code, etc. Once the clip is linked to the wrong media in Premiere, all the clip’s parameters change including duration and timecode, but the clip retains it’s original name. Nothing seems to really matter.

This is, as Daniel says, “a little scary.” Actually, I find it really scary. Just to make sure this wasn’t part of some kind of ‘Lost Weekend’ on my part, I just now took a DVCProHD clip off line and linked it to a random AVCHD file with a different name and frame rate. DVCProHD is a pretty robust format/codec with solid metadata and timecode. I then took it back to the original/correct media. Absolutely no warning from Premiere.

Would someone else try some of this? This is my first real project on Premiere and I’d like to know this isn’t just some dumb thing I’m doing.

[Daniel Frome]

The key is to rename all your media beforehand. Attach the reel name to it or something. I’m sure these are obvious workarounds you’ve already thought about, but that’s about the only rock solid solution.

I suppose you can tell by my replies that I use Avid wherever possible.

[Russ Johnson]

I’m well acquainted with Avid, used MC many times and owned a MCXpress in the late 90s and I do have a real appreciation for the reliability of the underlying foundation of the software. I’m not as keen on their interface these days, especially if I’m doing a lot of graphics, effects, and round tripping to After Effects.

What really bugs me about what’s happening with Premiere, is that metadata doesn’t seem to matter, so I don’t think adding reel numbers is going to make a difference, although I might try it.

Avid is Gold as far as media management. I have used FCP for over a decade and loved it and never had problems like this. If I tried moving some media offline and then link the clip to the wrong media file, I know for a fact that it wouldn’t allow it.