Wish for PP2.5- 3.0 to handle larger # of clips in vain?

[Mike Velte]

I have been lurking with interest. My projects are routine event stuff and pictures to video so I dont have a huge number of assests for the events and dont use Premiere for pictures (clunky pan/scan). I use ProShow Producer for the pics and it can get very sluggish with 1,000 pics in the timeline, taking 5 minutes just to open.
I cant fathom 25,000 bits of media in a project window! I would crash with the overload long before Premiere.

https://www.video2stream.com

[Steven L. gotz]

OK, I will add my two cents. I have also been lurking with interest.

I don’t have any idea how 25,000 items can be in one project. I am totally perplexed by that. I read the posts and still don’t get it. With the exception of importing projects to get at one small part. I understand that and can only suggest that you copy the project file and start deleting sequences until you get to what you need, then delete any file not referenced. Then import it. This is certainly a problem.

If items are not in use, get rid of them. I understand the ease of importing entire directories as bins, but not if you only need a few items. I understand the idea of chice, I believe. I do understand the need to be able to easily access all 25,000 items or more. Don’t get me wrong. That is what the Adobe Bridge is for. Or, will be, when they get it right. You should not have a clip in the project until you are ready to use it. It is just too easy to add media as you require it.

I admit that I use two monitors. So I can work in one and use Bridge in another. Drag and drop and away we go. I can tell you that when I use the Project Manager to move a project to a backup disk, I seldom save more than 10 percent of the space. This is also because I scene detect my captures with a 3rd party application and only import the files I want into my various projects.

As for preview files, I regularly purge those as well, Since I often nest sequences and renders don’t stay with the nested sequence, I often delete all of my preview files and rebuild them as necessary. I hope this changes one day. We ought to be able to delete out-of-date renders with a simple menu selection. I often do this during lunch or dinner breaks. Or even overnight. If you are exporting files and bringing them back in to replace original material, then get rid of the original material. It’s easy. Sort by usage and select everything at once that you need to delete. It isn’t like you were deleting the actual file.

Keep in mind that a Premiere Pro project is not a real database of items. It is an XML file. Text. All of which has to be read into RAM. It is not a random access file as it probably should be.

I find that when I am working a large project for a corporate customer, I make several projects so I can handle scenes or sections of the video separately. I then export a DV AVI (or CFHD AVI lately) to use in the project I designate as “Main”. I get everything ready in various projects, combine exported files to organize a “almost final” project, and make sure it all looks the way I want it to look (think “proxy” files). Then, after that, I can import all of the projects, replace exported clips with nested sequences, and then just about all I have to do is export the final product.

With DV this was more important as I exported to MPEG2-DVD. With HDV, using the Cineform AVI, it is less necessary due to the wavelet technology that provides me with the quality I require without noticeable loss in only one generation. My exports to WMV-HD come out just fine if I just use the exported files.

When projects are kept lean, opening them takes seconds, not minutes. So switching back and forth has never caused me much heartache. Besides, while I have never lost a file to corruption, I figure my day will come. Better it should be once scene and not an entire presentation.

I also find that I use After Effects to do a lot of work with tiny little clips or stills. Using Dynamic Link to a comp with 1000 items is a lot easier than dealing with those same items in Premiere Pro.

Obviously there are problems with Premiere Pro. But working with the software instead of against it is something that might make your life less stressful.

Hmm. Maybe this was more like three cents.

Steven
https://www.stevengotz.com

[Marisu Fronc]

Steven-

All great and wonderful suggestions. Unfortunately when you’re sitting there with the director they want to see all their selected shots and swap them out as quickly as possible, I can’t tell them I only have half of their pull list because the software can’t handle it all, they don’t care, that’s my issue not their’s, and rightly so. As projects pass back and forth between various people (art, sound, editing, etc) they may well need something that I decided I didn’t and then they’re stuck. As it stands I can’t even begin to cull a project until the final voice over stage (which is often 4-6 months or longer after its inception) and can’t cut it to the bone until its heading out the door for closed captioning. Even then I need to save a copy of the project with everything in it for the next round of revision or adaptation.

If bridge worked it could certainly streamline the process some, but it doesn’t work dependably (for stills certainly, for video it bogs down and eventually hangs then crashes). Besides, I already use two monitors just for editing. The other problem is probably specific to the nature of what my company does, we need to be able to make constant revisions and updates to keep the product current or customized, paring a project down to just what you’re using means spending even more time trying to find and import all the stuff you eliminated when the next round begins. It is especially tedious when all the shots are batch digitized by ID number from a database (no long captures, every shot is separate from the get go) – once you enter a useful description for each shot on all the footage for a large project (which usually ends up as 1-3 hours of finished material) you don’t really want to have to re-enter it every time you re-import. I have found that rebuilding a legacy project from an EDL is probably the worst offender in terms of the number of clips it creates, those projects are ridiculous from inception with nothing available to cull, even if I wanted to.

We don’t nest sequences so the only new renders are the ones caused by new editing decisions – I’m busy all day every day, nights are for backups (because while I haven’t had problems with corruption I have lost disk drives so everything has to be backed up) Time used to render then re-render, etc. is seen as wasted time just as much as the hangs and restarts. Bottom line is that Premiere probably can’t handle what my company is asking me to do with it (which I suspected going in . . . but it wasn’t my decision). Perhaps they’ll decide to make a change, or I’ll continue to battle with it. In either case, my job is to deliver what I’m asked for, the way I’m asked to with the tools I’ve been given.

I do appreciate all your suggestions though, thanks for taking the time and thought to post them.

slainte,
marisu

[Richard Milner]

Steve,

Thanks for your input. Anybody peak at Memory Management in 3.0?

Richard

[Steven L. gotz]

The beta trials haven’t even started as far as I know. I expect the next version to come out in June with the Mac release. So nobody is going to see it until, well, really soon is my guess. But maybe not.

Steven
https://www.stevengotz.com

[Aanarav Sareen]

Marisu,

I hear ya! Although, I haven’t done anything close to 30,000 clips, I have indeed worked with over 600 hours of footage and to put it simply: it was a pain!

Please, send your requests to premierewishlist@adobe.com. The Adobe team DOES read any and all emails to that account. So, if you feel that something needs to be brought up, make many people send it 😉

Best,
Aanarav

Aanarav Sareen
premiere@asvideoproductions.com
https://www.asvideoproductions.com/techtalk

[Tim Kolb]

[Richard Milner] “The funny thing is that PP is very workable when the jobs aren’t so big, and with better asset management tools, I probably would be very content.”

Hi Richard,

Adobe is aware of the issue. getting the software to handle 30,000 assets may be a handful, but they do have this on the list of areas that need attention.

If the bridge were a bit more integrated perhaps…that might help to offload some of the burden. Vegas uses explorer as it’s browser…

I agree with Marisu’s assertion in this (or the other, similar thread) that it’s RAM release that is the issue…in my case i don’t really do 30,000 discrete asset edits, but I do elaborate ones with lots of layers and for a time, lots of dynamic links and photoshop docs and titles and keys, etc, etc…and once the project file grows, it does affect stability.

I think when those who are criticizing accessing those types of assets are talking, they aren’t really thinking about the fact that PPro handles just as many audio tracks as video tracks. The audio portion of a small independent feature with sound effects, music, etc, could easily run into thousands and thousands of clips…and they may be running 4-8 at a time, so the linear “30,000 assets at 5 seconds a piece would play back until the end of the world” argument does not hold up when you’re running multiple tracks of video and 8-12 simultaneously active tracks of audio with maybe 30+ tracks of audio available with specific purposes for dialogue, etc (a workflow that Adobe suggests by being able to use audio effects on a track basis…leaving tracks customized for specific roles like a certain actor’s voice, or something similar…), not to mention that a 5 second sound effect might be “in use” for a second or less, or blended with 5 other sounds to create a sound that the viewer perceives as one sound…

I can’t figure out why it should drive the project file to instability to have a link to a file in the bin…or 1000 links…it isn’t as if all the assets need to load into RAM.

We don’t all make similar projects, I’m not sure I understand why we can’t accept that we don’t all have the same workflow. Some of these workflows may appear extreme to some of us that haven’t experienced similar projects, but that doesn’t make them illegitimate…maybe challenging for the software to support…but not illegitimate.

TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,

Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net

[Richard Milner]

Tim,

Thanks for the response. It will be interesting to see when Adobe addresses some of the problems associated with these issues.

Richard

[Brian De herrera-schnering]

To clarify…

I counted all the clips in my project (excluding renders) and the clip count totals… 3182!
That’s it! Half of the clips came in via EDL and the other half were imported from other projects. Maybe a quarter of those clips are offline with no media on the drives.

Using the 5 second rule, that’s only a little over 4 hours (I have used 200G)!

I’m sure many more editors have numbers closer to these.

Brian

[Brian De herrera-schnering]

(I posted in the wrong spot before)

To clarify…

I counted all the clips in my project (excluding renders) and the clip count totals… 3182!
That’s it! Half of the clips came in via EDL and the other half were imported from other projects. Maybe a quarter of those clips are offline with no media on the drives.

Using the 5 second rule, that’s only a little over 4 hours (I have used 200G)!

I’m sure many more editors have numbers closer to these.

Brian