[Brook Hinton]

Great, thanks Nat! We’ll give it a whirl.

[Brook Hinton]

Thank you – we started to test this idea but got stuck at the move-or-delete prompt for the cache database, which led me to assume the database would still need rebuilding for each project, but this is encouraging news. Do you have them move or delete the existing database at the prompt when changing the location?

[Brook Hinton]

Thanks for the response, Gerard. They’re actually great with setting scratch disks and other prefs they control – it’s drilled into them on day one. We used preference manager with FCP – though my preference is always to make them learn to do these things the hard way so they undersand it, but then the tool was there for quick fixes.
But my understanding is that the premiere pro version of prefmgr does not open up the option of temporary swapping of the cache database when loading projects on different systems – THAT’s our problem. Students can come up to the podium system or go into an available edit suite, mount their drive on the new machine, set scratch and cache files location and all else needed to correct location on their external, but pp still rebuilds and reindexes – the cache database can’t be changed except to move or delete/create new, neither of which help even if they didn’t cause their own problems. . Using “store cache files with original media when possible” helps a little but is pretty hit or miss. It might not be a problem in a software-training class, but in semester-length classes and thesis situations where work is constantly being critiqued and worked on in multiple locations its a major problem – as it is for editors who aren’t tied to one machine and are working on large, complex projects.
I hope some option to use a project-based cache system is in the works. Meanwhile, holding out hope that someone here knows a workaround. Searching everywhere else has been fruitless.