[Warren Morningstar]

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH! That’s a lot of footage to convert. Well, lesson learned. Next time, we’ll agree on a format we both can use.

Thanks very much for the info. I would have thought that if Apple makes ProRes available to the Windows world, they would the other codecs as well.

[Warren Morningstar]

Thanks, Stuart. I needed something to help me wrap my head around this.

[Warren Morningstar]

Thanks, Vince.
I can find the Media Cache, but I think what is happening is that since I bounced the project files (including the preview files) to different hard drives, the data base no longer knows where to find the .cfa files. So if I’m understanding what happens under the hood in the Adobe products, I think what I’m looking for is a way to globally update the Media Cache for a project. I can do it clip by clip by either interpreting the footage or replacing the file with the same file, but that is a tedious process.

Again, thanks for the help.

[Warren Morningstar]

Thanks Paul, Brian, and Dave. Great suggestions all. Really appreciate the help.

[Warren Morningstar]

Thanks for the response. Was in Santa Monica last week for a shoot with Harrison Ford (name dropping shamelessly) last week. Back to messing with the box.
When you say a different drive for housekeeping, are you suggesting a third drive? I currently have the Adobe apps on the C drive with the OS, and a RAID 0 drive I use for project files, assets, and the housekeeping files.

[Warren Morningstar]

Nope – Raid 0 striped array internal. I’m wondering if it’s a media cache thing.

[Warren Morningstar]

Here is the workaround.
Rename the Elements project (*.prel) to a Premiere project (*.prproj)
Create a new project in CS4.
Import the renamed project file.

[Warren Morningstar]

let me be clear — I’m looking at small, highly compressed files to begin with – 360×180 pixels. and it only seems to work if you use a “same as source” setting in Encoder. Your results may very

[Warren Morningstar]

Matter of transfer time and practicallity. On a fast, stable connection, I’d be happy to do it that way. But most of the time, these guys will be in a hotel room. My experience has been that the sometimes crummy connections available will crash on multi-hour file uploads.

But I may have stumbled upon a solution. In CS4, you can import a flash file and edit it natively. I can take .flv files that have been compressed to their final size for display on our web site, and as long as I don’t render the timeline, I can re-export the .flv with edits and graphics added without a noticeable degradation. Render the timelime and it looks like what my dog threw up. I don’t pretend to understand how it works, but somehow it seems to.

Thanks to the suggestions from all.

[Warren Morningstar]

They’ll be doing both. Some videos I won’t need to touch; they’ll go straight to the web and I’ve already created a preset in Elements that will encode the video the way we need it. (I picked elements because we are PC based, I know Premiere well, and cost)

Many more, however, will require touch up on my part, which is why I think I need to have them encoded at a higher quality than what my final output will be. I’ve just loaded CS4 and found out it will handle .flv files natively. Is there a way to re-export a .flv file from Premiere without compressing it again? That would be the best solution; the reporters could send the file in the final resolution and then I could take to the web or tweak it first as needed.

Most of the time they will be in U.S. My past experience with wireless broadband on the cell system has been that, as miserable as hotel systems can sometimes be, they still have been faster for upload. But maybe the 3g networks have improved in the last six months.

Thanks for the suggestions.