Upgrade/Extend: Relink media files 2.0

@NwProPr Thanks for the additional explanation. Based on my understanding of your workflow, I think the best way is to just give the external editor an entire copy of the production (not necessarily all the media). The flow would look something like this:

1. Internal editor creates a new project for the external editor, let's call it "External.prproj" and copies in whatever sequence they need to be working from. The only thing in this project is the sequence, which references source clips in other projects

2. Send the external editor the copy of the production and any necessary media files

3. The external editor opens the production and opens External.prproj and does their work. The key here is they don't change anything in any other project in the production. They can open it if they need to find a different clip, etc, but they only modify External.prproj

4. When the external editor is finished, they send you back only "External.prproj", not the whole production, since only External.prproj has changed

5. The internal editor drops the External.prproj into the production folder (in the Finder) and let it replace the original copy of it

All the links will work, and you'll have the updated work from the external editor.

Yes, as far as Premiere is concerned we're working on the same system.

And the size of work you're doing, maybe David Helmly should be consulted. He seems to run much of their broadcast/Hollywood workflow interactions with clients.

@dhelmly 

Neil

Hi @R Neil Haugen,

I'm very strict regarding workflows when it comes to Production projects being very 'bound' to one shared storage device. So far, within our production house, I've been anti extracting sequences and data for editors to work externally.

As mentioned a few times, I'm very fond of keeping all links and connections intact to prevent anything from going wrong and also to keep things organized and linked in a clean way. For example, whenever an episode is done in post and we're ready to send it off to a grading house or audio technician, it's just nice to be able to 'reveal' every single clip within the right project if needed.

For example, a few months ago we had a very dramatic workflow regarding a documentary which was done in Avid Media Composer, which we then had to transfer into Premiere Productions to finalize (including graphics, animations etc.). Long story short: we had to basically replace every single clip on the timeline manually (Match Framing wasn't an option in terms of the clips being Avid proxies, not carrying the right time code data etc.).

Within a fully build Production project, the internal linking 'infrastructure' would prevent something like that if you work in a consistent way. Referring back to my question on this page, in such a situation (where all links between the clips on a timeline to the exact original source clips in a different project are lost) it would be nice to have a separate option to tell Premiere: "In Project X there used to be a file called A001.MXF. For some reason that file disappeared and so I had to replace it with the exact same file from the same spot on the storage device. Use that file instead, since it's the exact same file".

But I'm repeating myself again 😉 I think my overall question is clear. I'm still hoping to run a test today.

@R Neil Haugen, do you mean that both your apps function in a normal way as if you're both in the same room on the same server? From a technical point of view that sounds great. Cost wise it sounds expensive (we're talking about an average of 20-30 TB of data, including proxies, transcodes etc.).

But in a way that would mean that Production would be able to supply a workflow where editors can work separated from each other. But then again, I wouldn't want to lean on that within our own projects. In this case we had an extreme situation where there was no other way due to a tight schedule.

I'm awaiting another reply from Matt also.

I will simply note that Productions was designed to have multiple editors working in the same Production at the same time. There are procedures built in for locking sequences currently in use.

My partner is in South Africa, I'm in Oregon USA, our media/projects are on an Amazon S3 server in London, and we use LucidLink as the "file server". And he's ALL Mac, we're all PC.

Our local Premiere and AfterEffects and Audition have no clue the media and projects aren't on a local drive.

Neil

Hi @mattchristensen ,

Thank you for taking the time to read my posts and reply.

To keep my explaining as simple as possible, I tried to stay away from all sorts of other methods I tried as well. English not being my native language was a task on its own 😉

This whole post isn’t necessarily linked to a specific current situation. It really is something I’ve tried to look into from time to time, to see if newer updates might’ve solved the ‘issue’ (might not be a literal issue, as it could be too specific for the system to handle).

1. I did try and use the Reassociate Source Clips option, but somehow it didn’t always do the trick. In all honesty I haven’t tried it in the last few weeks, so I will definitely give it a try later today (building a test Production, recreating the situation of extracting/migrating a project (including sequence/data) to another set and have it imported back into the original Production.

2. I’ve tried (and thought of) a 1000 things regarding to this subject, except for the ‘option’ (?) to share a copy of the entire Productions project.

“Why not just give the external editor a full copy of the Production?”

We have multiple editors working within our Production projects. To give a specific example:

Step 1: We import footage of shooting days and footage of interviews

Step 2: Editor 1 is editing this footage on a sequence

Step 3: Editor 2 comes in and likes to make selections from the interviews

So, whenever I would extract/migrate the interview data, I would create a new project and import all interview media and a single sequence into this project. This project file (+ media on a drive using the same folder structure) is then send off to an external editor.

This is why, so far, we’ve only been doing this when we would know for certain that editor 1 wouldn’t be working with the interview media and/or sequences until everything would be imported back after editor 2 would finish.

Step 4: This is where that issue occurs from my previous post: You can’t simply imported the ‘migrate’ sequence back into Production and drag the sequence from editor 2 into the original Production and expect it to fully work again (in other words: that new sequence won’t be able to ‘reveal’ the clips on the sequence ‘in’ the original ‘project’ (where the original media files are still located; or else previous edited sequences by editor 1 might break).

Why not just give the external editor a full copy? To be honest: I’ve never thought that could be an option. In a way it makes sense, because you would also send him the ‘system files’, such as the prodset file.

Wouldn’t it be an issue to do so while in the original Production there are other editors working as well?

3. I might have explained myself to the point where things got confusing:

“If at any point you are re-importing new copies of the clip, Reassociate may not work.”

I’m not sure if this is what you mean, but there are never new copies of the ‘physical’ media files. At any point when I’m trying to re-import or reconnect media files, it’s always the same files that were there on our storage device from the beginning.

So to refer back to the interview sequence:

When I try to import the sequence back into our own Production, it will ‘physically’ know where the media files are (reveal in project — on our storage device), but Reveal in Project has now switched to the migrate sequence. Which makes sense, because the editor has dragged the clips from within that same migration project on the sequence.

So it’s more a matter of: What if we receive back this migration project, import it into our Production and decide to drag the interview sequence into our own interview project… how do I tell Premiere that there is no migration project left, and that it has to make new connections for the clips on the sequence back to the original clips in our own media files project… I still have to see if the Reassociate Source Clips might work in this case.

What I meant with re-importing media files into a media files project from which has been edited before (in other words: those media files were dragged onto multiple sequences in other projects already):

Somehow, we had a situation where inside a media files project, the 20 or so files that were imported before were largely gone (too complex to explain). Those files themselves weren’t altered, except for the fact they had proxies attached to them.

So, as it turns out, you can’t simply recreate the situation. You can’t re-import those missing media files from the same storage device and then re-attach the proxies. Because the sequence in another project won’t recognize those media files as the (as you call them) ‘exact original source clips’.

I guess that wouldn’t be an option to look into for Adobe? Instead of forcing to always look back at the ‘exact original source clip’ to now be able to ‘relink’ that connection?

Again, the ‘physical’ link remains, so you can continue editing and make your exports, but the internal Productions way of linking remains broken.

I will run a few tests later today and head back when I have some results.

Thanks again a 1000 times 🙂

@NwProPr Thanks for your detailed post, I'm glad you've been having a good time with Productions overall. The workflow you describe should be possible, but as always with these things it's tough to translate all these ideas to written text so forgive me for a couple questions here:

1. There is a function for re-connecting the timeline to source project link: Edit > Reassociate Source Clips. When working in a Production, you can select one or many clips in a sequence and use Reassociate Source Clips to point to the project that now contains those clips, and the link will be re-made for any matching clips found in that project.
2. For your workflow as I understand it, why not just give the external editor a full copy of the Production? I think the source of the friction you're experiencing comes from trying to manipulate the clips & sequence in order to get them out and back in. You can make a copy of the production folder, zip it up, and send it to the editor. They can then send you back only the project with the sequence they edited, and you drop it right back in your Production folder (or use Add Project to Production) and everything works. If for some reason you don't want them seeing other parts of the Production, you could even delete those projects out of the copy of the Production if you like, before you send the folder.
3. If at any point you are re-importing new copies of the clip, Reassociate may not work. It's designed to work with the exact original source clips, just moved to a different project in the production. If some properties of the clip differ like some metadata, or markers, etc, it will cause Reassociate to see them as different and thus not reassociate them.

I hope that helps!

Matt

Hi @Kevin-Monahan,

I've been using the apps from Adobe for 25 years now, so with the introduction of Productions (which is absolutely perfect in any way), I've fully commited to Productions workflows only, trying to -sort of- master the most beneficial ways of applying it to different types of productions. Which has been quite a journey, as it works better on one project, where for others it can actually slow down the entire process. But I'm not complaining 😉

Most of my information and workflow setups are based on documentation by Adobe itself (such as the link you're referring to) and 'third party' resources.

From that perspective I have absolutely no issues at all. I think what I would love for Productions to do is more complicated than you would assume. In the end it's a network of a bunch of separate projects, which -without Productions- aren't connected.

I gave an example earlier of the color space upgrades that Premiere has been working over the last... 18(?) months. At first, when you had two projects, and one project contained the footage, where the other one housed the sequence, the sequence wasn't connected to the footage. So the interpret footage workaround to undo the 'coloring' of Premiere when you were using log footage, such as S-Gamut-3 Cine, didn't work when those two elements were separated. You really had to put both the sequence and the footage in one project, apply the interpret footage, and from there you could move the sequence ot another project. But, again... the connection from that point would be broken. So undoing the color space changes on the media files wouldn't have any effect on the sequence whatsoever.

I was very happy to see that Adobe was able to update that specific workflow, because since last summer, the connection between the sequence and the media files (no matter if separated) would remain.

So from that idea, you would think that it actually is possible to keep some sort of a real time connection running between projects within Productions. In other words: that it would be possible to 'manage' that specific connection. To actually be able and 'refer' the clips on your sequence inside Project 2 to just Project 1 (where you might have had to replace the media files) instead of it sticking to the the media clips that were used when you dragged them on the timeline.

I forgot to add in my previous post: I now have several 'media' projects (contain dailies), which now hold two copies of all the files.
Copy 1: because these files were already used on sequences in -for example- Project 10 and 11
Copy 2: because when trying to migrating the sequence from an external editor back into our main Production project, the sequence is only fully corresponding with the footage that was imported in the migrated project (so we had to replace those specific copies of all the media besides copy 1 -to keep things organized-

LOVE your posts! You've put wondrous thoughts and details there.

@Kevin-Monahan @mattchristensen  ... could you get this passed on to the right team please?

Neil

Hi @NwProPr,

The product team should respond to any feature requests. @mattchristensen1 might be able to shed some light on this issue. For now, I can recommend the long form and episodic best practices guide: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/long-form-episodic-best-practices.html

I hope it helps.

Thanks,
Kevin

Thanks for that info, very informative.

If you have a contact at Adobe from a previous issue, yes, contact that person. Here we can make sure @Kevin-Monahan knows about it, and @R Neil Haugen has been using Productions for some time now.