Premiere Production: Should all footage be placed in one or several projects?

Question

Hello!I'm an assistant editor at a production company, and we use Premiere Productions. We often have large amounts of footage shot over longer periods of time (documentary projects). Right now, we tend to create new projects for every new "load" of material, so that it's organised by date. This means that some of our Premiere Productions end up having a lot of material projects. I've also worked in companies that had only one project for all the material, and I wonder if that's better.We always organise our Productions so we have designated projects for material/footage and designated projects for editing. So material projects never contain any editing sequences. Is it an advantage that the footage is divided into several smaller projects (making them easier to read), or is it really a disadvantage, as Premiere constantly has to read material from several different projects rather than just one?Thanks in advance for any advice!

John V Knowles · Accepted Answer

It is absolutely vital in a Production to spread your media out over multiple projects. The entire point of a Production is to keep individual Project sizes small, and you do that by not overfilling them with too much media or too many sequences. That's what leads to Project bloat, long loading times and possible corruption -- all the issues with large individual Project files that are meant to be alleviated by a Production workflow. So split up your footage and assets into a logical hierarchy and avoid one massive media pool project.--

R Neil Haugen · Answer

It all depends on what you need, and how you need to organize things for quickest workflow. But remember, a major reason for using Productions is to keep those asset metadata references from getting so big that it slows the project, right?

I've seen Productions designed with the use of an upper folder for Media, with subfolders by day, and then projects per type of camera, per camera, or for the full day. I've seen with more subfolders and projects, and fewer.

Reality shows with up to 15 cameras shooting two-three 'events' at the same time may include subfolders for camera or event groups, with project or projects inside them.

As Productions is a huge help in my mostly one-person operation, I have subfolders per client, then per job per client, then for media and sequences. And I have a top folder for general assets. That way my entire b-roll library, sound files, graphics, template sequences and all, are available for any project for any client.

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