Workflow for Archiving Project Media
Hi everyone,
I’ve been getting into much larger projects than I’m used to and I’m hoping to get some workflow advice from people who have more experience with post-production pipelines than I do. Sorry this is kinda long, I just have a lot of specifics that complicates things for me.
Here’s my situation.
My camera records .MOV files using H.264. Because my editing style involves a lot of animation, color work, and round-tripping between Premiere Pro and After Effects, I’ve been transcoding all my footage in Mezzanine files before editing.
Right now my workflow looks like this:
- Record footage on camera (H.264 .MOV).
- Before importing into Premiere, I transcode everything in Adobe Media Encoder into mezzanine ProRes 422 files.
- >Important: I edit using those ProRes files and export clips to After Effects when needed and then back into premier as linked AE files.
- Everything works well performance-wise and quality-wise, so I’m happy with editing in that format.
The problem comes after the project is finished. I end up with both the original camera files and the ProRes transcodes I edited with, and keeping both takes up a lot of space. It feels wasteful to keep the ProRes files long-term.
My goal for archiving would ideally be:
• keep only the original camera files
• trim them down so they include only the portions actually used in the edit (plus handles)
• delete the large ProRes working files
If I ever needed to reopen the project and do more work later, my thinking is I could simply re-transcode the OCF back into ProRes and essentially recreate the same editing environment again. That’s hopefully something I rarely need to do, but it's happened so I’d like to preserve the ability.
The complication is that some clips exist in both in Premiere and in After Effects. I usually render sections out of my premier timeline and bring it into after effects and link that back.
Kind of a Mess! I know there are tools to help with this. Any specific thoughts?
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