Premiere Pro File Setup for Export to AME Watch Folder

[dshealy21]

Hi,

We are trying to utilize a separate PC to render out our Premiere Pro and After Effects projects, but are confused as to how we need our projects to be oriented as well as how they need to be copied into the watch folder for them to encode properly. While there is documentation on how to do it for After Effects, I haven't seen anything regarding Premiere. Are you suppose to follow a similar process in collecting the footage and having it linked to the project? I'm looking for a step-by-step way as to how the process needs to be worked thru. Also, if all of the footage files are on the same shared networked storage as the media encoder watch folder, do we still have to collect the footage during the process?

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

[ivansull]

Hi, here's a link about using watch folders: How to encode video or audio in Adobe Media Encoder

Also, this video explains how to use Premiere & After Effects project with watch folders: Create a watch folder |

For Premiere projects, sequences must be in the top root-level of your Project folder; sequences in sub-folders will not be processed.  You can also use aliases/shortcuts to your Premiere or After Effects projects in watch folders if you don't want to copy over the project itself.

[dshealy21]

This helps, however, I am running into the issue of all of my video files are missing whenever media encoder goes to render out the project. All of the files are on the same network storage as the media encoder watch folders though. Does the footage need to be nested in a folder with the project?

[Joost van der Hoeven]

You will need to have the file paths of both machines to be exactly the same relative to the Premiere Pro project.

[dshealy21]

I'm guessing this isn't going to really work between Mac and PC then because of how the two OS's treat server file paths?

[Animotion.nl]

That indeed is a tricky one. I haven't tried that yet. I do have great experience with a Mac setup using Dropbox. Are you editing on Mac and rendering on PC?

What happens if you open the project on the render machine in Pr? Are all files there? You could set up a script that just opens and saves a project on the server to a render folder?

[dshealy21]

Yeah we are editing on Mac and rendering out to one of our render farm blades that runs windows. My next plan was to try and open one of the projects on the blade and see what happens.