Quite recently we discovered Adobe Prelude as a useful tool for logging Mediaclips. Logging is an essential step in the creation of documentaries and extracting relevant quotes out of long interviews or dialogues.In Prelude we miss some basic features that are useful. Here is a short list of shortcomings:
- You cannot print the content of the folder with the clips, neither the list view nor the thumbnail view. This is essential (in Avid: simply print...bin). This feature is also badly missing in Premiere Pro, and a real pain in the neck for every professional director or editor. (Lots of complaint about this issue on the web).
- The marker comment function is unhandy, and the automatic activation of the source, timeline and comment windows is a disaster. Prelude should work the old-school way: define an in- and out point for a marker, type directly text into that marker and press return and space to proceed in the timeline. Implement the I and 0 key function and the JKL function into the timeline. Now, you have to leave the timeline, activate the marker comment windows etc.
- A serious problem we encountered in the latest update of version 9.0.0, both on Windows and Mac. Let me try to describe this and explain our workflow.
- There is no SAVE project function!!!! Just a SAVE AS…
After copying mediaclips on our hard drive we launch prelude and ingest these clips. The clips show up in Prelude and we start with logging them. Every clip gets one ore more markers with comments.
The second step is saving the project (we have to force this with SAVE AS… so we can give it a proper name).
Third step is sending (by mail) the project to our editor that already copied the same mediafiles on his computer. Now this went wrong. Markers and comments do not show up on his computer. A workaround would be: send your Prelude project to Premiere Pro and save that Premiere Pro project to the editor, like we do all the time with our productions. After a tedious search, we discovered that Prelude only works fine when the Preludeproject is delivered and stored with exactly the same mediafiles that were used during logging. It is impossible to link a Prelude project to mediafiles that are copied onto other disks or computers. What does this mean? Is Prelude during the process affecting your mediafiles? We don’t know, but it causes a lot of frustations. Markers do not show up and all the looging work seems to be for nothing...
To avoid that, do as follows:
Put all relevant files into a separate folder.
Create a dummy project in Prelude.
Ingest all mediafiles from the separate folder into your Prelude project.
Save this Prelude-project into the same folder as the mediafiles using SAVE AS….
So make sure that the mediafiles and your Prelude project are stored in the same folder. Copy that entire folder to an external disk or to the computer your editor is working with.
Now you can start logging. When finished, you can send the Prelude project to your editor. He or she has to put that project in the folder with the mediafiles and the dummy Prelude project. Now he can work and markers and comment will show up.
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