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mediafred
Participant
September 5, 2012
Question

Importing folders with subfolders does not work in CS6?

  • September 5, 2012
  • 6 replies
  • 22507 views

I've been working with Final Cut Pro for years, and at the beginning of each project I would always set up a project folder on my drive with subfolders for my audio, images, PSD (a subfolder of images), etc. I would then drag all of my content into the folders and subfolders and then drag the main folder into the Browser of Final Cut and it would import it with the same structure using bins. I just tried this in CS6 and it imported the main folder as a bin, though it dumped the content of the subfolders inside the main folder/bin. So I would now have to recreate the folder/bin structure that I setup in my initial project folder on my drive if I wanted everything to be organized the same way.

I always thought of this as a good workflow for starting and working on a project. Is there anyway to import a folder with lots of other folders into CS6 and have it keep that structure after import?

Thanks.

      This topic has been closed for replies.

      6 replies

      AndrewTheGreat
      AndrewTheGreat
      Known Participant
      March 9, 2023

      Premiere 2023 - importing files in subfolders still does not work! What - THE - HELL!? Any - JUST ANY - video editing software can do this. I drag and drop a folder with subfolders in it with files and get a forder with empty subfolders. Is that OK?

      Michael L at UNCP
      Michael L at UNCP
      Inspiring
      January 7, 2021

      2021 and this is still a problem, a small one, but frustrating.

      When media are organized on the hard drive into folders with subfolders, the subfolders are not respected by Premiere on import, regardless of import method. I've tried Import, Media Browser, and drag and drop from Finder. No matter which method is used, when I bring a folder containing subfolders into the Project Pannel, all media in the subfolders is placed into one Bin with the name from the top level folder on the hard drive, without subfolders.

      A simplified example, If I have a folder structure like this,

      PHOTOS

          PORTRAITS

              Jamie.jpg

          CANDIDS

              Classroom.jpg

       

      and I bring PHOTOS into Premiere, what results is a Bin with two photos...

      PHOTOS

          Jamie.jpg

          Classroom.jpg

         

      It is frustrating to have to duplicate organization time, manually recreating a Bin structure to match a folder structure.

       

      Premiere 14.5.0

      OSX 10.14.6

        J
        Juhn5DF4
        Participant
        March 17, 2021

        This happens, when there is only one item in the subfolder.

        When there are 2 or more items it will preserve the folder structure.

        I am still looking for a way to preserve folders with only one item in it...

        any hints?

        R
        rachell63192363
        Participant
        March 19, 2016

        Just noting that this is so explicitly dumb that I cannot believe it's 2016 and I have to try to get into folders I created for drives in 2008. Switching from FCP for a project in Premiere Pro better have some advantages when this is all done. This file structure situation is not cool at all.

          P
          paulejonesy
          Known Participant
          November 28, 2013

          If you still have FCP7, import the files (with folder structure) into a clean project, export an XML of the project and import into PPro. Much quicker than a slow AE import if you have a lot of camera rushes.

          P.x

          Ann Bens
          Community Expert
          Ann BensCommunity Expert
          Community Expert
          September 5, 2012

          There is a workaround (if you have AE) to get the folder structure in Premiere.

          Import all folder/subfolder etc into After Effects

          Select all, copy and paste into Premiere.

          http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

            M
            mediafredAuthor
            Participant
            September 5, 2012

            I'm just switching to Premiere and like everything so far except this. I can't believe this is not part of PP. I always work off of an external drive in Final Cut Pro and setup my project folder with all of my media before importing it.

            1. What is the Premiere Pro way of setting up a project folder? Do you just dump a bunch of files into a folder on a drive and start importing them and then sort them into bins once in Premiere?

            2. After you already started working on a project and you need to bring in new media, do you copy those new media files to your main project folder, and from there import them into Premiere? Or is there a better way to do this?

            Thanks.

            jstrawn
            Community Manager
            jstrawnCommunity Manager
            Community Manager
            September 5, 2012

            1. There is no absolute workflow or this. I create bins names in a way that is logical for that prject 'Video, Audio, Graphics... etc) and then import into those bins. or, if you name the media folders that way and import the folders it will inherit the correct name. It just wont get all of it's sub folders and keep the media organized within them.

            2. I open the bin which corresponds to the new media I want and then import directly into it. Or you could just drag it in after the import. Either way, there is some organizational work to do when you start and as long as you go along. But there would also be some work at thr OS level if even if we did import all subfolders as they live on the OS.

              jstrawn
              Community Manager
              jstrawnCommunity Manager
              Community Manager
              September 5, 2012

              There is no way to 'automatically import folder structure with media' as you request. But I agree it would be a good workflow to start with and would save some work for people like us who like to arrange all their assets on the os before importing them int Prpro. Please submit a feature request for this.

              B
              bernk
              Participant
              December 21, 2012

              There is a way to import organized media!

              1. In Media Browser switch to directory view using the second icon to the left of the scale slider at the bottom of the window
              2. Navigate to the folder containing all of your orgaized media, and open it
              3. Select all of your media folders with cmd-a (ctrl-a on Windows)
              4. Drag and hover the folders over the Project tab until it becomes visible, and drop them into your project

              Hope that helps someone.

                M
                makilex
                Participant
                January 16, 2013

                You can also drag from a Finder window (on the Mac) but it can only import one level of folders, so make sure you re-create the rest of your folder structure as bins first.

                I had to import 5 days of 4-track audio recordings and it just kept bundling the tracks from the same day in a single folder, which was too bad, since they were all named 1.wav, 2.wav etc.

                So I made bins for the days and just dragged all the file folders from each day into the day bins from the Finder window. Presto!

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