Major headache dealing between two platforms

[Daniel30810352o94k]

Hi,

I have a media mangement issue between MC and PP.  I will reproduce this post on the Adobe forum, and hopefully between the two answers can figure this out.

It's a long one.

I cut on Avid and my filmmaking colleague cuts on PP, and neither of us is going to swap.  So we need a way to exchange workflows.

On a previous project I linked to a load of media, created a timeline in MC, then exported to an aaf file, and my colleague had no issues bringing all into PP.  Then, when he did some editing alterations and sent me his aaf file, this was the beginning of our issues.  Originally, when linking in MC the link symbol shows up in the appropriate footage bin.  But after bringing in the PP aaf file, new footage symbols were created and yet the symbol then showed an imported symbol (NOTE: the terminology between linking and importing is different for Avid than it is for other NLEs) of which, of course, there were none (no importations/transcodings were ever created, only links) and therefore the required media was offline.  I tried pointing/relinking Avid to the original media, but it simply would not perform the operation.

I then checked in with the Avid forum, and they said something to the effect that PP has no issue linking to the right media anywhere, whereas Avid likes to place imports in a specific place, and this can cause headaches.

So now, on a new project, I needed to create proxies, and instead of doing this in Adobe Encoder, I did the transcoding in MC, so that Avid could place these newly-created files where it likes, and then I could collate all these, and with a new aaf file, hand over all to my colleague. But he now says that PP is saying something like "Illegal Files", and this may or may not have something to do with the fact that Avid creates a separate file each for video and audio.  Also, PP does not seem to recognise the original file names (although I would have thought that the metadata within Avid, and therefore transferred to the aaf files, would match up with the original camera files when all is pulled into PP).  

What to do?  And if the solution involves brand new proxy creation, how on earth do I point all this to the timelines already created using the MC-created proxies/transcodings (and how this will eventually point back to the original footage?

Thank you,

DC 

[R Neil Haugen]

Cross NLE workflows are a right pain ... mostly. And good luck with working like that "collaboratively" ... as the two apps have such different ways to indicate everything from track names to time ramps/changes that even simply things can be hard to recreate.

I know some doing the transfer between Pr and Resolve do an EDL out of Premiere, and ... I'm trying to remember, it's either the AAF or XML from Resolve back to Premiere. But they use a different 'method' each way.

Yea, it's a mess.

[Daniel30810352o94k]

Hi Neil, thank you.  I did get this response on the Avid forum:

It can be that difficult. And it is.

https://www.provideocoalition.com/how-to-answer-when-someone-ask-you-to-move-a-project-from-avid-to-...

Can anyone here answer this question: Can you suggest what to with PP connecting to the Avid-created transcoded material?

[R Neil Haugen]

DNx files? If so, Premiere handles those pretty easily. If doing general importing. 

[Daniel30810352o94k]

Hi - yes, but as the opener explains, during the transcoding-for-proxies process, Avid creates separate video and audio files (reading them together when operating within MC); but it seems that PP does not like this (even though the file is an Apple Pro-Res proxy file in a MXF wrapper).  Please advise, D. 

[R Neil Haugen]

@Warren Heaton or @Fergus H  ... comments? @Michael Grenadier or @Richard M Knight ?

Those are folks that might have some solid experience there.

[Michael Grenadier]

unfortunately (or fortunately as the case may be) I haven't had to deal with avid/premiere in a number of years...  25 years ago I was an expert on avid...   but those days are gone forever...     I'm thinking you might need to generate your own proxies...  but moving back and forth between the platforms will probably be a nightmare...  But happy to do some testing with short sample files in Premiere...  You can send me a direct message by clicking on my name at the top of my post (I think) and add a short post to this thread, giving me a heads up.

[Warren Heaton]

Passing a project with full-resolution source footage between Media Composer and Premiere Pro or vice versa should work well enough for a cuts-only edit, but it's best used for a one-time change of NLEs.

And yes, with Premiere Pro's Proxy workflow, the picture and sound need to be in the same movie file.  It's necessary to attach proxies in the first place.

If attempting a cross-NLE workflow anyway, I would have Media Composer and Premiere Pro on each system.  Partly so the project can open and play as expected, but also to get each editor involved familiar with the other NLE.

[Remote Index]

Hello Daniel etc.

The last time I dealt with cross platform projects (Avid / PPro) was maybe 8 years ago, so I'm a bit imprecise on the details, recalling it now. However, it was a large project with many hours of footage and many original formats (at least a dozen, maybe more) and it went on for about a year. All that to say that it is possible.

Or was possible in the past.

That said, what I have to offer may be no more than a slight elaboration on what Warren Heaton has written.

You've outlined 2 issues.

Your second issue is a dead end, I think. The only way Avid transcodes is to mxf files with separated audio and video elements - this will not work in Premiere as far as I understand.

The first issue you mentioned seems to be an issue with the way AAFs from Premiere Pro are being interpretted by Avid. I would do further testing to see if you can get any AAF from Premiere coming over to Avid properly. (ie. start in Premiere Pro, try a number of codecs/formats, try audio only, try video only, try combos, trying anything you can think of, see if anything comes over to Avid properly). If a test AAF never comes over to Avid properly, then you know there is a fundamental issue to deal with on the Avid end. If you get something to come over properly, then there is hope. It may be an issue with the codec or file format, and trying different ones may give you some clues to help you figure out this first problem.

Test as I've outlined above. Hopefully that gets you past the AAF issue. Then this is what I can suggest:

1. Definitely originate in Avid. (Though I'm already second guessing this one ...)

2. Definitely use only linked media in Avid.

3. There may be an issue with wrapper and codecs, so you may need to find a high quality wrapper and codec that all footage gets transcoded to. (I recall that we had and issue with one camera / format which used spanned files and that was no good - any spanned files had to be transcoded to single files per clips. I use this to illustrate the possibility that certain camera formats / originating formats may not be suitable for this workflow.) Perhaps very reliable formats like DNx or ProRes will work best?

4. If you need to transcode, this needs to be done outside Avid, so that the transcoded files are single files with matching audio channel counts to the originals. These files will need to be linked in Avid.

5. Don't count on much besides straight cuts and track organization coming over between systems.

Those are the places I would start to try to solve this. Hope that helps.

R.

[Warren Heaton]

Extracting the sound from the picture with the full resolution source prior to creating proxies should resolve the attach error, but without QuickTime Player Pro classic around any longer, I am not sure there is a quick way to do that without transcoding.  That could be worth the busy work of linking sound to picture in Media Composer if the error goes away when moving back and forth. 

[Daniel30810352o94k]

Hi everyone, thank you for contributing.  My goodness! - what a headache it all seems.