Productions: "source media is not found in any of the open projects"

[DrewPost]

I'm trying to help a fellow editor clean up a big long-form project mess. He's been collaborating with a 2nd editor, without Productions or Teams. Just 2 (imperfect) copies of the media, and sending projects back and forth. Of course it became a mess of duplicate media (~3,700 clips).

We're now putting them on Productions. My goal is:

• One or more prproj's for media (source clips, GFX, etc.)
• prproj for sequences
• prproj for handovers, temps etc.

We want to get rid of dupe media instances, and of sequences linking ("reveal in project") to the wrong places.

I tried to:

1. Create a new Production
2. Bring a copy of the project in, using "Add Project to Production"
3. Delete all the sequences from it, and dupe media clips that we don't want the sequences to link to
4. Rename it "MEDIA"
5. Create a new blank prproj, "SEQUENCES"
6. Open another, external instance of the project, outside the Production
7. Copy-paste a sequence to SEQUENCES

This does bring it in the sequence without copies of the clips, and some of the cilps indeed link (Reveal) to MEDIA. 

However, some clips that "the project containing this media is missing."

• If I manually open MEDIA, I still get "The source media has been deleted or moved from its project". Searching for other open projects (MEDIA) doesn't work, I get "The source media is not found in any of the open projects."
• Of course, I'm looking at the same clip right there in MEDIA.
• I can't see any Interpret or Audio settings in it that are different.
• I selected the sequence, Edit > Reassociate Source Clips, and pointed it to MEDIA. No change.
• Saved, reopened, no change.

I tried something more drastic like exporting the sequence into an XML, and reimporting it, into the SEQUENCES prproj that is part of the Production.

To my surprise, the import still created 150 new clips in SEQUENCES. And (at least what I'm focusing on testing) is dupes of the clips in MEDIA.  

Digging further yet into an offending pair of dupe clips, I see that in one, the Audio Channels Preset always reverts to <Custom>. Everything else seems fine and identical, but the other clip is "use file". But changing the Preset (Use File, Stereo, etc.) does nothing - it's stuck on <Custom>.

Also, If I drag any linked clips (from the aforementioned 150 clips) from SEQUENCES to MEDIA, their Video Usage and Audio Usage data disappears. So they look like 0 usage instances, yet these are the clips that "Reveal in Project" links to.

I unliked both, relinked... each instance had a different Media Start TC. 

In MediaInfo, the clip had a 3rd different start TC value --  40:51:58:21 . Which I believe is illegal?... It's an MOV from a Canon 5DmkIII so I am confused about corruption at this point.

Also, Reveal doesn't work anymore. ("The source media is not found in any of the open projects.")

[R Neil Haugen]

Maybe if @Jarle Leirpoll jumps in you might get this sorted.

[DrewPost · Accepted solution]

So far, looks like the key culprit was not media corruption, but attached proxies -- Premiere doesn't know how to consolidate those (which I find unfortunate; if everything else is identical about the dupe clips, why not merge them with the proxy attached), so it kept them separate including the linking.

In the testing I was able to do so far, this workflow worked:

1. Before migraing the project into a Production, detach all the proxies in it.
2. Import that project into your Production (Add Project to Production). Let's call it MEDIA.
3. Make a new project in the Production, e.g. SEQUENCES
4. Drag sequence(s) from MEDIA to SEQUENCES.  Save.
5. In MEDIA, delete the dupe clips you want to get rid off.  Typically, the extra copies that came from bringing in sequences, instead of the organized source media bins.
   Premiere will give the usual warning that those clips are used in sequences. However in this test, thanks to being in a Production, this didn't gut the sequence.
6. In SEQUENCES,  Edit > Reassociate Source Clips, and point it to MEDIA.

In my testing, this workflow allowed to successfully match-frame and Reveal to the good, desired clips in MEDIA, and get rid of the dupes. I'll update if I hear more from the editor.

I'm not a fan of Edit > Consolidate Duplicates ,  since you don't get to control which of the dupe clip copies get removed.

[Jarle Leirpoll]

Just out of curiosity:
Were the proxies named exactly the same as the originals? I see some people do this when making proxies in third-party apps.

If you make proxies in Premiere Pro, they get _proxy added to the file name. This prevents confusion when relinking etc. I've seen people link to the proxies when Premiere Pro asks for a file – and that creates some strange problems. It's possible to have the proxies linked as both originals and proxies, but only until you close the project. When you reopen it, Premiere Pro will ask for the file again. You're stuck in a loop until you link to the correct files.

Not sure if that's relevant in your case, though