Re-link media issues

[Indie767]

I'm cutting a documentary with a lot of footage. My project file is growing in size and now I have to manually re-link all my media each time I open my project. I know PP isnt' ideal for long form projects but I'm looking for a solution to avoid this. If I were doing a scripted feature film, I would break the project into seperate reels to keep the project file down in size. I cannot do this with a documentary. Any ideas?

Thansk,

DC

[R Neil Haugen]

First, many editors break down documentaries into sub-projects. I don't see what would be the issue. Using a sub-project/Master project organization structure is fairly common across long-form work. It's pretty easy to transer material and copy sequences from one project to another.

Second ... I'm puzzled as to why you're needing to relink all files every time you open the project. What is your file storage system?

Neil

[Indie767]

This re-link issue has been an intermitment pain for me. I'm using a USB 3 External Drive. I noticed that as my project media grows, my re-link issues become more frequent.

I organized my media into different bins, which PP may not be able to handle well. I will try using a master folder for all my media iinstead.

DC

[DarrenManden]

Hey there DC,

Truly random (and potentially unhelpful) question, but are you opening the projects on different Operating Systems?

We have several editors working off of a server here. Some are on Macs, some on PC, and any time that a project switches an OS it needs to relink. So, let's say that I'm on Windows, and I save a project, and then my colleague opens on her Mac, she will have to relink, and vice versa.

Not sure if you're in a similar situation or not, but that's definitely something that we see here all of the time.

Also, you mentioned that you're using an external drive. If you save your project, close Premiere and immediately reopen it, do you need to relink?

If you don't need to relink in that scenario, are you disconnecting the drive, and plugging it back in, and then having to relink? Are you plugging in any other storage devices?

Cheers,

Darren

[R Neil Haugen]

It's easier to see the replies if everyone just uses the blue Reply button of the top post. Otherwise this blasted forum software nests them.

Large amounts of media on a USB3 drive external will be prone to trouble. It's far better to use an internal or external box connected via PCIe external ports. Just for information.

Neil

[Indie767]

I have that option. Cutting on a laptop at the moment.I'll migrate to another platform.

[DarrenManden]

"It's easier to see the replies if everyone just uses the blue Reply button of the top post."

Ah, thanks for the tip, Neil. This thing is driving me crazy. I'm hitting reply on a user, can only post a couple of words, and then have to edit my post to actually post the proper reply. It's frustrating to say the least.

Sorry for the tangent! 😛

[Peru Bob]

If Windows, did you assign a fixed drive letter in Disk Management to the external drive?

[Indie767]

Re: internal drive / PCI Ext port, I mean to say I don't have that option. I was planning on doing my color on Resolve, so I'm going to do my whole project on that platform and give it a spin.

[Michael Grenadier]

I haven't had an serious problems using Premiere CC for very complex long form documentary projects. That said, I have seen a similar problem using fcp7.  Although it's far less of an issue than it was years ago, I think there is still a character limit for the path to any file.  The path is the drive name and then the folder structure drilling down to the file in question.  I'm on the mac, but the principle is the same on a windows machine.  For example, here's a path for a file on my system "/Volumes/New Partition/sheila paige/mitch final"  If there are too many subfolders, there can be a problem.  I had one project that I was maybe the 7th editor on and most if not all of the previous editors didn't have a clue.  I was getting crashes every few days in fcp7 and when I restarted, most of the media would be offline.  I finally bit the bullet and rebuilt the folder structure for all the media and the problem vanished.