Rendering a Premiere Timeline using Media Encoder on a remote machine

[Akshay30014633pt4n]

I know similar discussions have happened before but I didn't find things that worked exactly to my requirements.

My setup: I am editing the a Premiere Project with multiple timelines on an M1 MacBook Pro. My company pays for enterprise plan so I still have a folder with full cloud sync enabled, i.e. all project files and assets are in the CC Sync Folder. I have a 2nd machine which is a Windows gaming laptop with the CC Sync Folder set up on its SSD as well.

Is there a way that I can send individual timelines to the 2nd laptop? E.g. I click on Export Media > Send to Media Encoder but instead of opening Media Encoder locally it queues up on the Windows machine? Is there a file I can copy? I know After Effects creates AEP files for its render queue but these are pure Premiere jobs.

[Ann Bens]

Premiere does not support render farms.

Ae does.

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/automated-rendering-network-rendering.html

[Akshay30014633pt4n]

It's not exactly a render farm, it's the other machine logged into my CC account...

And of course such a basic feature should be available to paid subscribers, its quite a basic ask that I be able to work on a different timeline while exporting a previous one.

[Peru Bob]

File a feature request here:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/ct-p/ct-premiere-pro?page=1&sort=latest_replies&filter=a...

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/how-do-i-create-a-discussion-post-bug-report...

[Akshay30014633pt4n]

How likely is it that devs actually read this community? Usually I only see community experts like yourself post here, Bob.

[Peru Bob]

Although they may not post replies, the devs do monitor the Ideas and Bugs sections of the forum, but not the Discussions section.

[R Neil Haugen]

We are getting a fair number of posts by various dev team staffers these days. Annika, Todd, Cliff, Matt, Ishan, a whole bunch of others. More than we ever used to have.

And the Ideas and Bugs posts are sent directly to the devs sections that deal with those things. So even if they don't respond, everything is read and logged.

As to this specific request, I've talked with devs at NAB about this. And what I've been told is that this was developed for Ae back when most computers were relatively "puny" devices, and doing composite workflows simply took hours to render a precomp, let alone a final.

So they had to have something for compositors to keep working. Ergo the 'render farm' process.

But why not for Premiere? Well ... as far as they're concerned, for the vast majority who need something, Me as currently established works fine. Set to process in the background. You keep working, and anytime you're idle a few seconds. Me does some stuff. And they don't get enough requests for this as a full render farm operation to put it high enough on the priority list to get done.

Not exactly the same, though, is it? Keep pushing .... having Ideas posted and/or upvoted on this certainly helps. Every once in a while, one of those makes the public beta followed by general release.

Until then ... if you have a 'remote' software for the other machine ... you could copy the project to shared storage or the other machine ... use the remote software to open Me, go to the project, and do whatever exports you need. 

[Akshay30014633pt4n]

Until then ... if you have a 'remote' software for the other machine ... you could copy the project to shared storage or the other machine ... use the remote software to open Me, go to the project, and do whatever exports you need.

Funnily enough this is exactly what I've been doing, although since the other laptop is right next to me I just turn over and manually drag the project file into the render queue. I was just looking to automate this process since I have to sometimes render 15-20 files for a project and doing this effort was quite annoying. And since the videos range from 10 mins to an hour in size, they do take a bit of time to render overall so keeping my main edit machine free is important.

[Ann Bens]

Moved to Idea board.

[MyerPj]

From @R Neil Haugen 

<<We are getting a fair number of posts by various dev team staffers these days. Annika, Todd, Cliff, Matt, Ishan, a whole bunch of others. More than we ever used to have.>>

I just wanted to agree with this, it's been great having so many devs posting here and in the beta forum. Thanks everyone!

[PaulMurphy]

You can easily render a Premiere timeline using Media Encoder on a remote machine by creating a watch folder.

Adobe Media Encoder
1. Open Adobe Media Encoder on your PC.
2. Go to Settings > General and under Queue, set the time for automatic exporting.
3. In the Watch Folder tab, click Add Folder and select a location in your synced folder. Add the presets you want to export to.

Premiere Pro
1. On your Macbook Pro, ensure sequences are not in any bins (on the root level of the project).
2. Select them in the Project panel and choose File > Export > Selection as Premiere Project and save to the same location in your sync folder.

When the exported project file syncs on your PC and Media Encoder sees it, it will automatically start encoding.

Note: Your PC needs to have access to all the same media, effects, and fonts as your Macbook.

Hope this helps! If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

Cheers,
Paul

[Akshay30014633pt4n]

Hi Paul, I'd tried that previously before writing this post, but Media Encoder simply doesn't start encoding .prproj files for some reason. This technique works if I drop normal video files but it doesn't work for project files, which is pointless for what I need. I even tried it again with the Queue settings you mentioned but nothing happened.

Edit: I went through everything step by step, making sure that plugins were present in Premiere on both systems, and I had the timeline in the root of the project before exporting, so it should work. I'm updating Media Encoder to the latest version, which was the only thing I hadn't done previously. I'll report back after a restart on whether it works now.

[PaulMurphy]

Just to re-iterate - it's crucial that the sequence or sequences are not inside any bin, they have to be on the root level of the project.

[Akshay30014633pt4n]

I can assure you the timeline is not in any bins.

[PaulMurphy]

Good idea to check and make sure your Premiere and Media Encoder versions are in sync.

A couple of other Media Encoder settings you might want to check:

• Import image sequences from watch folders
• Import Premiere Pro sequences natively
• Don’t encode outputs when missing items are detected

Cheers,
Paul

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi @Akshay30014633pt4n,

Thanks for filing the bug report. What you might try is copy and pasting the contents of that sequence into a brand-new sequence. You can also try the same by copy and pasting the contents to a sequence in a new project. Let us know the results. I hope the advice helps.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Akshay30014633pt4n]

I tried Duplicating the sequence and exporting that, which worked but threw a warning, showing a yellow exclamation mark that it couldn't find some files, even though opening the Project in Premiere on the remote machine doesn't require me to relink any media, and the Media Encoder watch folder output didn't seem to miss any of the clips in the edit.

[R Neil Haugen]

Duplicating a sequence loads the meta from that sequence into the other. What Kevin suggested, is a different action ... create a new sequence, then copy all from the old one, paste into the new. It creates a new metadata entry for everything it seems.