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Hi, my question is re: using Google Drive as the place to save the project. I have always saved my Premiere Pro projects either on my laptop or on an external hard drive (or, both). However, this summer I'm teaching video production at a community college, where students can't save anything on the college computers (everything gets erased as soon as they turn the computer off). They all have and want to use Google Drive. I would love some advice on how that works with Premiere, as I'm unfamiliar with the process. Is the process 1) save Premiere Pro project and all video files to Desktop, 2) upload to Google Drive? Will they have to reconnect the media every time they return to work off of the Goggle Drive? When they do want to return to work on the project, do they have to copy it back to the Desktop, or can they work directly off of the files in Google Drive? (My main concern is that moving folders/files can lead to the media offline issue, how do I avoid in this case? Any advice would be great, thank you!! -Ali
Hi Aliciawoznia,
I wouldn't suggest using google drive due to network connectivity issues, as well as the sync speeds between google drive and the computer. To answers some questions:
1) The process you described above is the process they would have to go through to use google drive.
2) If all of their content is wiped after use, that would indicate to me that every time they use the computer (e.g. boot it/shutdown), they are going to have to sync the drive back, loosing precious classtime. Hopeful
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If they create a folder with all the assets in the same place then it shouldn't ask them to locate the media. Save the work as normal and then upload it to the drive.
If the computers are wiped then have them save everything to the thawspace (that's what I had to do in college) and this will not erase them when the computers are turned off. In case you don't know what that is, it's the other drive of the computer so if your main one is C then the thawspace will be your D drive.
I think they probably could open the PP file and work it through the drive, like opening the file through a USB, but it would be a bit laggy.
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Hi Aliciawoznia,
I wouldn't suggest using google drive due to network connectivity issues, as well as the sync speeds between google drive and the computer. To answers some questions:
1) The process you described above is the process they would have to go through to use google drive.
2) If all of their content is wiped after use, that would indicate to me that every time they use the computer (e.g. boot it/shutdown), they are going to have to sync the drive back, loosing precious classtime. Hopefully this is not the case 3) If they are working with big projects/big files, syncing to google drive could take some time depending on the internet connection you have at the college.
4) Google can sometimes do some strange things with files, and I've known of files getting corrupted in the uploading process when vital bits of data within the file are left out.
My advice:
Get them to use a USB/thumbdrive/hard-drive. This is much more secure. While they are subjected to forgetting it/leaving it somewhere/loosing it, it is still a more secure option than using a cloud savespace.
In an OPTIMAL WORLD:
I would love for you to get a little server going and network it into the college so they can store their projects on there. Having their own little corner in the server's hard-drive would be the best way to do things. If you want more information on that, message me through this or reply and I'll drop you my email.
Hope all this helped,
Kind regards,
Caylem.
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In my institution, we have always used USB HDD's to store the project files, video files, conformed audio etc. The only thing I could not do easily was get the media cache stored on the USB HDD as well. (I needed a common workflow for Windows and Mac users.) The media cache settings although set in the preferences, that data is not stored in the "Adobe Premiere Pro Prefs" file, it is stored in the registry (assuming windows), and although I knew where it was stored in a Mac, our IT people could not push out a file to the location to pre-set it.
That means that the media cache files are wiped when the user logs off. So when the user next logs on, that data is missing and premiere has to take some time to re-generate those files and regenerates the conformed audio files as well, even though those exist on the USB HDD. Not too bad with USB 3 drives and circa 30 mins total media in the project. But it becomes a real pain with 2 hours plus media. I did develop a work around for those students with lost of media but it was not an automatic elegant solution.
Now networked operation.
My network connection has always been 100Mbps so useless for video. However a few months back I noticed that it was now running at 1Gbps. So I created a folder on the uni's file store and put all the video assets in there for one project for a test. It worked but gave a few dropped frames when starting to playback a sequence. A few days later, I came back to the project - stuttering , dropped frames galore - STOP. Probably down to network congestion. Networks like these are essentially FTP types, File Transfer Protocol. It does not matter if the data is delayed by 500mS during the transfer from the filestore to the computer. But if its video then it does matter.
So this was no good - go back to HDD's.
BOX
Box is what my institution calls a service similar to Dropbox. A file storage area in the cloud. I have occasionally stored video files on there (never edited from there) and the delays were tremendous. Downloading circa 20 GB of data took hours. OK for word, powerpoint etc but useless for large video files which camcorders typically produce. You could be waiting a long time for upload and download.
If Google drive is anything like this - don't do it!
So, use a USB HDD or store the data on the university's filestore area and transfer that to / from the computer at the beginning / end of the session provided you have 1 Gbps network speed.
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The college that I teach at uses USB drives as well. The IT folks won't do a separate network for video so it was the only answer. The good part is that all the files stay linked. With the type of projects that will typically be done there was plenty of bandwidth with USB 3 connections
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hi, I have a question about the issue you mentioned with the USB flash drives (external thumb drive). Did you have a particular workflow that led to this problem? Or did Premiere simply not save the media cache because those thumb drives are too small or too slow? what size and type of thumb drive were your students using? thank you!
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Issues with a work flow arise if you mess with the setting for the scratchdisks, once you don't change that it shouldn't be a problem. Once you have everything set up, have them move all the necessary files to the media storage and open the files that way, as this will negate Premiere asking to locate media.
USBs aren't always reliable, some can be corrupted, an SSD is the best option with USB 3.0 - it moves the files quicker and is more stable than USB 2. Just make sure to always eject it before removing or you're likely to find problems.
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thank you!
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Hey, late, but I do this. Save the whole project, .prproj files, clips, media, to a GDrive Backup and Sync folder. Syncs with Drive. Then sync that folder on another computer, I can open the exact same thing and keep going. The computers resetting is a problem, but your idea works.
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My team and I are trying to get this working as well, we all have access to the same folders on Google Drive. But when it comes to syncing it all seems to fall through. Any suggestions as to how to solve this?
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Hey DustinsCode,
Our team is using Dropbox currently to edit all our projects. It requires all team members to download all project files on their own personal computers, and communication about who is in the project so that only one person is editing at a time. This works for us so far, but we are intrigued by Google Drive since it would allow for some additional tagging features that Dropbox doesn’t. I am, however, finding very few people discussing this type of workflow and was curious to see your statement “…when it comes to syncing it all seems to fall through.” I was curious if you could explain more what you mean by that. Thanks for any insight you can provide.
Silas
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Hey SilasPippitt,
Did you ever sort this out for yourself and your team? How has it been working/not working for you? I'm looking to do the same thing myself. I used to use Dropbox for this and it always seemed to work fine. When I switched to Google Drive a few years ago, it didn't always work as seamlessly and would often corrupt files and I'd have to start over from a save on a hard drive.
Thank you!!
-Bliss
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I would highly recommend checking out LucidLink for moving/using Premiere project files. Even working with them. Amazing service as they have an intriguing method for moving data so that an app like PrPro can start working with partial files.
Neil