Solving Duplicate Master Clips AFTER they have been edited into timelines

ugh, no! the solution to this problem isn't to turn XMP writing on, it's to turn it OFF. This problem of PP not recognizing media on import it COMPLETELY manufactured by adobe. It doesn't completely solve the problem (Adobe has shown little interest in fixing this issue (its been a huge problem for years) but:
1: go into the preferences and UNCHECK every preference having to do with XMP. Do this on every computer that will open a project containing the shared media. Quit and reopen PP several times to make sure your setting are all saved (Adobe, like a sleazy russian spam bot, will try and reset the XMP in order to boost usage of their pathetic, unusable, metadata system.)

2: ingest the media and if you are going to do any "Modify" settings on the clips, such as switching stereo audio to  mono, etc, do it now, because once you ingest media into multiple projects and then "Modify" in one, the other project will not reconcile the 2 clips. (Adobe's pathetic developers aren't competent enough to manage this "confusion")

3: you should be good to go, but make sure you copy media into each version of your edit project before you start trying to move sequences back and forth. Definitely keep an eye out for duplicate media bins popping up, and trouble shoot when you do, otherwise you will start multiplying your media database and pretty soon you will be out of control and you will crash your project.

4: Pray to whatever god you choose to reduce the scam artists at Adobe into dust

I FOUND A SOLUTION! It worked for me at least. It takes a bit of time but for projects that are huge like mine, I think it's worth to spend some hours "debugging".

I used the last version of premiere cc 2018.

Here it is how i did it:

1) Make sure that in the original project with dup master clips you have the “Write XMP ID to files on import” activated.

2) Create a new project (I didn’t close the original one given that 2018allows you to have several projects open).

3) Make sure the “Write XMP ID to files on import” option is activated in the new project.

4) Open Media Browser.

5) Make sure that in the media browser settings you have the option “Allow Duplicate Media During Project Import” Off, unchecked, i mean, NOT selected!

6) Browse for the original project in your hard drive using Media Browser.

7) Drag the sequence from the original project to the root of the new empty (use media browser. If you drag it from the original project opened, didn't work for me). It will create the folder structure where the master clips are.

8) Drag the other sequence (the one your other editor prepared and used to point to the dup master clips) to the root of the new project. Voilà! Problem solved. No duplicate master clips.

9) Repeat the operation. You can drag several sequences at a time, but if you drag a lot, premiere wouldn't import anything.

You’ll notice that some times creates the same folder structure, and it seems that is duplicating the clips, but if you go inside the bins, you’ll see that it’s only duplicating the folder structure and inside the bins there are the clips that were not included when you dragged the first sequence.

After that it’s a matter of just organizing the project a little bit.

I had 90 days of shooting, then synced sequences with plural eyes so when i imported them it duplicated the clips. Then also worked with a second editor making cuts of some of the sequences. When i imported those, it duplicated the footage again. So in some cases I had 3 master clips and opening the project and loading clips would take me forever. It took me a couple of hours to “re-do” the project, importing from media browser and organizing it again. But in my case was worth it.

Hope this helped.  

Not sure if anyone else figured out this method, but I will post anyway (just in case).

I have a similar situation.

Scenario:

Multiple editors working from the same media on different machines.  When editor 1 finishes a sequence(s), they email the project file to editor 2.  Then, in many cases, a tweak is made and editor 1 resends their project file.  Importing the sequence(s) often times leads to a forced import of duplicate master clips despite leaving "Allow importing duplicate media" unchecked.  As you know, this could be a logistical nightmare having multiples of the exact same file.

After researching, I found and article that describes the way Premiere works when importing sequences.  When leaving "Allow importing duplicate media" unchecked, Premiere looks at the available media and determines whether a clip in the imported sequence is the same by checking all file data including original file location.  If it sees any discrepancies, Premiere imports a duplicate clip thinking it's original. (or something to that effect)

On a hunch, I did the following and successfully imported a project without having the duplicate clips.  Here are the steps.

1. close your "working" project

2. open downloaded project master file.

3. relink all clips.

4. save project.

5. return to your "working" project.

6. import downloaded project (or selected sequences).

7. be sure to leave "Allow importing duplicate media" UNCHECKED.

When relinking each clip to the same file as your "working" project, this eliminates any discrepancy issues.  So, when importing new sequences from other projects into your "working" project, Premiere recognizes that the clips in the imported sequences as the same, it does not import the duplicates.

Doing the relinking process can take be quick or slow depending on how organized your media is, but its better than having duplicates.

Hi,

I'm working on a similar project: multiple computers/projects using the same OS & PrPro version 2015.4.

We get duplicate clips when importing sequences from within projects through Media Browser (or if we import a sequence that was exported as a project). We don't get duplicates for all clips, and the main difference between the duplicates and the originals is the Video Duration (same as In/Out Duration that you would see in AVID).

We think when Premiere is importing these sequences it is referencing the In/Out points (Video Duration) to determine if the clip is new to the project or old. Did you find the same Video Duration difference?

What were you referencing when you said "I think we've figured out how to prevent dupes going forward."?