This is fun: Exporting EDL from Premiere Pro CC - some clips work, some don't

[Macn101]

Hey everyone,

I was brought in to supervise post on a 120 minute multi-cam feature. Nothing incredible, I know, and they have no money, so they are paying a bunch of editors very little instead of paying one more. We are talking a 4 editor workflow, and because of file sizes everyone is offline. To top it off, they decided that Avid wasn't going to work after syncing all of the dailies and cutting 20% of the movie, which meant we had a fun time going from Avid to Premiere, soo... that was an AAF party! And a freaking nightmare. But I figured it out and all of the important metadata was intact. And before you say it, yes I know, premiere starts to break down when you get into huge features, and the multi-editor offline workflow just exponentially exacerbates these problems. But that is what they wanted to do, despite my pleading.

So as the title says, here is something fun: when I export an EDL from Premiere Pro CC, and I import it into Resolve to reconnect to the raw R3Ds, some clips work, some clips don't - and I know why.

Here is a sample from my EDL:

007  A004C018 V     C        00:00:20:16 00:00:22:14 00:02:00:07 00:02:02:05

* FROM CLIP NAME: A1B TK2

008  B004C011 V     C        16:47:08:10 16:47:11:08 00:02:02:05 00:02:05:03

* FROM CLIP NAME: B1B TK4

Take a guess.

008 works fine, but 007 does not. That is because, for whatever reason, Premiere has decided to instead of using the actual source timecode (like 008 is - 16:47 blah blah) it uses the source clip duration, or possibly sound timecode (00:00:20 blah blah).

Luckily, despite our program transition, the source timecode DID carry over on all clips. I can tell because when you boot up either 007 or 008 or any other clip in the source monitor, the source timecode is present and accounted for.

Theoretically, I could get around this issue if our transcodes and dailies were not consolidated to save drive space - so source clip duration of the intermediates and the raw R3Ds are different, which means that clip duration won't work for me.

Despite the filename being incomplete (ONLY A004C018), which I know causes issues with other programs, this will only cause a headache for the first card from the feature, where they forgot to rename the card (so there are two A004s). I can manually get around that. Resolve is smart that way, even if it is smirt about preferences and all that silliness.

So, just to drive the point home, here is another sample from my EDL:

010  B004C008 V     C        16:42:40:12 16:42:42:14 00:02:07:13 00:02:09:15

* FROM CLIP NAME: B1B TK1

012  B004C008 V     C        00:00:31:01 00:00:32:17 00:02:12:22 00:02:14:14

* FROM CLIP NAME: B1B TK1

These two have the same source clip in the project, same media on the drive, everything. Completely identical from what I can tell, except for in the timeline, one is purple and one is green. This is coloring that the editor might have used, but using every other conceivable method, that is the only difference I can find between 010 and 012. And 010 connected to the R3D in Resolve, and 012 did not because of the source timecode issue in the EDL.

Further investigation with exporting EDLs has revealed something else - when I select "Use Sound Roll/Sound Timecode" NOTHING WORKS, and the ones that worked previously now have the same issue as the others. When I export without it, we get my original problem, and all of the ones that don't work are green and all of the ones that work are purple. So for some reason, the green clips in the timeline export out the sound timecode (which there is none from the source) whether the option is selected or not in the EDL export dialogue box. My EDL only has Video 1 information in it, no sound tracks are included.

In order to transfer complicated timelines between each other, we have had to send project files, because AAFs, EDLs and OMFs lose to much information. So the difference in coloring might have been from that - one clip was directly put in the timeline from a bin, and the other was already in the timeline when it was imported. But again, that being said, when I right click and say "reveal in project" they both go to the same clip in the same bin, and "reveal in explorer" goes to the same source file, and properties also match perfectly. If it had to do with project import, I think it would have gone to a separate clip that came in with the import (it makes a bin with the clips from the imported sequence) when I tried "reveal in project."

So... can somebody tell me what is going on with my timelines (all of our nested scene sequences), and how to fix it? Short of manually replacing all of the affected clips, because when I drag a clip from the bin to replace the green clip in the timeline it exports to the EDL fine.

Thanks!

System:

PC

Adobe CC, Premiere CC fully updated to v7.2.2

Asus P8P67 Deluxe

Windows 7 SP1 64bit

i7-2600K

16GB RAM

Nvidia Geforce GTX 580 3GB

Can give you any more details about the system/problem, just ask!

[dummergold]

I am only bumping your post up, I do not know what is going on. You have probably finalized your project by now. My first thought is you mention nested scene sequences and I thought the edl process would not accept nest. I would have to navigate off to re-research that statement.

Why I reply is I have been testing the edl process and have been able to achieve sucess with exporting edl with audio as 'none' but failure to import edl with WAV audio into Speedgrade.

Yes, another member has a post regarding 'Major EDL Export BUG in 8.2!' in this pasted link
MAJOR EDL Export BUG in 8.2!

which is error with respect to WAV, and same error results as I am seeing with my WAV edl export text files

My research has led me to your post and I find it very interesting. Thanks for the details. I am not done with my research, just using all the data to see how I can include audio in an edl without error. My previous method was to export the edl without audio and import the audio separately. I now want to include audio,

another thought is your text files - they appear short, as in they say FROM CLIP NAME: (clip name), but no file extension

EDIT: I think the problem I am having with exporting edl WAV files is that the edl text file does not show the .wav file extension. I can export an edl and have the WAV file extension show, but it is not the sequence that I want to export as an edl. The sequence that does export out the edl file extension is the sequence where I cut sections of audio into my next sequence. It behaves like your nested sequence not giving file extension.

Thats all I can say is that my edl isn't giving me a file extension for my WAV due to it being cut from another sequence.

[Macn101]

A late response to a late response, sorry for breaking any necro rules or whatever.

Yes, we did finalize the project, which was me doing all of the manual replacement that I feared. Actually, with two people helping me, it was faster to actually manually replace all of the 1080p transcodes with the raw R3Ds in the Premiere timeline, than to keep going back and forth with resolve to just replace problem clips. I also tried removing the nests first, like you mentioned dummergold, but still had the same problems.

This of course led to a few more human errors, but all finished in the end. To put it bluntly, I will never use Premiere for a multi-editor feature workflow again, which is honestly what Avid is essentially built from the ground up to do in the first place.

It is curious what you say about your problem being related to WAV, which was also the format of my production sound files that were being used, attached to the group clips, even in the master color sequence with no sound in the audio tracks, but was still using the video of the grouped clips with WAV audio. Somewhat obviously, both working clips and problem clips are using WAV files, but my experiment with "Use Sound Roll/Sound Timecode" option, and your issue and the other member's issue with WAV files, seems likely that they are related.

It is possibly all fixed now, 12 months later (holy hell, has it really been that long?) but I won't be using Premiere with this sort of workflow to find out for myself.

Thanks for your reply dummergold!

[R Neil Haugen]

I've had to do some work that was EDL over to Sg rather than direct linking over, a couple from when I was hit with the "Insufficient Graphic Resources" issue on any D-L project work whilst in Sg, and once on a project for another person who exported an EDL from PrPro. It is buggy ... and I've asked but NOT received answers as to why. Some attempts to EDL go fine. But the next one a few minutes later gets rejected in Sg for "frame out of range" comments. I've tried all sorts of things in the settings, and can't find one that simply works. And several of the projects that wouldn't work at all one day ... I came back the next, brought up the same unchanged project, tried ONE MORE TIME to export an EDL ... with the same settings ... and it worked perfectly in Sg.

I don't know if PrPro is giving a wrong setting occasionally, or if Sg is reading the EDL wrong. And it drives me batty. I just wish someone could answer this.

Neil

[Macn101]

All of the EDL issues that Premiere has (not even mentioning only having one possible format of EDL out of the program) critically limits using it in a professional workflow that doesn't entirely take place within the adobe family. I have no issues if a workflow never leaves an adobe program, it is quite pleasant actually, like the ease of use with intermediates like Bridge. But have to go to color (resolve or lustre), sound (ProTools), or anything else, it is a friggin nightmare, oh my god. Not just because of EDLs even, but AAF and OMF export issues as well. With the strong push from Adobe to get it's foot in the door in the professional sphere after the apple FCPX blunder, I am surprised they haven't made these issues a higher priority.