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Trying to restructure my existing edits into the new Productions interface.

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
April 20, 2020
5 replies
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I'm trying to restructure my files to take advantage of the new Productions feature with the latest Premiere Pro update. Small bit of background: I edit an episodic YouTube show. We've done seven episodes so far and have 8 more left for this season. I plan to structure the Production file set with a single project file that houses all of my media and assets and then each episode will have it's own project file referencing the media in the media project file. Pretty simple.

Here's my problem: I import the project files containing my previous edits and obviously the media in the edit is housed in the project. I have not been able to find a way to systematically replace all of the media in my edits with the media stored in my media project without having to completely re-edit each project to be the exact same. I can't even get Premiere Pro to tell me the sequence in/outs for each clip so I can just cut the pieces that way if it came to it.

So, anyone have any ideas about this?

User interface or workspaces

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Correct answer Mike Dziennik

If you select a sequence there is an option under the Edit menu to Re-associate Master clips. This will open a dialogue where you can choose which project contains the master clips; in your case you can select your media/assets project.

R Neil Haugen

Legend

TheAlexMay ...

Yea, I hear you about trying out the migration process. It's in the details, of course. And the manual doesn't give a lot of details. One of the keys is you need to have both the Productions folder panel open, and a separate Premiere Project panel open for any project from which you're moving contents into the new 'added' project/s in the Productions folder.

So for each older stand-alone project you are adding to a Production, you may have 2-10 or more indiviual projects in the Production folder system that older project's bits get added into. If you have both the older project open in a panel, and your Production folder open in another panel, it's simple to drag/drop bins or assets between them.

Here's what I found ...

set up your folder structure first ... and remembering that what we've thought of as "projects" are now folders, named for clarity of use, of course;
after you have that done, right-click on a folder at the end of a folder tree, and "add project", naming it as you would have a bin before;
use File/open or open/recent to bring up a separate Project panel of the project file you are migrating into the Productions folder;
Select and drag/drop the assets from that older project file (probably from a single bin) that go into this particular production project file for 'storage';
Continue doing this for all bits of that older project file until everything is now in a project file within the production folder.

It's that bit about having a separate Project panel open that wasn't clear to me. Once I realized that was what they were doing, it made sense and it works as they say it should.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

GraceAndCorbett

Inspiring

Neil, just to clarify, in an earlier comment you'd said every asset would need to be inside a timeline in a project, then the project becomes the bin. But here you seem to be saying we can just drag and drop assets into the Productions window file tree. Can you please clarify?

R Neil Haugen

Legend

The first sentence in your post ... I'm not following. But then, the mental gyration required to understand the difference between 'stand-alone' project files and the Production model is large and at times, puzzling.

You organize your work by folder structure within that Production. And within your folder structure, you create project files for holding the various bits of the project. Folders for media, with perhaps subfolders for different types of media in larger projects. Within that subfolder tree, you create projects that do nothing but 'hold' the media assets. You don't make sequences in them.

You have another folder for say sequences or for acts, however you name things. And within that folder tree, you create projects that you make your sequences in. You can just drag/drop clips from their 'holding' project file onto the sequence in the sequence project ... as having numerous projects open at once is a normal part of the Productions process, and doesn't cause the mess doing so does with stand-alone projects.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

R Neil Haugen

Legend

Here's the link to their suggested practices guide. Productions Workflow Guide

Having worked with this for a bit, I would suggest a change in your organizational pattern.

Create folders for each episode within the show's production folder.

For each episode, create subfolders as needed for organizational work ... and then create project files for each specific task. Like create a folder for each episode's media, then within that folder, a project file that holds the video clips, exactly like you would have otherwise done with a bin inside a project. A project file for each type of media if you would have had bins for each type of media. And named for what's inside ... Day 1 Arri ... Scene 2 ... whatever your patterns or needs dictate.

In another folder of the episode, create a folder for say sequences. Within that folder, create a project file of sequences. And on and on through your workflow.

And nowhere in sight is a project file with a bin inside. Because this is designed to use folders as we have used project files ... and project files as we have used bins.

Remember the entire reason for Productions is to get small project files, which load and work with far less stress on the machine. Using one project file for say six hours of media, tons of audio files, graphics, other assets ... isn't using the capabilities of this new system at all. At that point, why bother? You are STILL loading everything about that episode in RAM/cache at one time.

Let the Productions process track the metadata ... it does it vastly lighter on the machine than tracking everything at once. Within productions, splitting the media into mulitple projects ... the other assets into multiple projects ... sequences into another project ... that is the entire key.

Create a 'rough cut' sequence in your otherwise blank Sequence project file, and open it in the timeline panel.
Open the production folder-tree to get where you've stored the media in another project file or series of project files, navigating to your media-holding projects in that panel.
Open the media project file in the panel, and go into thumb view maybe.
Select a group of clips, drag/drop to the timeline panel to start filling out that sequence.

You haven't copied or duplicated anything. The sequence in the Sequences project references the media from their location in that other project, and when this sequence runs, it doesn't need to load the entire other project file into RAM/cache, but only the metadata for the clips in current use.

This is the process for cutting down on project file bloat and lag. Each episode for you is a Job ... each job has subfolders for the component parts of the Job. Each component part gets one or more project files.

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

alexthemayAuthor

Participant

That is essentially how I have it separated out. I simplified my organizational structure considerably to make the question easier to understand. I have it all separated out by episode and that's basically where it stops since each episode is only about 6-10 minutes. I used the Premiere documentation to design my organizational structure. The problem here was importing projects that had already been edited before the productions feature was released and getting them to sit neatly and exist properly within the production set without housing their own media and without having to re-edit them (for whatever reason, the steps listed on Page 18 of the Premiere documenation were not working for me). That's what the copying/duplicating was for, as I had to copy the sequence timeline from the imported project after reassociating it's masters to my media projects to a new project in order to remove the antiquated file structure within the imported project.

Mike Dziennik

Community Expert

Some good ol' finagling going on there Alex.

I'm sure there will be lots of folk trying to do the same thing, but with wildly different organisational structures so I don't think there will be a one-size fits all approach. However, with this menu command and your procedures I'm sure this will help others. Cheers.

Mike Dziennik

Correct answer

Community Expert

If you select a sequence there is an option under the Edit menu to Re-associate Master clips. This will open a dialogue where you can choose which project contains the master clips; in your case you can select your media/assets project.

alexthemayAuthor

Participant

This seems like it's what I'm looking for but perhaps I'm not doing it properly cause nothing's happening. I select the sequence in the Project window. Go Edit > Reassociate Master Clips... and then I select the Media project in the Explorer window and click Open. Premiere Pro processes for a little bit then acts like it's done it, but the clips are all still associated with the in-project media and nothing has changed.

One thing I should note here is that the file structure in my Media project is not precisely the same as the file structure in the edit project. Perhaps this is what's causing the issue? Edit: I've restructured all the media in the edit project file to match the file structure in the Media project file and tried to Reassociate Master Clips again and it still hasn't done anything, sadly.

Edit 2: Okay, I have gotten this to work. Essentially, the issue was that some clips were offline due to reorganizing of my file structure on the server itself. So in order to properly reassociate all master clips, I matched the file structure in my edit project to that of my Media project and then linked all of the media in the edit project so that all clips and sources were online. Then I ran the Reassociate Master Clips function and selected the Media project. It worked now. But there was still a problem. For some reason it kept the media folder structure in the edit project, though the actual clips contained within had been removed. However, when I went to delete the folders, it still deleted the clips that were once contained in each folder from the sequence timeline, even though the masters were no longer in those folders. SO, the workaround for that was to create a new project file in the Production, go into the first edit project and copy the sequence timeline, go into the newly created and empty project file and create a sequence, copy the timeline over, delete the old edit project. This has left me with a project file for my edit with all master clips in the Media project. It's a bit of a convoluted process and could definitely be better but it still beats the heck out of re-editing all the sequences. Still, I'm giving this the correct answer to the problem because it is the tool that did what I was trying to do, even if it needed a bit of finagling.

P

POwens

Inspiring

I've had exactly the same problem, and I have no answer to it yet.

alexthemayAuthor

Participant

Check the reply from Mike as well as my reply to that for a proper working solution to this. It's a bit of a mess, but not as much as re-editing everything, so it works for now.

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