want to move all the proxies to a separate drive so the client can work on the road

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
July 6, 2023
3 replies
2136 views

So I've been wrangling a complicated project for a client for the last year and a half. over 40 TB of media including many 2 camera interviews and 3 or 4 camera music performances most of it shot in 4k. There's also extensive archival footage much of it low resolution screeners... etc. The clients going to LA later this summer to meet with graphics and archival people and wants to be able to take a drive with just the proxies so he can continue editing... I've always generated the proxies from within Premiere and had them stored in a proxy folder next to the camera original... We had a lot of problems with generating the proxies (mostly shot on sony cameras) til we figured out how to override the color space to rec 709 and the audio issues are complicated (thanks Sony which seems to record with 8 channels of audio whether you want to or not... although it's possible there's a way to override this - but seems to be beyond the capabilities of most camerapeople) and in many of the shoots, the primary audio was recorded to a dedicated digital audio recorder (usually a zoom) and even there the track structure was not always simple... So I've needed to modify the audio tracks in most of the footage and dealing with this in the multicam sequence creation is complicated.

Any hints on how to make this process simple (I can dream can't I)? All the media is on a pegasus raid at this point (and backed up to a second pegasus raid). I think we've used the medium resolution prores proxy preset and I checked a clip yesterday and the camera original for this 4k clip was aobut 40 gigs and the proxy was about 4 gigs, so we should be able to fit all the proxies, and audio files on a relatively portable usb3 drive...

I'll post back with my workflow and any problems we experience. I'm hoping I can wrangle this in a day (again, I can dream can't I). Thanks as always to everyone who contributes here (and of course to the adobe team). This is an incredible resource...

This topic has been closed for replies.

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

This should work: Use File > Save As to save a version of the Premiere Pro project to the same folder that the proxies are in, appending the director's initials to the tail of the project filename to differenciate it from the Project file that you're working with (or any naming convention that easily differenciates it from the project file that you're working in). Close that Project (or quit Premiere Pro entirely) and then copy the folder with the proxies and the Save As project to the mobile drive. When the Save As project (or the director's project) is opened later, the Full Resolution clips will be offline (unlinked) but the Proxies should be online (linked). Make sure that you're not using Premeire Pro 23.4 as there's a known issue where the source footage slips to the Media Start when opened on another computer. When the director returns, copy just director's project back to the same folder that the proxies are in. If any footage was added, copy that to where you would like it to be on your workstation. When the director's project is opened, Full Resolution media and Proxy media should link as expected. Any new footage will need to be re-linked.

Another option is to have the director connect remotely to your workstation via Jump Desktop, Parallels Access, LogMeIn, etc.

This project may be too far along to migrate it to LucidLink, but if it was stored on a LucidLink volume then the footage can be accessed from anywhere there's fast internet.

Warren Heaton

Community Expert

In re-reading your original post, are the proxies all in the same folder or in separate folders? If they're in separate folders, manually recreate the folder structore on the mobile drive to match the folder structure on the Promise RAID. You could even name the mobile drive with the same name as Promise RAID with "_mobile" appended. Then copy just the proxies to their corresponding location. Then do the Save As to the Promise RAID and then copy the Save As project to the "_mobile" drive.

M

Michael GrenadierAuthor

Legend

Michael,

Anytime I see you asking for help, I know it's an issue that will have interesting puzzlement value! And this is certainly a great puzzler, especially as well, massive project and Sony are involved.

And Warren ... oh my GOSH ... what a help you are to the rest of us!

Neil

and everytime I'm about to try and be the voice of reason to some body whining about how horrible premiere is, you beat me to the punch... At least the client appreciates my help... unlike the crazed avantgarde filmmaker who never stops whining about how much I'm charging (not enuf).

M

Michael GrenadierAuthor

Legend

and just to make things more complicated, because I've stored the proxies in a folder next to the camera original files, Sony has a complex folder structure for the mxf files with something called "packages" on the mac, so recreating the folder structure may be difficult... A friend suggested using a program called "beyond compare" to do the copying of the proxies maintaining the folder structure. https://www.scootersoftware.com/home. Does anyone have any experience with it? Thinking it might make sense to "move" (actually move) the proxies to a higher place in the folder structure to avoid any issues with the "packages" and then obviously need to "reattach" the proxies. And wondering if any of the process can be implemented with the Premiere project manager? The more I think about this, the more complicated it seems. I know I can make this happen, but probably not gonna be simple. Probably a mistake to locate the proxies with the camera original, but never even thought about this possibility...