Why would Premiere modify my original files? Is this something to worry about?

[Guest]

I edited a project in Final Cut Pro X. I needed to send it Pro Tools, so I went the route of taking the Final Cut XML to XtoCC and opening the project in Premiere to send an AAF to ProTools. It worked fine.

However, I was just looking at my original files and I noticed that several of my original files were modified. These modified files were all modified on the same date around the same time (within a minute or two). The rest of the files' "Date Modified"s are when the files were created. Why would these files be modified? What was modified?

[Ann Bens]

Premiere does not touch the original files.

Might want to look at the other end.

[Guest]

What does that mean? And Premiere did touch the original files.

[Ann Bens]

I will repeat myself: Premiere does not in any way touch original files.

Files may have been modified when making the xml.

[Guest]

Okay, but in a folder, all the files are from the same date, except a few that were modified on this date when I opened up an XML in Premiere. So yeah they were modified.

[Richard M Knight]

Do you have any of the XMP options selected?

[Guest]

Yes, those are what my preferences look like in Premiere and I don't believe I would have touched those.

[R Neil Haugen]

When it adds or modifies anything in the file header ... such as tagging or adding an XML ... I believer those will show as changing the modification date, but all Premiere has "touched" is the file header. It hasn't touched the file data.

Neil

[Guest]

Is there any way to know whether Premiere has touched any file data? Or it just doesn't do that? It only touches XML data? And that wouldn't have an effect on anything I export through Final Cut? Even if it's referencing those modified files?

[Jim Curtis]

UNCHECK Automatically Refresh Growing Files in the Media Preferences.  It's on by default, and shouldn't be, IMO.

If you have a backup system that only backs up changes since the last backup, it will rewrite all your media that's been "grown" (modified) since the last backup.  Normally, you wouldn't want to do that because of the unnecesarry amount of time it would take rewriting files that have already been written.  As Neil said, that option is changing the modification date (not the media), and that's what tells your backup app to rewrite a changed file.

There are situations where your media actually is growing in size, such as during a Capture from tape or a live feed, when you would want that option checked to make sure the updated media is backed up on your subsequent backup session.