B-roll access advice request

[Matt Young]

I use Post-Haste to launch new video projects, and love that I have an easily created consistent folder structure for projects on my machine as well as a PPro project template that creates projects exactly how I want to start with them.  The weak point I'm bumping up against is b-roll access. 

I have 1.3TB of organised b-roll living on my machine (and backed up elsewhere, of course!), bits of which I use for every project I do, and which I had initially imported into the Post-Haste PPro template.  It's nice to have access to everything from within Premiere and be able to start scrubbing from within the bins immediately, but as you can imagine every time I open a project there's quite a lag in performance while Premiere loads all of my footage.

The only reason I have all of that b-roll in my template project is because I never know what I might end up needing for a project, and the ability to scrub the thumbnails in a bin is fantastic.  I'm not averse to performing the same action outside Premiere and then dragging desired clips into the project pane.  Is there anything outside of Premiere that would accomplish the same thing for me?  What do others do (aside from paying for a DAM, which my boss won't entertain)?

[Matt Young]

Anyone else have a large pool of b-roll you use on a regular basis?  Any tools available to scrub video clips prior to importing into Premiere? Opening each clip in VLC just to skim through it isn't a viable solution.

[Ann Bens]

Try the Bridge.

[Matt Young]

Hmm...that might work.  I've just installed and had a look around.  Seems to have come a long way since I last used it 4-5 years ago.  Will explore.

[R Neil Haugen]

Ann's suggestion of Bridge for browsing b-roll is a very good one. And yes, after ignoring that app for years they finally put a big effort into it, and it's suddenly very, very useful even in video work.

Another idea is to simply work within their new Productions mode in Premiere. I do, and for a small shop where I reuse assets from media through audio and seqeunce setups and such, it's a massive gift.

You start a new Production, which creates a folder on disc. In the Production panel, you create subfolders for your needs ... I have a top level folder structure of folders for my wife's studio, for my rNeil work, and for testing/tutorial production.

Inside each of those I have subfolders for projects or assets. Inside those I have project files that hold the assets, or that are used to work the projects.

To add something to a current project, you can go through all your other projects with assets in them, simply drag/drop the chosen items into the current project. No duplication of media in the project files, it's slick & clean.

I love it. All my footage is available as b-roll, audio files ... everything.

Neil

[Matt Young]

Thanks for the Productions suggestion.  I disregarded this completely when it first came out, so am just watching some tutorials on it now.  My initial question is: wouldn't the Production containing my 1.3TB of b-roll take just as long to load as a Premiere Pro project template containing all of the b-roll in bins?

[R Neil Haugen]

No, that's the beauty of a Production.

The length of time for loading a project file is dependent on the amount of metadata in that project file. The more assets, the longer it takes to load the whole thing into RAM/cache files.

But ... in a Production, Premiere only loads what is in the project file you are working in at the moment. It can grab the other data for items that "live" in other projects within the production on the fly without loading those project files into RAM/cache.

And that's why you break your project (or in my case, projects) up into separate folders and project files. In fact, they recommend you use project files as you used to use bins. If you had six bins in a project for various assets, create a subfolder, with six projects in the subfolder, each holding the assets from the old bin.

Grab 'em to use anywhere else in the Production, the other project you use them in can simply reference the metadata of the MasterClip properties without loading the entire project into RAM/cache.

That's the beauty of it, and the entire reason for creating the Productions model. It was built while working with the massive long-form Hollywood productions that have many, many thoudasnds of assets in a total production.

Neil