Premiere Teams - How does media management operate when working locally

[Jake24958897ujo0]

I work as an AE at a post house where we use Premiere teams using shared storage, which works great for our purposes. I have an upcoming job where me and my editor will be working locally, using external hard drives as our media storage. I would like to use Premiere teams for this project and have never done so not on the same server as my collaborator (which I'm hearing is the main use case of premiere teams in the first place). I will be passing my editor audio, footage, graphics etc throughout the day by downloading it to my external drive, loading it into my project, sharing changes, and then copying the media to his external drive.

How does the media management work in this case? Does he have to media map the media every time a new asset gets brought in, or will the media be online if the folder structure is mirrored?

Thanks

[R Neil Haugen · Accepted solution]

Most people using Teams are probably on separate systems, and the project file itself "primarily" resides on the CC server.

As far as is practicable, yes, mirror the folder structure on each system. As you pass the collaborator's media and assets, they'll need to add them into their folders on disc. And may need to link to them.

Note ... Team Projects has become less different from 'stand-alone' than it was, but there can still be a few things "to be aware of" when linking media.

@Udo_Pawlik is very good about helping with this type of issue.

[Udo_Pawlik · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jake24958897ujo0 
If the folder structure is mirrored, there should be no need to create additional media mappings and the media should be online.

Udo Pawlik | Sr Software Product Quality Specialist | Adobe | upawlik@adobe.com

[RangeWide]

According to "Add and manage media in Team Projects" you don't need to mirror the directory at all. It says clearly that you can put the media anywhere, and once you relink to it, it won't disrupt your collaborators.  Only it doesn't work.  Here's what it says.  

This workflow is a local-only change and isn't treated as an edit to the project, thus eliminating the need to share it with other collaborators.... In the background, it works similarly to the Media Management dialog as Team Projects generate the necessary media mapping without impacting media paths in the machines of other collaborators. And since the relink is local only, it prevents one collaborator from accidentally changing the media mappings for the other collaborators.

But when my collaborator relinks the media, it takes my media offline. And when I relink the media and update the project, it drops his. It's clearly not supposed to do that. In fact, the project lead Abhi Singh specifically says this is a major benefit of Team Projects. He says this in the video masterclass live stream, between 10:30 and 11:30 on this YouTube video.

Sadly, I've demonstrated the problem to two layers of technical support, and they keep saying that the problem is that my collaborator and I don't have a shared directory. I am banging my head against the wall showing them that their own product manager says you don't need one. Now, apparently, they have to call me back again. Oh, I'm frustrated. 

Does anyone know a workaround? Has anyone made this work with non-mirrored file systems? 

[Udo_Pawlik]

Hi @RangeWide,

There is a possibility to run into a re-link loop when the media is exactly the same but has different mod-timestamps or if the media was 'made offline' before re-linking. The workaround here is to create a machine specific media mapping via the Media Management dialog - Media mapping using Media Management.

Best,

Udo

[RangeWide]

I don't think that's it. We don't have modified time stamps. We've made no changes except to publish the project back and forth. We are also not making the media offline before publishing. Under these circumstances, the workflow you propose is just another way to accomplish re-linking. Besides that, it explicitly says this shouldn't happen. Have you tried this on your side?  Just make a timeline and pull media locally on two machines. Then try to move the project. If you tell me you did this, and it worked your way, I'll try.  But the documentation is clear that relinking should work.