building a comprehensive template for ongoing series-based productions

[Ali Jafri]

Hi folks!

I'm working on video blog series that has me shooting in bulk and publishing 5-10 minute videos every week. I edit on Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015.2.

Currently, I just import the footage into the previously saved project and copy/past elements and attributes - unfortunately that's not the best way to do things for so many reasons.

I need to work on a more streamlined workflow and perhaps build a template that already has the basic recurring elements e.g. opening title and music, lower thirds, text titles, and other such elements. I also would want video and audio effects presets in place such as chroma key, color correction, VST audio effects plugins chain, etc.

I'm particularly stumped at how to save VST audio effect chains. I currently have a compressor/gate going into an EQ, going into another mastering compressor. I have to individually add these audio effects or copy/paste attributes. But pasting attributes doesn't work across projects - or so I believe.

The problem is that I can't find any resource to show me how to make a comprehensive template, or even if that's possible. I'm sure it is, I'm not the only one working on a series-based production with recurring elements and attributes! I wonder how everyone else does it.

Any ideas?

[Robert Young]

The way I would approach it would be to take the most recently finished project, delete all of the assets (video clips, etc) that are not to be part of the generic template, and save the project as "template".
To produce the next new episode, open the "template" project, add your new content, edit, then save the project as "this weeks project" or whatever.
This will leave your preexisting "template" project as it was- a generic template with no content, ready to use again for the next project.
As far as saving audio effects chains- I usually do audio editing in Audition which will save audio effect chains as presets. When you need to apply these effects to a clip in PPro, just right click and "edit in Audition".
You can quickly apply the preset chain in Audition, save the changes, and the new audio file will automatically appear on the PPro timeline.

[John Wiley]

One small modification to Robert's advice:

Open a finished project, and FIRST save it as "template" or whatever new name you choose, THEN delete all the unnecessary assets. Most editors have a subconscious reflex to hit "ctrl + s" at regular intervals which can be particularly dangerous in a situation like this because you might actually save all the changes to the original project. And if you then unwittingly proceed to the "save as" step, the "undo" button will no longer work in the original project - you'll have no way of recovering the finished version.

For any effects presets you want to keep, you can always leave some old media in your project template containing those effects - just make a timeline called "presets" and move all the clips containing effects you want to keep onto that timeline. Then just copy and past from there when working on a new project.

[Robert Young]

Good point John.
A single CTRL S would quite mess things up...

[Ali Jafri]

Thanks for the advice guys!

Just curious....professional network TV shows that rely heavily on templates operate the same way? Just seems like someone was bound to have thought that a more streamlined approach would save time and effort.

[John Wiley]

Most of those network shows are cut on Avid which has a much more comprehensive set of tools for project management, as well as entire departments whose job is managing/archiving/synchronising projects across multiple episodes/seasons/workstations.