XDCAM EX in Premiere and After Effects CS6

[Mitchell Lewis]

Okay, here is our "solution". Thanks to Eric Addison for explaining this work flow.

1) Using the Content Browser copy all your footage from the SxS card to hard drive used for archiving footage in it's original form.
2) Use Adobe Prelude to ingest all the files and move them to our RAID
3) Then, while still in Prelude, rename, organize, trim, etc...all the clips
4) Then select all the clips, right click and choose Send To Premiere
5) Edit in Premiere as normal
6) To transfer files to After Effects, just select the files you want in Premiere and copy/paste them into After Effects. You can create a folder to put them in to be further organized.

Honestly, I've now learned there are many ways to do this. If I was to only edit in After Effects, then I would probably choose Doug Jensen's way and use the Content Browser to re-wrap them as MOV's.

I also kinda like Dennis's suggestion to search out all the clips and pull them out of their cryptic folder hierarchy and put them together in a new folder.

We're choosing to use Adobe's workflow with the hopes that over time, they will further massage it so it gets better and better.

[Dennis Hingsberg]

My solution doesn't require the moving of any files and therefore any time needed to copy + paste + move. Sorry if that was not clear.

You are simply streamlining the way all files are displayed in one window so you can drop them onto your Adobe project box. This also preserves the original folder structure since again, they are not modified.

Also if you don't care for the BPAV hierarchy then what you can do is when you copy the file clips over from your media, again just do a quick search them copy/move the files over to your new folder.

[Doug Jensen]

Dennis, I htink your workflow could be simplified by just using the Media Browser within Premiere, thus eliminating using Finder and filtering. Premiere automatically detects the video clips within the BPAV folder without making you do anything special. Just navigate to the folder and you'll see thumbnails. Once you see the files, you can then selectively choose any or all of files to import into the project.

Mitchell, I see you're renaming your clips with Prelude. I would never rename my clips because I want all my BPAV archives to match the files names I'm using in editing. It makes organization so much easier if a clip always has the same name no matter which copy I'm looking at or where it is located. Just food for thought.

[Mitchell Lewis]

Doug: Prelude/Premiere doesn't actually rename the clip, it just makes it look like the clip is renamed using meta data. It's the exact same way with the Content Browser. If you rename a clip in the Content Browser and then go and look at the actual file, the file name hasn't changed. It only looks like it's been changed in the application.

Thanks again for everyone's help. I wish I could communicate with Adobe, because there are some easy additions that could be made to solve a lot of issues.

[Dennis Hingsberg]

My understanding is Mitchell is looking for an efficient work flow to import files in to both Adobe Premiere and After Effects, not just Premiere so I question what the point of even using Media Browser?

There is no point to rewrap files in Adobe CS6 and waste time, just edit the files natively.

After you import all your clips you can just as well preview them in either Premiere or After Effects and remove the clips or "takes" you are not interested in.

I generally color the clips I feel I won't use, or move them to a folder to keep things nice and organized.

There are 100 ways to do the same thing, however with the method I suggested you drag your movie clip files onto the Adobe application project box and its done. Not sure what could be easier than that to be honest.

[Mitchell Lewis]

Dennis: I think the difference is that some people like to spend the additional time up front to organize all their clips. Renaming them, trimming them, etc... While other people just import all their clips and just use thumbnails (Media Browser) to find the clips they need.

I have a friend who mostly produces commercials and he never renames his clips because he's normally only working with 10-20 clips. But our company does a far amount of long format projects where you're wrangling 100's of clips. Think about if you were editing a reality television show where there were 1000's of clips. Organizing them in advance becomes a necessity.

We've learned a TON over the last 24 hours and I appreciate everyone sharing their workflows with us. I don't think there's a "wrong workflow" out there. :)

[Dennis Hingsberg]

Ah well your first post didn't say you wanted to trim and rename clips, I was specifically writing a solution in reference to your post.

Me myself, I use the **Sony** media browser to review takes or clips I know I want to drop in my NLE or effects software and do my pre-selection there. Also its handy for when sitting in front of clients without having to open up Adobe or FCP...

Anyway glad to see you got some great ideas from folks.

Cheers,

[Mitchell Lewis]

Dennis: Thanks! But are you confusing the Sony Content Browser app with the Adobe Media Browser window built into Premiere?

[Zoran Vincic]

Mitchell: I don't think it's transcoding anything that way as it's bloody fast in doing so. I think it just rewraps, try it yourself.

[Eric Addison]

Mitchell - I noticed you're using Content Browser to ingest your footage from the cards, then going into Prelude...are you aware that Prelude can ingest from the cards, save to where ever you need to, and even do a verify to make sure it all copied over correctly?

Just seems like that would save you a step.

[Mitchell Lewis]

Zoran & Eric: Thanks for the replies. Okay, I'll admit, when I saw the words "transcode" in Prelude, I assumed it wouldn't rewrap the footage. (embarrassed) I'm going to give it a try on Monday.

Thank you!

[Eric Addison]

Mitchell - Prelude can both ingest from the card to where ever you want, and it can send the clips to AME to transcode to whatever codecs you have installed on your system. Also, you can also choose which clips to ingest from the card so you can weed out any bad takes.

Prelude's a pretty nice little program. Not many folks know all that it can do. I just presented on it at a local Premiere Pro user group, and was surprised how many people had no idea all it could do.