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Keith Moreau
Keith Moreau
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Mac - Windows Project Sharing: Media Linking issues

Jun 21, 2012 8:29 AM

I just got a Windows 7 machine to experiment with using both my old Mac Pro and Windows 7 CS 5.5 to work on the same project.

 

 

I am using the Mac Pro as a server, a bunch of fast drives are hooked up to it. Right now I'm using Mac 10.7.3 and sharing those drives via the SMB protocol. This has some issues, like sometimes Windows can't connect to the Mac, but if I reset the Mac's SMB sharing and reboot it seems to fix this (fingers crossed.)

 

 

The main issue is that Premiere Pro cannot find some files on the Mac Pro's SMB shares. I'm not sure how many it finds or doesn't or why it finds some and not others, but it first asks me to locate a file, which I tediously do, and then PPro churns a bit and then asks me for another one. I'm using a lot of AVCHD material, so in some cases the media files have the same name, such as "00000.MTS". Premiere Pro doesn't seem to be able to provide any information on the original path of the file it wants to find, though I am sure that path info is somewhere in the Project file. It just doesn't present it to me when it asks me to locate it.

 

 

This makes finding non-unique files pretty hard.

 

 

Have others encountered this issue and what was your solution? Is there a utility I can use on Windows 7 to allow it to see the Mac SMB shares in a way that it can interpret the paths seamlessly?

 

 

The good thing is that PPro Windows is finding most of the files after I point it to one or 2 files it can't find, so sometimes this is working, though mysteriously.

 

 

Thanks much for any advice!

 

 

-Keith

1150 Views   14 Replies   Latest reply: nw42, Jul 5, 2012 11:47 PM
 
Replies
  • Jim Simon
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    1. Jim Simon,
    Jun 21, 2012 9:14 AM   in reply to Keith Moreau
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    I don't think this is related at all to your setup.  PP would behave the same way for anyone with any disk setup.  It's just the nature of the seriously flawed tapeless workflow currently in use today.

     

    I personally recommend writing strongly worded letters to Sony and Panasonic, the developers of AVCHD, letting them know that they got it wrong and need to fix it, that they need to store all data - video, multichannel audio, thumbnail, timecode and other metadata - in a single MXF file which can be moved/renamed as desired without breaking any functionality.

     
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  • Keith Moreau
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    2. Keith Moreau,
    Jun 21, 2012 10:26 AM   in reply to Jim Simon
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    Thanks Jim, however I do believe that the Premiere Pro project contains enough metadata path information to find the files. For example I do similar things with FCP and it will provide the exact path to what it couldn't find, chosing to search within it's interface will eventually find the correct file. PPro (at least 5.5) doesn't present this interface. That is a PPro issue.

     

    I also believe that camcorder manufacturers could help by allowing unique names for the AVCHD MTS files. I don't think there is really any limitation on this, it's just lack of understanding of workflow on the manufacturers' part. I need a solution now, I don't think writing letters to manufacturers is going to get me what I need right now.

     

    As I say, for the most part, with very little work for me Premiere Pro somehow found many of the correct files, even though they had identical names. It somehow made that association. However, in how it interacts with the OS and how rigorously it searches drives is mysterious and possibly buggy. I'm looking either for a solution for Premiere Pro, or some utility or searching workflow that will help PPro find the finds it really does know about. I am sure that my lack of familiarity with how Windows does this on shares is part of my problem, I'm looking for real solutions that people have used, I'm sure many have been in the exact situation, either by taking a drive over to another windows edit machine or whatever, and they hopefully have worked it out.

     

    Anybody been in my situation and what did you wind up doing?

     

    Thanks much!

     

    -Keith

     
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  • Jim Simon
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    3. Jim Simon,
    Jun 21, 2012 6:28 PM   in reply to Keith Moreau
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    I don't think writing letters to manufacturers is going to get me what I need right now.

     

    Granted.  But the situation isn't likely to get any better if no one complains.

     
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  • SimonHy
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    4. SimonHy,
    Jun 21, 2012 6:48 PM   in reply to Keith Moreau
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    Yeah.. the re-linking functionality in Premiere leaves a lot to be desired.

     

    My approach has been to cancel the useless re-link media dialogue that comes up when you load the program, and instead wait til the project loads and then go to the media bins and relink any offline media. That way you know what the media is that you're relinking, which version of clip 0001.mts you're looking for etc.

     
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  • ComputerNovice25
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    5. ComputerNovice25,
    Jun 21, 2012 7:31 PM   in reply to Jim Simon
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    I would name my folders like this "cam 1" "cam 2" and so on. Then in my bin I'd name them the same way with clips 0000.mts and 0001.mts from cam 1's folder on my smb share inside the same named folder in my premiere project then you only have to re-link 1 clip from each cams folder and premiere will auto find the rest that are inside that same folder if it's missing them.

     

    So basically you'd simply be taking your avchd folder structure etc. and sticking those inside of the cam 1 or cam 2 or w/e main folder system then inside of your  premiere bin you just stick your avchd files that are from the same SD card or camera or shoot or w/e inside a main folder that is named either cam1 or cam2 or shootday6212012 (So it matches your smb's main folders name) or w/e and then when you import that stuff in premiere create a folder in the bin that is the same name that the footage originally came from. So that way you can at least know exactly where to go to re-link everything. Plus if you re-link the first clip from a cam 1 location it will automatically re-link anything else from cam 1 for you. At least in my experince. You'll still have manaully click the stuff from cam 2 and cam 3 clips and so on. But it beats hunting blindly for sure. So even though this isn't perfect it would let you know where to look at.

     
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  • Kevin Monahan
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    6. Kevin Monahan,
    Jun 22, 2012 8:51 AM   in reply to SimonHy
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    SimonHy wrote:

     

    Yeah.. the re-linking functionality in Premiere leaves a lot to be desired.

     

    My approach has been to cancel the useless re-link media dialogue that comes up when you load the program, and instead wait til the project loads and then go to the media bins and relink any offline media. That way you know what the media is that you're relinking, which version of clip 0001.mts you're looking for etc.

     

    Have you made a feature request for better relinking? http://www.adobe.com/go/wish

     
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  • Keith Moreau
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    7. Keith Moreau,
    Jul 2, 2012 11:47 PM   in reply to ComputerNovice25
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    Thanks Novice, I do name my source directories pretty uniquely, as well as bins, which are mirrors of this. It would be really great though if there was some way for me to tell Windows how to interpret the path information that Premiere Pro is giving it from the Mac paths from the Project file and covert them to windows shares paths. Also I don't find that I skip the initial media not found at project open time and then reconnect later that it will find associated files in the same directories as the bins. I have to link each file, very, very tedious and making me serious consider ditching the notion of using the Window PC with Premiere. Also if I work on the PC, then need to work on the same file on the Mac, I have to do the same thing all over with the Mac, though for some reason the Mac finds the files easier and links more at a time if I point to one in a bin.

     

    I really have to find a solution to this 'cross platform' issue as I know I'll be working on the same projects on Mac and PC for a while at least, there has to be somebody out there that has tried to do what I am doing.

     
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  • Bill Hunt
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    8. Bill Hunt,
    Jul 3, 2012 9:00 AM   in reply to Keith Moreau
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    I don't find that I skip the initial media not found at project open time and then reconnect later that it will find associated files in the same directories as the bins. I have to link each file, very, very tedious and making me serious consider ditching the notion of using the Window PC with Premiere.

    If one chooses the various Skip, Offline, etc., when the "Where is file ____ ?" dialog, and then does a Save, they loose the semi-automatic file linking function, and then must manually Relink Media, which CAN be tedious.

     

    Basically, there is one chance to use the semi-auto relinking.

     

    Good luck,

     

    Hunt

     
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  • Keith Moreau
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    9. Keith Moreau,
    Jul 3, 2012 9:14 AM   in reply to Bill Hunt
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    Thanks Bill. I do have a little more efficient strategy, which is that, my meager experience, Premiere Pro looks for the files in alphabetical order of the bins. If it asks for 00000.MTS, I can assume it's the 1st bin. Then I skip all the rest. Then I save, then open again, this time for the 2nd bin, using the automatic linking. I do this for all the bins. Slightly less tedious then linking each file, especially if there are a lot of files in each bin. This works for MTS files, which all reside in the same directory, I don't think it works with XDCAM EX files, which reside in adjacent directories.

     

    Is there some utility on Windows that allows me to 'fool' Windows into knowing about the Mac paths that are stored in Premiere Pro, some type of mapping or configuration file in windows where I can say, for example "5500_GB_EXT_2" == "Z:Mac-Pro5500_GB_EXT2" Since on my Windows I have fixed drive mapping to my Mac's shared drives over the network, this would be a one time setting. If not I can't bear to have to spend hours relinking every time I use the same project, created on Mac, on Windows.

     
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  • lasvideo
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    10. lasvideo,
    Jul 3, 2012 9:36 AM   in reply to Keith Moreau
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    Lots of folks are very unhappy with media management and weak relinking abilities. Many requests for implementation of fixes have been made with no results, yet.

     

    Josh, a creeative and motivated editor has come up with a temperary fix, in hopes that Adobe indeed does more than listen on this particular issue.

     

    http://www.retooled.net/?page_id=409

     
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  • Bill Hunt
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    11. Bill Hunt,
    Jul 3, 2012 9:37 AM   in reply to Keith Moreau
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    Is there some utility on Windows that allows me to 'fool' Windows into knowing about the Mac paths that are stored in Premiere Pro,

    Keith,

     

    I am not familiar with such a utility, but that does not mean that such does not exist.

     

    In my experience I am going one-way only, for X-platform Project, i.e. bringing in a Mac Project to my PC, and never going back to a Mac. I use MacDrive, to help reading the Mac external, but once I have Copied everything over to the PC, do not use it, or anything else from that point on. Once onto MY external, I just use the Finder, available with "Where is file ____ ?" to relink semi-automatically, and then do a Save_As for that Project, and begin editing.

     

    Maybe others will have some ideas for you.

     

    Good luck,

     

    Hunt

     
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  • nw42
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    12. nw42,
    Jul 5, 2012 2:47 PM   in reply to Bill Hunt
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    Hi,

     

    I'm aware of a lot of relinking issues - on the other hand:

     

    1. Recently I opened a Premiere project that was created on a local machine from another workstation via network shares (localy the footage was linked to the PC typical drive letters - but from the network there only was a different named UNC share) Premiere loaded the project without any problems - I don't remember if it asked about a single file location at all...

     

    2. Two weeks ago we conformed a full feature from a Finalcut Pro 7 sequence via XML and it only asked four or five times for fotage files to read a 9MB sized XML and about 1500 source footage files.

     

    so it's not always that bad - but for sure there are still to much issues left...

     

    keep improving Adobe...

     
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  • Keith Moreau
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    13. Keith Moreau,
    Jul 5, 2012 2:55 PM   in reply to nw42
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    NW42 - Thanks for the input. Yes, I found some things linked automatically, but others didn't. It would be good to have a seamless process here.

     

    However...As an experiment I looked at a Mac Adobe Premiere Project file with a industrial-strength text editor and you know what? It's all XML that can be edited! Paths to media are all in Unix stype paths.

     

    I was going to then save a simple project with my Windows Premiere Pro to compare how they stored paths and then my new PC stopped working and I'm getting a replacement. When I get a new PC I'll experiment and post my results, but I have a feeling that seamless use of these files might just involve a simple 'search and replace' of the Mac path info with Windows path info. Since I'm sharing about 4-5 network drives it's just a replacement of 5 strings. This would be sooooo much less trouble.

     

    If anybody at Adobe is listening, do you have any comment on editing the Premiere Pro Project Files?

     
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  • nw42
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    14. nw42,
    Jul 5, 2012 11:47 PM   in reply to Keith Moreau
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    Hi Keith,

     

    oh yes - that for sure will work - was't sure as I wrote my first post about the Premiere Pro XML structure - but you are right it's pure text...

     

    --> before we conformed our Finalcut Pro XML sequence in Premiere the cutters interchanged the sequence regular between Germany and India - Finalcut Pro 5 - PAL preview - Finalcut Pro 7 1080p preview

     

    to get this woking without offline media we "changed" the XML sequence file by hand and used search & replace to set the footage files and display scaling for the files accordingly

     

    If Premiere gets in trouble with automatic relinking - a text editor could be a good tool to get the issu fixed...

     

    nw42

     
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