Merged clips in Premiere Pro CC an absolute nightmare

[Greg Popp]

I just finished a rough cut of a 10 minute dramatic narrative.  All in all, I found CC to be a fine experience.  However, my project is nearly all merged clips, created with Canon 1D-C transcoded ProRes 422 4K video files, and WAV files from an external audio recorder.

Here's a (crippling) list of ALL the things that don't work currently in CC with merged clips:

No Match Frame

No Replace Edits (picture matches, but audio gets out of sync)

And for that matter, NO out-of-sync indicators at all.  None.

No making SUBCLIPS in the project panel (via source panel ins and outs).  A subclip gets created, but it's not the part you selected.

No retention of MARKER comments.  Once you select a new clip, the comments go POOF!  Gone.

Again, the good news is I wasn't under a deadline, and I was able to work through all of these problems.  This is indeed a stunning interface and experience, but were I to do it all over again, I would have synced everything with Plural Eyes outside of Premiere, married audio and picture (efffectively doubling my media), and imported those clips.  C'est la vie. 

Please help and report this nightmare with merged clips.  Thank you! 

[James Edmunds]

Thanks for this report. I have an upcoming project for which this advice will be useful... actually, I have heard even Adobe folks encourage the use of Plural Eyes for a really complex project.

I would encourage you to file feature requests, as you seem to have some specific ideas about what would help the workflow.

Thanks,

James

[bubbadoonyc]

Whoah. That sounds like a nightmare. I've just been experimenting with the merge clips features in PPCC and it's nowhere near as useful as Pluraleyes.

But regardless of the merging method — no match frame?!?!

[Jim_Simon]

Match Frame on Merged clips is spotty and unpredictable.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it seems to work but goes to the wrong frame, somtimes it does nothing at all.

[JaysonM-Y]

I've never tried this. Usually just PluralEyes > Import to PP > Work off two open timelines... Or you could  open your merged clips into the source viewer and export them to their own file(not effecient in any way but at least you can add markers now Z)...

[daxmacrog]

An absolute nightmare. Subclips of merged clips lose their edit points, as you point out. That cost me a day's work after I had broken down a series of interviews into select subclips.

After repeating all that work just using copies of clips with the appropriate in/out points set, the audio tracks have become unplayable. There's clearly a bug in the way that it maps mono channels in merged clips.

Match Frame doesn't work, and I've never been able to get waveform sync to work either.

Merged clips was a nightmare when I switched from FCP7 to CS5.5. I thought it was surprising that it would be so terrible 5 versions in. Two major releases later and it's still not fixed.

[Jim_Simon]

I thought it was surprising that it would be so terrible 5 versions in.

CS5.5 was actually the very first version to have the Merge Clips feature.

[daxmacrog]

Ha! Noted. But it doesn't change the fact that it's still a mess years later.

[Jim_Simon]

Agreed.

[Mark Mapes]

Several bugs involving merged clips and subclips thereof are fixed in the CC7.2 update.

[Guest]

Which ones? Is there a place where I could find a changelog?

[Jim_Simon]

http://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/whats-new-7-2.html

[Guest]

thanks, but that's not really a change log... avid for example list every single bug that has been addressed with an update, so clients know what problems exactly have been solved.

[Mark Mapes]

I think this is more what you were looking for--not, perhaps, exactly what you would like, but more apropos: http://forums.adobe.com/message/5925105#5925105

[Guest]

much better, thanks...

[Geoffrey Beane]

Mark: is the bug with merged clips and match frames supposed to be gone at this point? I'm on the latest version (I'm pretty sure) 8.0.1.

I have a merged clip. I'll frequently lay down both video and audio of a merged clip in my timeline, and then decide at a certain point to unlink the two and delete the video track. But if, at a later point, I want some of that video back - too bad, I'm out of luck. I can't match frame from the audio track and go back accurately to the master clip. It'll take me to the right clip but always to the wrong place in that clip.

This is never a problem with "regular", non-merged clips. They match back correctly.

I assume this is still something that hasn't been fixed with merged clips though?

[Geoffrey Beane]

One further, weird update on this: I've purchased two seats for CC, and on my other system, match frame is working just fine!! Go figure. Exact same version, 8.0.1....

[Mark Mapes]

I have not personally tested the exact scenario you outline where the video has been deleted from the sequence. I've put that on my ToDo list.

FWIW, I find no open bugs in our database involving Match Frame with a merged clip.

On the system where Match Frame goes to the wrong place, were the clips merged in 8.0.1, or is it a project you started in an earlier version? If it's the latter, then it could well be that clips merged by an earlier version of PPro will still manifest a bug that is otherwise fixed in the current version.

[CONVEY:]

I am using 8.0.1, and I'm experiencing the bug where subclips derived from merged clips do not display the correct frames and often won't play.  I just submitted a formal bug report about this.  After researching these forums, I see that the subclips-from-merged-clips bug was apparently fixed in 7.2 and there hasn't been much discussion since then.  Is it possible that after 8.0 there was an accidental reintroduction of this bug?

In answer to #17, my clips were all merged in 8.0.1.  I do start my projects with a skeleton/template project I created prior to 8.0, but it has been updated/saved under 8.0.1 and all of the new work, including the importing of the actual clips, was done in 8.0.1.

[Mark Mapes]

First of all, to be perfectly clear, there have been more than one bug in this area, so referring to "the" subclip-from-merged-clip bug could be misleading.

If memory serves, some bugs were fixed in 7.1 +/or 7.2, but I'm certain that others remained. In fact, some problems might have been introduced in 7.2. However, I'm not aware of any that were introduced in CC2014 (aka 8.0)

In any case, I can tell you that a few bugs in this vein are fixed in the release that was announced in a blog post last Sunday (scheduled release date not specified), but unfortunately we were not able to nail them all.

[Geoffrey Beane]

Yeah, it seems this bug, with merged clips, is a persistent one. On several fronts.

1. The subclips that sqwarellc references (which I've never tried).

2. The match frame (I redid a merge in 8.0.1, to be sure my clips weren't from an earlier version - match frame still doesn't work).

3. And simple tasks like inserting or overlaying audio only. See my previous frustrations on this front that you and I had a brief exchange on - Insert Edit and Overwrite Edit Crashes This One Premiere Project

[Geoffrey Beane]

BTW, the match frame on merged clips works fine when I'm matching from video in the timeline. It's just when I have only audio and I'm matching back that it gets confused.

[jamesp2]

Mark Mapes wrote:

First of all, to be perfectly clear, there have been more than one bug in this area, so referring to "the" subclip-from-merged-clip bug could be misleading.

Mark, thanks for your candor, but to my knowledge, this is the first  time anyone at Adobe has even acknowledged that "merge clip" isn't actually usable -- much less published a "known anomaly" account of this and other significant defects. 

Double-system sound is the norm for narrative filmmaking; is it really too much to ask that Adobe inform its customers what's known to be wrong with the feature designed to deal with it, and steer them to workarounds?   Why is it necessary to refer to forums like this one, and hope the user reports you're reading are accurate and up to date?

[Geoffrey Beane]

Agreed. Mark's candor is definitely appreciated. But I'm of the same opinion - rather than have us waste time trying to figure out why it's not working, it'd be good to know it's flaws up front. Better yet, maybe not even include it in the software so I don't go through the frustration of using it, realizing it's not so great, and then deciding that I probably ought to (unfortunately) be investing in another piece of software like PluralEyes to do my work effectively.

Of course, I will now go out and drop money on PluralEyes, and 6 months from now there'll be an update and the merge clip function will work perfectly...

[Eddie S]

Just to second all of your posts - this is proving a real problem for me too.