Premiere Pro’s Project Manager Can’t Handle Double-Nests

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adobe, archive, cc2017.1, media manage, nest, nested sequence, project manager

So, I just came across another tiny bug in Premiere Pro that I couldn’t find anything about online, so I thought I’d outline it here in case someone else is searching for the same thing.

One of the Offending Nests

I was archiving a project this morning in PPro CC2017.1 (the latest as of this writing), using the “Consolidate and Transcode” option. I thought everything had gone smoothly, until I noticed that two of my nested sequences hadn’t come across properly into the new project. They were represented in the timeline by green clips with diagonal stripes throughout, and behaved as if they simply weren’t there at all. (I.e., transparent video.)

But two other nests had come over just fine, so confusion ensued. I went directly to Google because I am lazy and this is 2017, but found nothing. After a while I gave up, went back to the original project and cracked open the two broken nests to find… more nests!

So, for whatever reason, Premiere Pro’s Project Manager fails to recognize and transcode nested sequences inside of nested sequences. The solution was to individually select all of the nested sequences in Project Manager and do the archive over again. Everything worked swimmingly the second time.

Hope this helps someone in the distant future. 2017 out.

Premiere Pro Audio Synching Pitfall on Large Files

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adobe, Adobe Creative Cloud, adobe premiere pro cc, audio, creative cloud, editing

So impatient!

Just a quick tip: if you’re seeing the error message “Audio synchronization failure – Could not synchronize one or more clips in the current selection because a match could not be found” when trying to create a multicam clip synched via audio tracks on large files (inhale) – make sure you’ve waited long enough for the audio to conform.

This threw me off today after importing two hour-long clips that I needed to use for a multicam clip. When I checked each clip, Cam A was fine, but Cam B had no audio. Since I was using a rented camera for Cam B, I assumed something might have gone wrong with the on-board mic (Cam A had the real mics), before remembering to check if the audio had been conformed yet.

Since audio takes so long to conform in Premiere Pro, I had already googled the problem and read three different dead-ends before I opened the clip again and discovered the audio magically appeared.

Conforming Audio

An easy mistake to make, so I just thought I’d post this for anyone else impatiently googling that error and not finding the answer. Check the bottom right of your screen to see if it’s still conforming!

Fincher’s Gone Girl was Edited with Premiere Pro CC

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adobe premiere pro cc, film, fincher

Here’s an article detailing the production process. They shot on RED EPIC Dragons at 6K, then punched in to 5K so they could reframe and stabilize in Premiere Pro and After Effects.

Lots more details in the post.

OS X Yosemite and Adobe Creative Cloud 2014

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adobe, Adobe Creative Cloud, adobe premiere pro cc, Apple, creative cloud, Creative Cloud applications, osx, yosemite

When Adobe released its 2014 Creative Cloud applications earlier this year, I put off upgrading due to the usual concerns of “I am not your guinea pig.” But with Apple’s release of Yosemite this week, I decided it was time.

OS X Yosemite

I installed Yosemite this morning, and promptly spent an hour on Apple Maps doing 3D flyovers of various cities. (I gather this feature has been available on Mavericks for a while, but since I never use Apple Maps, I only found it when it got added back to my dock.)

After that I had to download and install an update to TotalFinder (my older version was broken on Yosemite, and I simply cannot be without it for a moment). Although the update is listed as beta, it seems fine so far.

I’ll spare you the laundry list of changes (if laundry lists are your thing, check out Apple’s product page and Lifehacker’s Top Ten Hidden Features), but I do like the changes to Spotlight, and why on Earth it took them this long to make the Full Screen button actually make an app go full screen, I’ll never understand.

Adobe Creative Cloud 2014

Next I installed Premiere Pro 2014, and opened up a recent project to putz around. I immediately had to download new versions of and reinstall my plugins (and in one case buy an upgrade) to get everything to work properly. But once that was done, smooth sailing.

Of course the previous version of Premiere sits alongside 2014, so I was able to go back into my old project when I needed to gather some details to recreate one of those upgraded plugin effects.

All told, it has so far been relatively painless. I did have one crash the first time I opened Premiere, but I’ve closed and reopened it many times since then and it hasn’t repeated. (I suspect it was related to one of the outdated plugins sitting in the timeline.) Editing the project to recreate the various plugin effects exposed no problems, and an export through Media Encoder 2014 worked perfectly.

In sum, this Late 2013 iMac seems to be running both Yosemite and Premiere 2014 without a hitch. I’ll install the rest of CC 2014 in the coming days and update this post; I’ll do the same upgrades on my Mid 2009 MBP soon and post those results separately.

Adobe Premiere Pro / Audition Roundtrip Tutorial

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adobe, adobe premiere pro cc, audio, audition, creative cloud, editing

I created this tutorial for anyone who needs an overview of working with audio in Adobe Premiere Pro and Audition. It includes a basic roundtrip, splitting a stereo track into mono tracks, normalizing speech with the Speech Volume Leveler, and EQ’ing for voice.

A Year with Adobe Creative Cloud

I recently celebrated my one-year anniversary with Adobe Creative Cloud. This might seem odd, as my last Adobe-related blog post was about not wanting to subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud. But while I had my concerns, I was already fully converted from FCP7 to Premiere Pro CS6, and I wasn’t about to go back. So instead, I went forward.

In a word, my first year with Adobe Creative Cloud has been uneventful. Which is good. I’ve had a few crashes, but fewer than with any other NLE I have used. It’s never refused to start because of network issues (as some feared). Basically, it’s worked, and worked well.

I have, for the most part, kept current on incremental updates (although I never update in the middle of a project). I’ve never had anything break or witnessed other untoward behavior after an update.  And while I have enjoyed knowing that I am always on the latest and greatest, I honestly can’t think of a single new feature in the last year that I’ve used. I was looking forward to audio scrubbing without pitch-shifting in the in the new 2014 update, but…

…due to reports of crashing, lost work and general nastiness, I have not yet updated to CC 2014 (released just a few weeks ago). Once they release the first major patch, I’ll give it another look-see. But until then, my audio scrubs are all chipmunks, yo.

Although I find the integration of Premiere Pro with the rest of Adobe’s Creative Suite to be nice, I find that I actually need to use the other programs less. Indeed, I just recently used UltraKey (in PPro) to pull a temporary green screen key while I worked on a project, with the intent of using KeyLight in After Effects to pull the final key when ready. But UltraKey did such a great job, I was happy with those results and didn’t even need to bother with AE. Likewise, with FCP7, I was firmly in the habit of creating all titles in Photoshop and importing into FCP7; but the titler in PPro is powerful enough that I find myself using Photoshop less and less. And of course, it’s much more convenient.

The exception here is Adobe Soundtrack, which I now use on every project. It started out just as a way to tackle major audio problems; but exporting an entire sequence to Soundtrack is so quick and clean, and the experience of using it is so simple and powerful, I gradually used it more and more until it became a standard part of my workflow.

Honestly, my biggest problem with Premiere Pro CC is more of an annoyance than a problem: most of the time – the longer I have it open the more likely this becomes – when I shut down PPro, it crashes. It doesn’t lose any work, and it (usually) doesn’t crash while I’m actually using it. But when I finish up for the night, save the project and hit Command-Q, the Premiere process starts pegging my CPU, and I have to force quit. Almost every time. Unless it’s only been open for half an hour. Again, nothing bad has ever come of this – it’s just really annoying. And it is particularly galling given that a) I keep Adobe up-to-date, b) I keep OS X up-to-date, and c) this machine is a beast. It’s got 8 freaking cores and 32 GB of RAM – what more does Premiere want from me?

Anyway, all in all, I’m happy with CC. For now. I still don’t know exactly what happens if I ever want to move away from it, but I don’t think it would be too painful. I could keep the subscription live for a few months while I transition, and even after canceling it, I figure I could always reactivate it for a month here and there if I ever needed to get back into an old project.

Right? I hope? Yes? Please tell me I’m right. I really don’t want all my work hijacked when the next big thing comes around….

Adobe’s Creative Cloud has 1 Huge Flaw

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adobe premiere pro cc

NOTE: This article was originally posted 6/27/2013.

If Adobe’s new Creative Cloud offering has done nothing else, it has generated LOTS of discussion. There are strong opinions both for and against, and many compelling arguments made by each camp.

But at the end of the day, there is one major concern I can’t seem to shake. Yes, I am fine with the idea of paying in monthly installments instead of all at once; yes, I like the idea of being always up-to-date with the latest versions; and no, I’m not worried that Adobe will suddenly stop innovating because they have everyone locked into 12 month contracts.

What does concern me, though, is what happens if (when) I one day stop paying. Let’s say I move all of my clients over to Adobe Premiere Pro. I spend the next three years doing all my client work in Premiere Pro, and everyone is happy. But then one day, for some reason or another, I decide there’s a better option out there. Maybe Apple fixes Final Cut and releases an upgrade that trumps everything Adobe is doing; maybe Adobe pulls an Apple and wrecks their own software; maybe another company that doesn’t even exist yet releases a game-changing product that works better than everything out there. Whatever the reason, I now want to leave Premiere Pro, so I cancel my subscription, stop paying my monthly fee and invest in something else.

Poof.

Just like that, in an instant, I lose access to three years of work. All my clients’ projects, everything I’ve worked on in three years is gone because Premiere Pro stops working. It’s not like I can simply choose not to upgrade, move to another platform, but keep the old version around in case I need it (hello, Apple!). In the Creative Cloud world, my old version stops working, and I lose access to all my projects. A client wants a quick update to a video from last year? Nope. I want to build a new title sequence based on one I already made? Gone. I want to update my reel with my most recent work? Fail.

I love Adobe Premiere Pro. I am so happy I made the switch from Final Cut Pro 7 to Premiere Pro CS6. But this single concern keeps me from moving to Creative Cloud. I don’t know how this will eventually resolve itself, but I hear Lightworks is doing good things….