Importing Media into Adobe Premiere Pro
- Importing Files into Adobe Premiere Pro
- Tape-Based Workflows
- Tapeless Workflows
- Supported File Types
- Modifying Clips
- An Introduction to Adobe Dynamic Link
- Next Steps
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
The first step to starting a project is getting your media into Adobe Premiere Pro. No matter what kind of project you’re doing, if you can’t import media, you’re stuck. Adobe Premiere Pro offers different paths to importing including an Import command, Media Browser, and Adobe Dynamic Link. The one you choose will be based on the source material and your objectives.
Of course, not everything will come in the way you expect it. So, it’s essential you know how to modify clips. Adobe Premiere Pro also doesn’t work alone: It’s crucial you understand the real “superpowers” of the suite. You can draw assets from the rest of the Adobe Creative Suite components, including Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Audition, and even Adobe SpeedGrade. In this chapter, you’ll learn about importing files and the effect it will have on your system.
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Importing Files into Adobe Premiere Pro
Overall, Adobe Premiere Pro behaves the way most other editorial systems do. It provides a link from the original media to a pointer that lives inside your project. After you’ve imported media files, moving them outside the application can break links.
Adobe Premiere Pro Likes Most Formats
You’ll find that Adobe Premiere Pro can handle pretty much any file format you can throw at it. This is especially true for formats that other editorial systems balk at, such as DVD VOBs, FLV, and WMV (on Windows) files. Don’t ever be afraid to import a file to see whether a clip can be used.
You can directly import assets into Adobe Premiere Pro in four ways:
- Standard importing by choosing File > Import
- The Media Browser panel
- Adobe Prelude
- Adobe Bridge
Whichever way you use Adobe Premiere Pro, it will create a link to your media, whether the media consists of videos, stills, or audio files (or even a dynamic project from one of the other Adobe Creative Suite apps, such as After Effects).
Super-Fast Imports
Which is the fastest way to access the import command? That’s easy. Just double-click in an empty area of the Project panel to bring up the Import dialog.
Standard Importing
Standard importing is probably the most straightforward type of importing you can do, and you’ve been doing it for years. To import any file, choose File > Import. If you prefer to use keyboard shortcuts, press Command+I (Ctrl+I) to open the standard Import dialog for Macintosh (Figure 4.1) or for Windows (Figure 4.2).
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Figure 4.1. The Standard OS X Import dialog; note the search box in the upper-right corner.
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Figure 4.2. The Windows Import dialog; note the search box in the upper-right corner.
Let’s import a clip to see this process.
Choose File > Open, and navigate to Lessons and Media > Lesson 04 > 04_getting_started.prproj.
This is is an empty project that’s set up for the media in use.
- Choose File > Import.
Drag-and-Drop Import
Technically, you can drag and drop to import using the default OS file browser—the Finder in Mac OS and Windows Explorer in Windows. If you open a file window in your OS on top of Adobe Premiere Pro, you can drag and drop directly to the Project panel. This drag-and-drop interoperability is fairly wide and flexible beyond just a file browser. It even works with some other management software, such as iTunes, iPhoto, Picasa, and Adobe Bridge.
- Navigate to the Lessons and Media > Lesson 04 > Imports folder on your local drive.
Real-World NamingWe’re naming the bin to File Menu Imported solely to help keep straight how we got media into Adobe Premiere Pro. In the real world, you should use proper bin-naming techniques, such as by interviews, exteriors, location names, selects, and so on.
- Select the first clip (0022AO.mp4), and click the Import button.
- Click the New Bin button at the bottom of the Project panel or press Command+/ (Ctrl+/).
- Name the bin File Menu Imported, and drag the clip into the new bin.
- Repeat these steps for the two other clips in the Lesson 4 folder (0024P1.mp4 and 0025RB.mp4).
The Common Media Folder
We have a standard template we like to use for all new projects. It’s a series of folders that you can use to get and stay organized at the desktop level. In this video, you’ll explore the common media folder approach to media management.
Using the Media Browser
Our favorite import method, by far, is the Media Browser (Figure 4.3). Its flexibility makes it superior to the standard file system import. Not only does it display the files in a straight list, but it also adjusts the view using the metadata. Being able to see this meta-data makes it far easier to select from long lists of files or shots.
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Figure 4.3. The Media Browser has the capability to display clips and cards from popular formats like P2, XDCAM, RED, and even Arri.
Projects Too!
Yes, Adobe Premiere Pro projects and After Effects projects can be imported into the Project panel as well. Adobe Premiere Pro permits only one project to be open at a time. If you want to access a second project, you have to import it.
By default, you’ll find the Media Browser in the lower-left corner (if your workspace is set to Editing). You can also quickly access it by pressing Shift+8. Because it’s a dedicated panel in Adobe Premiere Pro, you can save it to a specific workspace or move it around so it lives in a different part of the interface.
The major benefits of the Media Browser include the following:
- Auto sensing of camera data—AVCHD, Canon XF, P2, RED, Arri, Sony HDV, and XDCAM (EX and HD)
- Narrowing the display to a specific file type, such as JPEG, TIFF, XML, AAF, and more
- Viewing and customizing the display of metadata
- Spanned clips appear as a single element
Once the Media Browser is open, you’ll find that it is not significantly different from browsing using the OS. You can navigate through the folders on the left side and use the up, down, left, and right arrows in the upper-right corner.
Open Without Opening
You can open any clip in the Source Monitor without actually importing it into Adobe Premiere Pro. If you do choose to directly edit it to your Timeline, the clip will automatically be added to the project. The Metadata workspace is fantastic for this sort of use.
Playing Without Opening
You can use the Hoverscrub option as well as J-K-L shortcuts on media while it’s still in the Media Browser. This makes it easy to browse and locate clips without first importing them.
Camera media
Adobe Premiere Pro’s Media Browser (Figure 4.5) automatically recognizes camera media, meaning that if you navigate into a directory of XDCAM, P2, or RED files (among others), it will autorecognize the footage. This makes it easy to use and adjust metadata from the field.
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Figure 4.5. P2 card import in the Media Browser
Manually Sift
Sometimes you’ll be looking in a folder that contains a copy of a media card along with other files. When this happens, Adobe Premiere Pro will automatically assume the files are camera media, ignoring other elements you might want. You’ll need to manually switch the folder view back to a standard file listing to see those files.
Sometimes a Thousand Words Are Better Than a Picture
We’re huge fans of the thumbnail view in CS6 because of hoverscrub. But there are times where we really want to see more information than just the picture. To see this information, you must switch to the list view in the bottom left of the Media Browser.
Let’s use the Media Browser to import the clips from a copy of a P2 card.
- Start with the same project from the preceding exercise.
- Click in the Media Browser, or press Shift+8.
- Press the grave accent (`) key to display the Media Browser full-screen.
- Navigate to Lessons and Media > Lesson 04 > Imports > P2 CARD 1.
Try hoverscrubbing by moving your mouse across the images.
What is the Media Cache?
To improve playback and lessen the load on the CPU, some formats—particularly the more compressed HD formats—will need indexing and caching. As you import these files, Adobe Premiere Pro takes a moment and builds an internal index to lessen stress on the system.
Configure the settings for the media cache by choosing Preferences > Media.
Cache files are generally small. You have the option to move them (as mentioned in Chapter 2, “Configuring Your Nonlinear Editor”) to live somewhere else. The main advantage of this would be to offload these files from the internal hard drive to your fastest drive.
The media cache database should never be moved, but on a regular basis, it should be cleaned (Figure 4.4). How frequently you do that depends on your facility. If you’re a news organization, you probably should clean this on a monthly basis at a minimum.
Figure 4.4. It’s suggested that you clean the media cache database on a regular basis.
- Change from the thumbnail view to the list view by clicking the list icon in the bottom left of the Media Browser.
- Select the three clips (002AO, 0024P1, 0025RB), and choose File > Import from Media Browser.
- Press the grave accent (`) key to return the Media Browser to normal size.
- Click the Project panel to make it active, create a bin called From Media Browser, and move all the clips you just imported into that bin.
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Want to Transfer Manually?
Later in this chapter, we talk about the idea of creating a clone of your card-based media and offer other thoughts on file-based workflows.
Narrowing file types
Being organized in the editorial process is a key skill, both within and outside of Adobe Premiere Pro. Yet, sometimes you’ll find yourself scanning a long list of files for a specific format (Figure 4.6). An easy way to reduce the number of files you’re looking at is to limit the file types to the specific format you need.
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Figure 4.6. Not only can you limit the files to a specific format, but you can also select multiple formats, such as stills, which makes finding just the stills in a directory quick and painless.
Customizing the Metadata in the Media Browser
Having a complete view of metadata information is ideal, especially if you work with XDCAM or P2 or other formats with rich metadata, where you can set information such as scene number and ratings while you’re out in the field. But metadata isn’t very valuable unless you can access it. Fortunately, the Media Browser permits that. Adobe Premiere Pro maintains a custom directory view for each format.
Here’s how to access the different directory viewers.
- In the top right of the Media Browser panel, click the panel menu and choose Edit Columns. You must be in list view for this to work.
- Select a directory viewer to customize, such as P2 (Figure 4.7).
Figure 4.7. Remember that each directory viewer is unique; customizing P2 doesn’t customize XDCAM (or any of the others).
- Add or remove columns by selecting them relevant to your needs.
- Use the Move Up or Move Down button to rearrange the order of columns.
- Click OK to store your column settings.
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Adobe Prelude
New in the CS6 family is Adobe Prelude. Think of Prelude as a “preprocessor” for your file-based media. It will allow you to preview your media, choose which clips you want, and even allow a logger or producer to do some basic editing.
Ingesting into Adobe Prelude
This video goes over the basics of launching Adobe Prelude, starting a project, and ingesting some media.
Most important, Prelude can copy your media from one location, such as the card that came from your camera, to a specific set location, helping you stay organized. And it’s even possible to make extra backups of your media at the same time. The best part? The data with these copies is verified, which ensures that every bit is successfully copied and backed up.
Ingesting
The first step to working with Prelude is to ingest the media. Ingesting means adding the media to your drives. By ingesting to the right location, such as your media drive, you’ll end up quickly organized for future editing.
Let’s ingest some media.
- Launch Adobe Prelude, and then click the New Project icon on the Welcome screen (Figure 4.8).
Figure 4.8. You can quickly start a project in Adobe Prelude; the method is nearly identical to Adobe Premiere Pro.
You’re going to capture the media to your desktop. Realistically, you’d pick your own media location for this. You’re creating this folder so you have an easy time finding (and later deleting) the media you’re creating on your machine.
- In the dialog box, navigate to your desktop folder.
- Create a folder called Card Media.
- Name the project Desert P2 footage, and save it in the newly created folder.
You’re now looking at the Prelude interface (Figure 4.9). There are four buttons in the top left to help focus on the streamlined workflow.
Figure 4.9. The four major steps in Prelude are echoed by the buttons Ingest, Logging, List, and Rough Cut.
Copy First or Directly from CardIn this exercise, the media was already copied to your drive. Adobe Prelude can work directly from a media card and can transfer that safely to a destination drive for you.
- Click the Ingest button.
A drive/file list comes up that resembles the Media Browser in Adobe Premiere Pro.
- Navigate to Lessons and Media > Lesson 04 > Imports > P2 Card 2 (Figure 4.10).
Figure 4.10. Similar to the Media Browser, the Ingest dialog box has the ability to switch from List to Thumbnail in the lower-left corner.
- Click the Check All button (along the bottom of the window).
- Make sure to select the Transfer Clips to Destination button.
Subclipping and Rough Cuts with Adobe PreludeIn this video you’ll learn how to use the subclipping rough cuts features of Adobe Prelude.
Change the primary destination to the folder Card Media on your desktop that you created in step 4.
You have these options at this point:
- Transcode the footage
- Add subfolders (creating an organized structure)
- Verify that the copy occurred without errors
- Add a destination to create a copy somewhere else
- You’re not going to do any of those now, but know that you have the option to adjust how and where Prelude ingests your footage.
Markers and Metdata with Adobe PreludeLearn how to organize your media and create descriptive markers that will travel to Adobe Premiere Pro.
Click Ingest to start the transfer of the media.
The footage is copied and placed on the left side of the Project panel. You can double-click any clip and use J-K-L In and Out points and other basic editorial tools to prepare for the edit in Adobe Premiere Pro. You can also add descriptive markers that speed up the editorial process. Be sure to check out videos #09 and #10 for more information on these tasks.
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Sending your ingested media to Adobe Premiere Pro
Once your footage is ingested, copied, and possibly marked and edited together, all that remains is the hand-off. Fortunately, the process of moving from Adobe Prelude to Adobe Premiere Pro couldn’t be easier.
Let’s send our ingested video to Adobe Premiere Pro.
- Create a new bin called P2 Media from Prelude.
- Select all the clips in your Adobe Prelude project, and place them in the new bin.
- Select the new bin.
- Choose File > Send to Premiere Pro to transfer to the Adobe Premiere Pro project that’s currently open (you must have a project open).
Switch to Adobe Premiere Pro. The files appear in the Project panel ready for you to use.
In your own projects, be sure to give the bin a more discrptive name that matches the content and role of the footage.
- You can now quit Adobe Prelude and close the project.
Adobe Bridge
Most people encounter Adobe Bridge (Figure 4.11) via Adobe Photoshop. In case you’ve never used it, it’s a dynamic media browser—think of it as a file browser on steroids. It’s a media browser that is optimized mostly for still photography, but it has loads of power for video users.
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Figure 4.11. Adobe Bridge is a versatile program in its own right. Notice Filtering on the left side and Video Metadata on the right side.
What’s Wrong with Adobe Bridge?
Adobe Bridge has come quite a distance since the first edition of this book. It now handles all sorts of file-based camera material (such as P2, XDCAM, and RED). It’s not as flexible for transcoding or adding markers the way Adobe Prelude is.
You can manually open Adobe Bridge by clicking its application icon. You can also choose File > Browse in Bridge in Adobe Premiere Pro to automatically launch Adobe Bridge and point it to the same directory that the Media Browser is viewing.
Adobe Bridge has a few killer features you should know about. They are optional uses but are very powerful in and out of the video workflow, acting as a significant replacement for your native OS file system. The features we’ll focus on are adding metadata (such as a rating), batch renaming, and collections (on the accompanying DVD).
Adding Metadata with Adobe Bridge
Metadata is additional data about the actual video in the shot. It could include information such as the frame size of the shot or the scene number. With stills, metadata can include all sorts of common EXIF data, such as aperture, location (if the camera has a GPS chip), and camera model or lens.
What Is EXIF?
The EXchangeable Image File (EXIF) format specifies additional data for stills and audio but unfortunately not video.
You imported material earlier in this chapter. By adding the metadata to the QuickTime files, you’ll be able to contrast your existing imported files by importing the same files after you’ve added metadata. The choice to add metadata offers additional organizational ability in Adobe Premiere Pro, such as being able to sort on information such as shot type. Because the metadata stays with the clips, the media will be easier to organize in the future if you bring the clips into a new project.
- Continue working with 04_getting_started.prproj.
Before and After Comparison
You’ll modify the metadata and reimport the same clip as earlier in this chapter. If you didn’t complete the earlier sections, it’s not an issue. You just won’t be able to compare the new import, which has extra metadata, with the old imports.
- Launch Adobe Bridge by choosing File > Browse in Bridge.
Stars and More
You can add other metadata like ratings and get them to show up in Adobe Premiere Pro. Once you add them in Bridge, you need to go to the Metadata display in the Project panel menu in the upper right. The easiest way to find a field, such as Ratings, is to type its name in the search box at the top of the window.
- Navigate to the Lessons and Media > Lesson 04 folder.
Rating Clips in Adobe BridgeIn this video you’ll learn the workflow of how to rate clips and add keywords, quickly sifting through your material.
- Select all three MP4 video clips (0022AO.mp4, 0024P1.mp4, and 0025RB.mp4).
Building a Collection in Adobe BridgeIn this video you’ll expand on learn how to use ratings and keywords from the prior video by having Adobe Bridge build collections to help you locate footage quickly. This video shows you how to sift, sort, and then move the data at the desktop level or into an Adobe Premiere Pro bin for organization. You can even create dynamic smart collections that will automatically gather footage that meets your key criteria.
- Select the Metadata tab (in the lower-right corner), and scroll down to browse the categories.
- Find the Video category, click Scene, and add the scene number 15 (Figure 4.12).
Figure 4.12. Customizing the Scene metadata. You can change any field that has a pencil next to it.
If you see a pencil icon, it means the field can be adjusted. After the metadata has been added to the clips, the clips are permanently modified.
Viewing metadata from Adobe Bridge
You’ll now directly import these clips in Adobe Premiere Pro. Earlier they were imported without the new metadata. Those previously imported clips don’t have metadata. You’re now going to import them again; the difference is that now there’s new metadata. Both clip imports will exist in the same project, but you can see the metadata difference. Let’s make a quick comparison of this information.
- In Adobe Bridge, select the three clips you just added metadata to.
- Choose File > Open, or press Command+O (Ctrl+O). The clips should now be imported into the Project panel in Adobe Premiere Pro.
- Create a bin called From Bridge, and move all the clips into that bin.
- Click the Project panel to select it, or press Shift+1 and then click the grave accent (`) key to view the Project panel full-screen.
Batch Renaming Clips in Adobe BridgeIn this video you’ll learn how to use the Batch Rename command to quickly add the date and time to a series of clips, providing each with a unique name. You can even preserve the original filename in the clips so you can cross-reference your archived media from the shoot. The Batch Rename command is particularly useful for cameras such as DSLRs that don’t assign unique clip names.
- Switch the Project panel to list view by clicking the list view icon in the bottom-left corner.
Click the disclosure triangle to open the File Menu Imported bin and the From Bridge bin.
You should see the same clips in both folders.
- Scroll to the right until you see the Scene column.
Note that the items in the File Menu Imported bin do not have the scene number, yet the ones that were imported from Adobe Bridge do. The only reason the newer clips have this data is that they were imported after you added the data in Adobe Bridge (Figure 4.13). If you were to import them now via the Import command or via the Media Browser, the new import would also have this metadata.
Figure 4.13. Note the differences in the Project panel between the two lists of identical files. Adobe Premiere Pro can display only the metadata that was embedded in a file prior to its import.
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