- Tip 1: Learn Premiere Pro's Most Important Layout Features: Workspaces, Panels, and Panel Menus
- Tip 2: Adapt Your Keyboard (or Don't)
- Tip 3: How to 'See' Audio
- Tip 4: Get to Know the Grave Key
- Tip 5: How to Import Sequences from Other Premiere Pro Projects
- Tip 6: How to Import Projects from Final Cut Pro or Avid
- What's Next?
Tip 6: How to Import Projects from Final Cut Pro or Avid
Adobe Premiere Pro directly imports FCP 7 (and prior) XML files, and it imports AAF files from Avid Media Composer. Obviously, not everything is going to translate. But the big items—clips and sequences—will. There are a few potential landmines; we'll consider those issues by format.
Importing from Final Cut Pro
An entire project can come across from Final Cut Pro. It'll be pretty obvious what does and doesn't come across. For example, text and motion projects don't come across, as they're synthetic items inside of FCP. You'll get a report after performing the import.
What can trip you up? Any footage that logs and transfers rewrapped but didn't transcode (such as P2 or XDCAM.) Why? Because Final Cut took the original media, which is a Material Exchange Format (MXF) file, and rewrapped it into a QuickTime file. When you buy FCP, you get those codecs for QuickTime. If you take this to a system without those codecs (either no ProApps or on a Windows machine), you're out of luck. You'll need to find a third-party substitution from a company like Calibrated Software that can sell you a license.
Importing from Avid
Avid transfers are a bit more basic—they bring over only the sequence. Again, it'll be obvious what does and doesn't come across in the report.
Media is trickier. If you worked via Avid Media Access (AMA) with linked files, everything should link up.
Captured/imported media is more hit-and-miss. MXF files can link, but if the media is in the Avid DNxHD codec, those MXF files won't come across, because Avid doesn't provide a way to read/write DNxHD MXF files by third parties for free. The QuickTime component for DNxHD is free, but it doesn't help us here.
If you need to move something with DNxHD media, I suggest transcoding it in Avid to a different codec, such as DVCPro HD or AVCHD. Again, Calibrated Software has a component that may help with MXF media in this codec.