This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Using the File menu
The File menu gives you access to the project settings and to the Project Manager. You can use the Project Manager in several ways to prepare a project for archiving or for collaborative editing workflows.
Using the File menu commands
There are some important File menu options for project and media management.
Link Media: If you have clips that have become unlinked, use this option to open the Link Media dialog box and relink the media (see the next section).
Premiere Pro will automatically invite you to relink clips that are offline when you open a project or clips that go offline while you are working on the project. If you have previously manually set the clips as offline, select Link Media to trigger the relinking process.
Make Offline: You can deliberately break the connection between clips in the Project panel and their media files (see the next section).
Project Settings: These are the settings you chose when you created your project; see Lesson 2, “Setting Up a Project.” You can change any of the project settings at any time. Always save and close the current project before moving its PRPROJ file to a new location. Alternatively, choose File > Save As to create a separate project file.
Project Manager: This automates the process of backing up your project and associated media files and removing unused media files (described later in this lesson).
Export: You’ll use this menu to export media files, markers, and captions.
Making a clip offline
The benefit of making clips offline is that they can be reconnected with new media. If you’ve been working with low-resolution media, this means you can reimport alternative media files at a higher quality.
The words offline and online have different meanings in different contexts. In the language of Premiere Pro, they refer to the relationship between master clips in the Project panel and the media files they link to.
Online: The clip is linked to a media file.
Offline: The clip is not linked to a media file.
When a clip is offline, you can still edit it into a sequence, and even apply effects to it, but you won’t be able to see any video. Instead, you’ll see a colorful, multilingual “Media offline” warning.
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In almost all operations, Premiere Pro is nondestructive. This means that no matter what you do with the clips in your project, nothing will happen to the original media files. Making a clip offline presents a rare exception to this important rule.
If you right-click one or more selected clips in the Project panel and choose Make Offline, you’ll have two options:
Media Files Remain On Disk: This unlinks the clip from the media file and leaves the media file untouched. The clip goes offline. You can relink the clip to bring it back online.
Media Files Are Deleted: This deletes the media file. The clip goes offline and it cannot be relinked because there is now no media file to link to.
Working with low-resolution media is sometimes desirable if you have limited disk storage or a large number of clips. When your editing work is complete and you’re ready for fine finishing, you can replace your low-resolution, small-file-size media with the selected high-resolution, large-file-size media.
The proxy editing workflow handles this process well (see Lesson 3, “Importing Media”), but there will still be occasions when you want to set one or more particular clips to be offline to link to new media files.
Be careful with the Make Offline option, though! If you choose the option to delete your media, it’s gone! As in…really gone, nowhere to be found, not even in the system Trash or Recycle Bin!