Feature film editing in Premiere

[Cracker Funk]

Okay, I've never editing anything remotely this long. Everything I've ever edited before has been saved as one project. Sometimes, I'll have numerous sequences in one project, obviously placing those sequences into a new timeline, before exporting the master timeline.

That was originally my plan for this feature -- each 10 minutes, or so, would be a new sequence, but the entire feature was going to be in one project. But every time I open the project, it has to load every single clip that's being used, and that's a lot of clips. So, I'm starting to wonder if I should have multiple projects, export each one as an individual media clip, then only piece them together when I'm ready to burn to DVD.

Thoughts? Thanks, in advance. Oh, I'm in CS5, and I'll be authorizing the DVD in Encore, if that's relavent.

 

[Zensteve]

Use Project Manager to create a trimmed project.

It will create a project that contains only the footage that is actually used in the timeline (and whetever handles you specify), and can considerably shrink the space needed.

Normally when you edit, you keep the entire video clip and use pointers to reference specific in & outs. As trimmed, the video clips are physically shortened to whatever was used.

Sounds like your big issue is RAM, though. Possibly access to rendered preview files? At any rate, when trimmed you'll be loading less than before - no more unused portions of the original clip.

Hope that helps some.

 

[sonnyboo]

Or to combine both of your ideas, edit the individual scenes in separate projects, but then when you go to put the whole feature together, use the PROJECT MANAGER to create a trimmed, much more easily handled project.

PROJECT MANAGER allows you to take all your project files and export the whole project - which means duplicating all the files from the TIMELINE only (not the bins) with handles (meaning extra frames for minute editing later for longer or shorter cuts) and creates a whole new folder with all new clips that are JUST what you had on your sequences/timelines.

For a feature length, I prefer to have ALL the footage available to me or manually delete clips you know you'll never use (IE gag reels or blown takes, etc.), but ZENSTEVE's option is a good one.

 

[Cracker Funk]

Use Project Manager to create a trimmed project.

It will create a project that contains only the footage that is actually used in the timeline (and whetever handles you specify), and can considerably shrink the space needed.

Normally when you edit, you keep the entire video clip and use pointers to reference specific in & outs. As trimmed, the video clips are physically shortened to whatever was used.

Sounds like your big issue is RAM, though. Possibly access to rendered preview files? At any rate, when trimmed you'll be loading less than before - no more unused portions of the original clip.

Hope that helps some.

I've got 4G RAM, and it's been handling just fine, probably gonna upgrade to 8, soon enough. Currently, it's not taking too long to load, I'm just looking into the future.

I'll look into Project Manager. I've never had a need for that before, so it's completely new to me. Thanks for the tip.

 

[sonnyboo]

There might also be settings to turn off the CREATE PEK FILES which are annoying as hell and seems like a flaw in the Premiere software to me. I can do it with my MATROX RTx2 setups, but I don't edit without that anymore so I can't say if you can or cannot turn that off in regular Premiere Pro CS3-5.

That's part of what is slowing down your load up times with a LOT of footage in Premiere.

 

[Cracker Funk]

Or to combine both of your ideas, edit the individual scenes in separate projects, but then when you go to put the whole feature together, use the PROJECT MANAGER to create a trimmed, much more easily handled project.

PROJECT MANAGER allows you to take all your project files and export the whole project - which means duplicating all the files from the TIMELINE only (not the bins) with handles (meaning extra frames for minute editing later for longer or shorter cuts) and creates a whole new folder with all new clips that are JUST what you had on your sequences/timelines.

For a feature length, I prefer to have ALL the footage available to me or manually delete clips you know you'll never use (IE gag reels or blown takes, etc.), but ZENSTEVE's option is a good one.

Sounds like I definitely need to start utilizing Project Manager.

It's been many years since I used Premiere, so I don't know if this feature is new to CS5, or if it's been around a while, but one of my favorite things about this software is that I never have to import any footage. Every single video clip on my entire computer is at my disposal, and it only loads that clip if I choose to put it in my timeline. So, all the clips that will never get used (gag reels/blown takes) still exists on my hard drive, but they don't waste any RAM having to ever import or load them into the project. That's rad! I love this software.

That means I can have the best of both worlds. I can edit a 10-minute clip, and when I feel like I'm pretty comfortable with that cut, use Project Manager to trim the clips down to just what's actually in the timeline, making it faster to load the project every time I start up. However, since every clip is at my disposal, and I don't have to do any importing, if I ever want to make an edit to that sequence again, I can just delete the trimmed version of a particular clip, replacing it with the full version that still exists elsewhere.

Thanks, guys.

 

[Cracker Funk]

There might also be settings to turn off the CREATE PEK FILES which are annoying as hell and seems like a flaw in the Premiere software to me. I can do it with my MATROX RTx2 setups, but I don't edit without that anymore so I can't say if you can or cannot turn that off in regular Premiere Pro CS3-5.

That's part of what is slowing down your load up times with a LOT of footage in Premiere.

Whoah, that went over my head. I'll look into it, though.

 

[sonnyboo]

Whenever you load a project or import footage, on the bottom right hand corner of Premiere, you can see a little blue line going across and it says "conforming audio PEK file" and it takes freakin' forever and it's automatically copying your audio files into a format where it can show you the WAVES on the timeline.

It's also a resource/memory hog from hell and it makes the load times on Premiere Pro project horrendously slow when you have more than 2 hours worth of footage.

I get to turn that off and I don't have that problem anymore because of the Matrox RTx2 card and it's software/plug ins. I don't know if anyone can turn it off or if that's special to the Matrox card.

 

[Cracker Funk]

Whenever you load a project or import footage, on the bottom right hand corner of Premiere, you can see a little blue line going across and it says "conforming audio PEK file" and it takes freakin' forever and it's automatically copying your audio files into a format where it can show you the WAVES on the timeline.

Oh, yeah, I've seen that. On random occasion, my audio will go mute, and I have to wait a few seconds for that file to "conform", before I can play again. I definitely need to see the waves, but I'll look into being able to turn that off, if I reach a point of it being a problem.

For the time being, I think the Project Manager solution you guys have offered will probably do the trick.

 

[NickClapper]

I thought I'd hijack this thread in order to ask a question rather than starting another one.

Basically I want to get a new computer because the computer that I have at the moment can't handle Premier CS5- it is only 32 bit, whatever that really means. So I want to get something which can run an editing program but which doesn't cost the world.

Someone offered me this deal:

>AMD Athlon II X2 3.0 GHz DUAL CORE Processor
>4GB Kingston DDR3 RAM
>500GB Western Digital HDD
>Samsung 22x DVDRW
>Ethernet Port
>6 USBs (4x rear, 2x front)
>Front Audio Ports
>Windows 7 Professional included

That's for £200. Now I have little inclination of whether this is a good deal or not. I have googled each component in an attempt to work out if it is, but my search proved inconclusive. If it is not a good deal can anyone recommend where I could find a good deal? Please bare in mind I'm located in the UK so shipping from the US is less than ideal.

Much obliged.

 

[Cracker Funk]

Right-click on "computer", and select "properties" to find out if it's running 32 or 64-bit Windows 7. I don't remember what determines 64-bit compatibility (motherboard?).

Regardless, find out what motherboard is on there, cuz that's quite important.

You're going to want a video card, and more storage space (though, I guess your storage demands depend on the size of your project). I've got two 1TB hard drives, internal, as well as 1TB external, for backup, and all of it is needed.

On a sidenote, back to the original question, project manager doesn't work with DSLR footage. Meh, no big deal. I just have to wait a few minutes for each clip to load, whenever I start the program.

In my opinion, £200 is a pretty sweet deal, but don't necessarily swipe it up immediately. After your needed upgrades, how much will you have spent? This computer, plus upgrades is probably the best bet, but other options are worth exploring. There are some companies out there that will build a PC for pretty cheap. I like these guys:

http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/

They've been around a while (I bought my first computer from them 10 years ago), and their lifetime free tech support can come in handy. They market to video game nerds, but they can build a good computer for any purpose.

 

[NickClapper]

Cheers for the advice Cracker.

I know my current computer doesn't do the trick because it is 32 bit and has, like, 1GB of RAM. So I'm going to need to upgrade in the long term. To be honest space isn't that much of an issue as I prefer storing any important stuff externally, so I have an assortment of external hard drives.

This Video Card you refer to (yep, I sound like a 'noob', I believe they call me) is that not something I already have/why do I need it? My computer can play videos can it not?

Also on your point why can't Project Manager handle DSLR footage specifically? Is it the format, or is just HD footage in general?

 

[Cracker Funk]

Specifically, the "trim" function in project manager. For some reason it doesn't work with DSLR. Don't know why, that's just what I read somewhere. Whatever; no big deal. All it means is I have to wait for the software to load my giant project.

As far as storage is concerned, make sure your hard drive is 7200 RPM. Seems like all the giant ones these days are, but just be safe and make sure. Also, however large the hard drive is, cut that in half. You never want to fill your hard drive to greater than 50% capacity; it will slow down immediately.

Perhaps someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't an internal hard drive a faster connection than external, even with USB2? Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the impression I got, so that's why I prefer to only use external for data backup. Besides, hard drives are ridiculously inexpensive. As cheap as they are, you might as well get a ton of storage space. If memory serves me correctly, you're planning on getting the 550D? DSLR footage is a beast.

Video card. Yeah, every motherboard has onboard video, but that doesn't make it good. You'll need something to accellerate video processing. I accidentally edited my entire feature without my video card installed (doh!). It handled it just fine. But when it came time for color correction, it froze up every time I tried to apply an effect. Installed video card and everything is fine. I have a GeForce GT220. That's a cheap card -- less than $75.

Good luck computer-building!

 

[NickClapper]

Yer I bought the 550D a few months ago and have only used it sparingly (mainly for stills to be honest).

Ok so I will try and improve the hard drive space (?) and get an additional video card. I'm going to put my bartering hat on, right now