Anyone edited a feature in Premiere?

S

Smithhouse

Well-known member
Hey guys,

I'm finishing up the editing on the final sequences for a feature film... Once done...

Do I just take all the sequences, put them together into one hour and half premiere project, and then prepare for authoring...

Thanks,

SmithHouse
 
Why new project, just make a new sequence called "final movie" or something, and place the separate sequenses on that in the right order. This way you have only one project.
 
Hadn't even thought of that, Petrus... I only wanted to see if there is another way of doing it because the computer seems to get slower with the more footage I add.
 
Gets slow and heavy. I've got a 2.5 hour feature on my system.... 1.5 TB (5 drives) I'm always backing up due to every 2 hours the system crashing, and PPRO has a crappy auto recovery system. IT's all a big gamble. I have top of the line equipment, but for some tech reasons, PPRO isn't set up right to handle large feature films. Too much data, too much everything.

If I knew then, what I know now.... split the movie up into 3 or 4 different projects, then, when you are all done tweaking and editing and ready to seal the deal, then pull them all together for master file.

Otherwise you will be in agony and editing hell like I was. I finished the feature, but really paid the price emotionally.

www.mogthemovie.com

Trailer coming soon!
 
By the way: when you make the master sequence you pull the parts (sub-sequences) from the file list like you could do with a clip. Sequences have their own symbols on the file list, just crab those with the mouse and drag to the master sequence* timeline.

(there is no such thing as "master sequence", all sequences are equal. I just call tha final movie that).
 
If you render out your segments, ie your different scenes, you will notice a much better stability and speed difference. Bring them into a main project and render out the final. Film reels are around 12min you could always break up like that but it is not necessary for dvd.
 
True, but if you render the sequences to AVi files, the size of your project also grows a lot. Now you have both the original clips on the hard disk, and also the semi-final AVIs which are almost as big in size. In my projects that would mean about 50% more disk space used. If you render only the final sequence (the compilation of the sub-sequences) using just one project, less disk space is needed in the process. In the end there must be enough space for the final output, off course.

I have noticed that the changes made to the sub-sequences do not happen on the same sequences if they have been dragged to the master sequence already. So if you want to twiddle with the sub-sequences after making the final compilation(but before the final rendering), you have to re-drag the sub-sequence to the master sequence. Or maybe I am doing something wrong? Not a big deal really. Have to look into this.
 
no when you render out sub sequences again, they automatically update the main project - you wont have double sized projects if you are only doing final versions (2 hrs worth of footage/avi's ~ 26gb) The final main project/movie can be rendered out to DVD mpeg 2 thus ~ 6 to 7 gb.
 
I agree with Soarprod

Rendering out sequences/segments/reels is good practice. Disk space should not be an issue with a feature film ( HDs are cheap and reuseable).

Individual segment exports facilitate easy checking of parts of the project and are easier to "redo" if an issue is discovered.

I would even mpeg encode in segements to be able to check them as I went. A time saver in case of issues far out weighing HD space.
 
For my feature i initially tried combining sequence, but like what was mentioned above, rendering out individual scenes to avi files worked a lot better. Ive cut a 90 min and a 2 hour movie in premiere pro this way.
 
I already have the whole movie now edited together in one file (one segment - one hour fifty minutes) and it's slow as all get out... It takes forever to open and close and I can't even copy segments to another file to break it down into bite sized pieces... anybody have any suggestions?
 
Did you combine different sequences? Different Projects? Go back to the sequences/projects and render them out. Say scene 1, scene 2, etc. as individual AVI's. Now if you have say - first 5min in a seq or project, you can render that out as well. If you have every clip, every take, every piece of footage all in one big project, that can definately slow things down unless you have a monster computer.

How much memory do you have? Look at Task Manager and see how much windows/PPro is using. Where are your clips stored? Are they on a lot of Hard Drives? See if you can put them into one location/HDD. These can slow things down. How many individual clips do you have in the project?
 
dude how you doing audio mix? all engineers i've talked to work in pro tools and want OMF. i can't figure out how to do it! automatic duck discontinued the only OMF export tool for PPRO. anyone here know wut to do? mc
 
mark,

You may need to render out each audio channel separately, and place a 1 frame sync pip at a certain timecode point of each audio track in your PP2 timeline, and provide a written note of that TC to the PT guys. They can then load up each track in their session, sync TC to the pip, and then edit and master from there. Send you back the mastered file, and you insert into the PP2 timeline and sync to the pip yourself.

Maybe there is a better way?

Edit: oh, and of course do this after you lock off pictures.
 
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Take the sequences, lay them into a 'master sequence' and save.

Open After Effects and import the PRemiere project.

In after effects you can color correct each shot and apply effects by the master sequence or by any of the individual sequences.

Lay an adjustment layer over the modified master sequence timeline and add movie looks or color effects like desaturation, etc. to your whole project.

Render uncompressed and you have a rocking final project.
 
Man I thought that Premiere couldn't handle large projects! I have FCP and Premiere Pro 2 at work and Premiere just slowed down to a crawl once my project became very large. Just so you Premiere guys know Final Cut Pro does not do that. I have never experienced any slow down like that at all inside of Final Cut Pro. even with the same amount of ram on both computers.

One thing to look out for is having Firefox open while you edit. If you are like me and open everything in tabs Firefox will eat up all of your RAM. Hopefully Premiere Pro CS3 will be better I am seriously eyeing the mac version.
 
Christopher Barry said:
You may need to render out each audio channel separately, and place a 1 frame sync pip at a certain timecode point of each audio track in your PP2 timeline, and provide a written note of that TC to the PT guys.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I did in the past. It worked, but wasn't ideal.

As for Premiere, the one time I edited a feature with it was in Premiere 4.2, which couldn't handle projects more than an hour long... had to do it in two parts and stick them together on the machine we used for color grading.
 
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