Originally intended as a blog post, Creative Cow has published my latest article “A Cautionary Tale for the Final Cut Pro Switcher.”
This article details our attempts to move a current series over to Avid 6, grade the series in Resolve, and how that series ended up on Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 after just three episodes. This is a classic tale of what we thought was enough testing not being enough, software doing what it’s designed to do but conflicting with the modern workflow, and almost 12 days lost in production along the way…..
imo,
As much as I appreciate Adobe’s market aggressiveness and ease of workflow on the front end…there is a lot to be said for a workflow that encourages organization from the start of a project so that when the project is finished, for all practical purposes, it’s done. Speaking for myself, when I complete a project, the last thing I want to do is jump through hoops to put it away, only to hope that I haven’t misplaced anything. Now, for run and gun news, etc, who cares? But, for a project that is months, even years in the making, I am more confident knowing that when it’s time to put it away, all the parts are there.
Plus, if i have never seen the footage, organizing at the beginning of a project helps me familiarize myself with the footage and get my head around things. I know, in this short attention span world, and through just plain burnout, it’s tempting to not view and log footage in advance. I use Pr CS6 a lot, if not just to make sure the footage plays, etc., but for long form organization and creativity, I’m still preferring MC/Symph…the biggest drawback is the time it takes for transcoding, but once transcoded (usually overnight) it still rocks as a creative/project organizer.
That’s why we follow Richard Harrington’s example in his book of media management. Everything for a project is organized before we start the edit in premiere Pro.
When the project is completed, the entire project is in one folder, ready for archive.
The media management in Adobe we are dealing with just fine for the moment. The one big thing missing is the ability to transcode the entire timeline to a single codec at the end of the edit.