Going from Avid to Premiere: all the quirks that ever quirked
So I have this small project to do, basically as a favor to a friend. I decided to do it in Avid, since I have access to one for the time being and I need the practice badly. It’s really not much; my friend has about six hours of DV footage, shot a panel-type event. He wants it cut down to highlight reels. Easy.
Except he also wants a few artsy-fartsy things done to it. Lower thirds, titles, that kind of thing. Nothing big, but enough to make me need a miniature workflow pipeline to do the job.
My plan was simplicity itself. I’d import the footage into the Avid, make subclips based on my buddy’s paper notes, edit them together, output an AAF for each timeline, take the AAFs into Premiere, relink to the original QuickTime media, then use the Premiere-After Effects integration features to put my titles and supers on. Then render, save to a series of QuickTimes for delivery, and donezo.
So yes, it’s basically an offline-online workflow, as traditional as buttermilk biscuits. Should be no problem, right? After all, this kind of thing has been the norm since God was a boy.
Except yeah no. Quirks abound.
I did a little test today, just to make sure my workflow would turn out the way I planned. What I learned is that either the version of Avid I’m using — more on this later — has some bugs related to AAF export, or Premiere Pro CS5.5 has some bugs related to AAF import.
As you can see in yon pretty picture, I’ve got just about the simplest timeline you can imagine. NTSC, non-drop, starts at 01:00:00:00, got a half a dozen subclips strung out all in a neat little row.
This should be easy, right?
Well, the first thing you’ll notice, in the screenshot below, is that Premiere can’t count. Seriously. Non-drop timeline starts at 01:00:00:00, right? Premiere thinks it should be 00:59:56:12, which I’m sure we all recognize is the non-drop timecode equivalent of 01;00;00;00 in drop-frame.
Okay, I mean, that’s stupid, but it’s fixable. It can be fixed. You can spend five minutes digging through the manual, give up, google it, then learn that there’s a hidden menu in the timeline pane of the Premiere interface that lets you set the start timecode of your timeline. Change it to 01:00:00:00. Fine. Whatever.
But then, and I refer you here back to that same yonder screenshot above, notice the weird thing. I have six subclips on my Avid timeline:
- NAFA Tape 2 of 6.mov.Sub.02
- NAFA Tape 2 of 6.mov.Sub.01
- NAFA Tape 1 of 6.mov.Sub.01
- NAFA Tape 3 of 6.mov.Sub.03
- NAFA Tape 3 of 6.mov.Sub.02
- NAFA Tape 3 of 6.mov.Sub.01
What I’d hope to see in Premiere — and this isn’t an unfounded hope; keep reading — is three clips in my bin:
- NAFA Tape 1 of 6.mov
- NAFA Tape 2 of 6.mov
- NAFA Tape 3 of 6.mov
Link those to the original QuickTimes, and I’m golden. What I’d tolerate seeing in Premiere is this:
- NAFA Tape 1 of 6.mov.Sub.01
- NAFA Tape 2 of 6.mov.Sub.01
- NAFA Tape 2 of 6.mov.Sub.02
- NAFA Tape 3 of 6.mov.Sub.01
- NAFA Tape 3 of 6.mov.Sub.02
- NAFA Tape 3 of 6.mov.Sub.03
That is, one clip in Premiere for each subclip in my Avid timeline. I mean, that’s kind of stupid, really, seeing as how half of those refer to the same media as the other half. But, like, I can work with that, you know?
But no, instead I see both. There’s a clip for the actual clip not used on my Avid timeline but referred to by subclip, and there’s a clip for each subclip!
It’s not at all obvious how to relink those.
But wait. I’m not actually done yet. Something you can’t see in that screenshot — and I can’t really figure out how to take a picture illustrating this — is what’s actually on my timeline.
Just to review, this is how my Avid timeline looks:
- NAFA Tape 2 of 6.mov.Sub.02
- NAFA Tape 2 of 6.mov.Sub.01
- NAFA Tape 1 of 6.mov.Sub.01
- NAFA Tape 3 of 6.mov.Sub.03
- NAFA Tape 3 of 6.mov.Sub.02
- NAFA Tape 3 of 6.mov.Sub.01
Those subclips, in that order. This is how my Premiere timeline looks:
- NAFA Tape 2 of 6.mov.Sub.02
- NAFA Tape 2 of 6.mov.Sub.02
- NAFA Tape 1 of 6.mov.Sub.01
- NAFA Tape 3 of 6.mov.Sub.03
- NAFA Tape 3 of 6.mov.Sub.03
- NAFA Tape 3 of 6.mov.Sub.03
It’s like Premiere almost does the right thing. It almost says “Hey, these six different clips really only refer to three different media files. So I’ll consolidate them and my operator will love me and buy me upgrades.” But it goes wrong. Because instead of naming the clips on the timeline the same as the source files, it names the the same as the first subclip from that source file it runs across. I guess. Or something.
Oh, and yes, it still throws all those other clips, which aren’t even technically on the timeline, into the bin.
Okay, well, you’d think that’d be annoying but fairly easy to work around, right? Just identify the clips in the bin that aren’t in the timeline, delete them, then relink the others to their appropriate media files. By hand. Because you hate yourself. Right?
Yeahno.
Because when I do just that, and believe me I tried, Premiere doesn’t seem to get the message. It still thinks the clips are offline. So I have linked master clips in my bin, and unlinked timeline clips in my timeline. Which really shouldn’t be possible in any modern NLE, but there we are.
Now, this is the part where I wish I could tell you I had a workaround all figured out, and it’s actually very easy, and you should try it. But I can’t. It’s after five o’clock, and I haven’t figured out a damn thing yet. All I’ve done for the past eight hours is identify the problems.
But I can tell you that whereas all day Premiere has been acting like a slightly brain-damaged puppy — enthusiastic but embarrassingly incompetent — Smoke has been all “Fuck yeah.” To wit:
You see that right there? That’s what my screen looks like after I point to my AAF — the exact same AAF I fed to Premiere and watched it choke on — and say “import please.” Smoke looks at the AAF, figures out what the subclips on the timeline actually refer to, goes out and finds the media for me, and loads both the timeline itself and the source media. Boom, baby.
And lookit:
Not only can Smoke count — if you look in the bottom left you can see the timeline starts at 01:00:00:00, non-drop — but check this out:
It also kept my clip names correct, while still relinking them to the correct media files. That may not be entirely obvious if you’re not familiar with Smokes information-overload interface mode, but you can see the clip names — “NAFA Tape 1 of 6.mov.Sub.01” and such — at the top of each clip on the timeline, the clip name of the actual media file it’s linked to right below that, and down at the bottom the path on my drive where that source file lives. (It’s a soft-imported file, which is a bit like Avid’s AMA, if you know what that is.) Oh, and those “H” and “T” numbers on the top left and bottom right of each clip on the timeline? Those are how many frames of heads and tails I have. “Many thousands,” in both cases, because these clips are a whole camera reel’s worth, and they’re nearly an hour long each.
So my timeline came over correctly, all my clips came over correctly, they maintained their same subclip names so I can keep everything straight, but they kept only their names. The actual media files themselves are the originals.
That’s how it’s supposed to work.
Now, I grant you fully that I could just be doing something totally stupid here, and that’s why Premiere is being a little bitch to me today. I only started using Premiere a few weeks ago, and Avid just days ago, so what the hell do I know. But the fact that I can take the exact same AAF file — not the same timeline, but literally the same file — and send it to Smoke and have everything do what it should makes me think this isn’t my screwup.
So I ask you, faithful readers. What am I doing wrong here? Is there a way to send an AAF to Premiere and not screw up the timeline timecode, first of all, and second not have it go bananas when faced with the terrifying prospect of a subclip? Or am I just boned here? Drop me an email or find me on twitter or something, wouldya? I’m tired and frustrated.
