Suppose you have timecoded footage etc. from an intermittent shoot of a long event.  Perhaps there were also multiple cameras, but for whatever reason (e.g. huge outdoor site) there is no common audio with which to synchronize them.  Wouldn’t it be nice if the NLE (or whatever) could auto-populate a Sequence with clips placed appropriately in (timecode-) time on it?

As noted in an earlier post, Adobe Premiere can’t do this, but Avid and Edius can.  I already use Avid, so that will be my auto-arranging tool of choice.

In Avid (Media Composer 7.0.2):

  • Set Project Settings for media type as per source footage
    • Unlike Premiere, Avid doesn’t have such Sequence-specific settings.
  • Import the footage
    • I found it ok to use AMA – no need to Ingest to MXF etc.
    • And yes, at the end of all this, it transferred (by AAF) from Avid to Premiere ok.
  • Menu:[Windows > Workspaces > Source/Record Editing]
    • To reinstate the Timeline – after it closed when I deleted the bad seq
  • Bin:
    • Sort the clips into order by Timecod
      • Shouldn’t matter in principle but it did appear to in practice…
    • Select all required clips
    • Do [Bin > AutoSequence]
    • A new sequence gets created, with the clips placed in time.
      • The sequence gets auto-named as per the last clip in the selection.
      • The sequence’s starting-timecode is auto-set to that of the earliest clip in timecode-time (among the selection)
  • Tip:
    • Timeline Zoom in/out = Ctrl-] / Ctrl-[ respectively.

I will post separately on how to Export from Avid and Import to Premiere via AAF (Advanced Authoring Format).  It worked, even for my AMA-linked footage (Sony XDCAM EX  / BPAV) – though  it wasn’t as straightforward as I expected – due to “a known issue with AAF in Premiere Pro CC (7.2.1)“.  It did succeed with Premiere CS6 (6.0.5), though even then some clunky wrangling was found necessary.  Thereafter I opened an existing Premiere CC project and Imported the CS6 sequence successfully.  Again I had to double-check the Sequence (this time in Premiere) matched the footage (clips).

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 18th, 2014 at 18:19 and is filed under Avid, Premiere, XDCAM EX. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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