Join clips in Premiere Pro CS6

[Svein Rune Skilnand]

Hi.
I am editing a multicam shoot that was recorded with one FS100, one NX 70 and two EX1Rs.

I have imported the BPAV folders into Premiere Pro and to my surprise, coming from FCP7, the clips show up. Fantastic.

However, the recording has been split into segments which is normal for EX as I understand it. Is it possible to join the separate clips so that I don`t end up with a lot of multi clips to work with? That is, I would like to work with one angle as one clip instead of several clips from the same angle.

[Mike Beckett]

You could try putting all the clips onto a sequence timeline, then nesting that sequence inside another sequence for editing. That way it'll act as if it was one single large clip.

To do this, create the first sequence, drag all the clips from the XDCAM onto it, then drag that first sequence from your source bin into the new sequence. You should be able to slice it up as required.

Or, put all the clips onto a single timeline, select them all, right-click and "Group" them together. That way when you drag one, you drag them all.

Or, find 3rd-party software to combine all the clips into one file, before they are imported into Premiere. (This is possible for HDV, I'm not sure about other formats though).

Or... I could be talking garbage and not have a clue! <grin>

[Alan Craven]

Did you import the clips using the media browser? If not, give that a try - it is necessary for AVCHD clips, which can also be split files like this.

This is just an educated guess on my part.

[Pete Bauer]

Agree with Alan that if you import via Media Browser, Premiere should read a series of files that comprise a clip as if it is a single file. I don’t know if Sony’s XDCAM Clip Browser applet supports clip concatenation (joining) like Canon’s XF Utility does, but that would be worth looking into as well.

Mike’s suggestions to group and nest would work, but might result in more work during a complex edit because some functions won’t work on grouped clips or nested sequences. You’d have to group / ungroup as you edit and possibly have to move more often between source and target sequences.

If all else fails, you could put each camera’s clips on their own timeline and export with Adobe Media Encoder from Premiere or Prelude. If you go to the time and effort of doing that, I’d suggest transcoding the AVCHD to MXF OP1a, which will be a lot less demanding on your CPU during multi-cam editing.

For concatenating the XDCAM footage, you should be able to use the Smart Rendering feature to greatly speed up the process:

Smart Rendering in Premiere Pro CS6 (6.0.1, and later)

We'll be curious to hear what works out best for you.

[Jeff Pulera]

A third vote for Media Browser in Premiere. When copying memory cards to computer hard drive, very important to copy the entire folder structure over "as is". Media Browser will represent and import the spanned clips as a single, seamless clip when done this way, but it does need the metadata and folder structure intact. Don't try to copy "just the video".

Thanks

[Svein Rune Skilnand]

Hi.
I have copied the entire folder structure through XDCam EX Clip Browser as I always do.

Importing the BPAV folder as is, the clip in question shows up as two files. Using media browser however, it only shows the first of the two clips.The second clip just isn`t there. I remember I had the same problem in FCP7 but I think I downloaded some sort of plugin at that time.

[Simon de Swardt]

Have you tried just using that clip numbered 01? Although it seems like you are only using clip number 1, behind the scenes Premiere joins it up with all the others. Drag it onto your timeline and see if it includes the entire clip you recorded.

[Svein Rune Skilnand]

Hi Simon.

Yes, I have. It only shows the first 12 minutes of the clip.

Going back to FCP7 it imports the entire clip. No problem.

[Bill Heslip]

At the risk of stating the obvious, are you combining all cards from each camera into a single BPAV folder (using Clip/Media Browser)?

Assuming the footage is a continuous roll, the clip followed by the number 1 should contain the seamless contents of all cards.

When you say the second clip isn't there, do you mean the second card?

I've never had an issue with clips seamlessly spanning cards using Clip/Media Browser. If Clip Browser isn't getting it done, then try Media Browser (an updated version of Clip Browser, although even it has been superseded by yet another version).

[Svein Rune Skilnand]

It seems that Premiere should be able to import spanning EX footage as one clip through Media Browser, according to the info I have gathered throughout the web. It just doesn`t work with my system for whatever reason.

I did try to nest different sequences but ended up with more bins and cluttering my workflow.

I will be doing this a lot, so hopefully there is a fix out there somewhere. My workaround for the moment is to transcode all the footage as Pro Res files. This way I am ending up with one file for each camera. A bit more cumbersome than I hoped for. Eager to see how they are to work with.

[Zoran Vincic]

Did you transfer the footage from the card using Clip Browser / XDCam Browser or the newest Content Browser or did you just copy the card via OS?

Edit:

missed the part where you said that you transferred via Clip Browser.

Here's another thing I noticed that might help.

Did you by any chance had the Premiere's media browser showing the folder while you were transferring the footage from the card?

I was recently transferring footage from a second cam (of a four cam shoot) and I imported the footage from the first cam in PPro CS6 at the same time. While the footage from the first cam showed up as one single clip (it was actually spanned eight times), the second cam showed up in PPro as individual spanned clips while it was transfering. After the transfer was completed I expected to see one single clip in Media browser, just as with the footage from the first cam but even after I restarted PPro it was still showing individual spanned clips from the second cam.

Didn't have time to investigate, I just deleted everything and imported again, this time without PPro running and all was good.

Just a thought...