Thanks, Uwe. It's good to know that they've finally addressed a
long-standing and serious problem with Premiere. It sounds worth the
upgrade, although that will require a new computer for me and
possibly painful project transfers to CS5.
I have learned quite a bit about index files (.mpgindex), audio
conform files (.cfa and .pek files), and data base files (.mcdb)
since working on this. Strangely enough, for me the video indexing
takes about half the time the audio conforming does, which is
especially frustrating because I don't need any of the audio on the
footage, and the audio is embedded in the footage and not possible to
get rid of as far as Premiere's concerned.
I also had a clever idea about the MCDB files. There's one for each
video file that's been indexed and conformed, located in a Common
folder that Premiere, After Effects, and Encore access. There's a
sub-folder for each drive letter connected to your computer, and the
MDCB files for a project are all there.
My thought was that once all indexing and conformation had taken
place on one computer, I'd simply copy all the MCDB files generated
on that computer and put them in place on the second computer before
opening the project. Premiere would find them, then find the index
and conform files, and all would be copacetic: no re-indexing or re-conforming.
Nope.
Premiere somehow knows it's a new computer, even though it's the same
drive letter, and regenerates everything, even regenerating new MDCB
files in the same place to overwrite the old ones.
It's a monumentally poor piece of design that took Adobe a long time
to fix, if it's true they've finally fixed it in CS5. I'm keen to
check it out. Kudos to the fix and raspberries to the engineers who
originally designed the old system.
Thanks,
Mike Boom
At 09:01 AM 9/5/2010, you wrote:
>Short answer: Upgrade to CS5.02.
>
>Long answer:
>
>Unfortunately, this has been a problem with Premiere for a long time,
>especially when moving projects from folder to folder or to another
>drive. CS5 fixed most of the problems, but not for all media types
>(XDCAM-EX being one of them). But two days ago, they released an update,
>CS 5.02 -- and one of the fixes that are mentioned in the release notes
>is for unmotivated reconforming of audio. So now we've hopefully seen
>this problem for the last time.
>
>To avoid reconforming (most of the time) in CS3 and 4, at least make
>sure your drive gets the same letter assigned to it every time you
>attach it. If it doesn't, I am sure you know where to fix this Windows
>. Also, make sure both your Media Cache file AND the database are
>located on an available drive and that this drive also gets the same
>drive letter. Some people have these on separate drives to save space,
>and when they move to another PC or Mac, the whole project needs
>reconforming. Don't use the default location which is usually the C
>drive (or the drive with the operating system) as that one will
>obviously not be in the other computer .
>
>In Edit>Preferences>Media I tick the "Save Media Cache Files next to
>originals when possible", so my conform files follow the material. So if
>I make sure the project folder stays in the same place, it will not need
>reconforming. If I need to move it, I would get reconforming in CS3 and
>4, but not in CS5. CS5.02 finds the files automatically. Finally!
>
>The biggest problem is probably not the audio conforming, but reindexing
>of your MPEG files. Indexing takes more time than audio conforming. So
>the fact that you have MPEG material is giving you both indexing and
>conforming trouble. You realize that you can start editing when
>indexing and conforming happens in the background (provided your
>computer is powerful enough).
>
>Uwe
>
>
>
>
>I just picked up a little 1-terabyte USB drive at Costco for US$119,
>just the thing, I thought, for storing a really large Premiere
>project and taking it with me to work on a laptop while I'm traveling.
>
>Nope.
>
>Premiere seems completely brain-dead about how it finds existing
>index and audio conform files, re-indexing and re-conforming every
>time I plug the USB drive in and the drive is assigned a new drive
>letter value. (This almost always happens when moving from one
>computer to another.) Because I have 72 hours of HDV source footage,
>it takes over 24 hours for Premiere to re-index and re-conform, which
>is unworkable.
>
>Does anyone know how to get Premiere to recognize existing .pek and
>.cfa files in a Media Cache File folder? Are there any other ways to
>avoid endless re-indexing and re-conforming?
>
>I'll try assigning the same drive letter value to the drive when I
>plug it in to see if that helps.
>
>For the life of me, I can't imagine why Adobe hard-wired drive letter
>values in the pathnames to .cfa and .pek files instead of using
>relative pathnames that don't care about the drive letter value.
>Perhaps the Adobe engineers working on video indexing and audio
>conformation were brain-dead themselves.
>
>Mike Boom
>
>P.S. I'm using Premiere Pro CS3. Does anyone know if indexing and
>conforming have been fixed in CS4 or CS5?
>
>_,_._,___
>
>
>
>[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
>------------------------------------
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
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