One of the limitations of Adobe Premiere is that you can only have one Project file open at a time. However, once you learn this very cool tip, it becomes easy to share difference sequences, media, even entire projects, between projects.
Here’s how.
THE PROBLEM
This project contains a number of rough cuts for my upcoming documentary, where each rough cut is its own sequence.
Here, I opened my main documentary project and I’m editing like crazy. When… SLAM! I’m forced to halt because I need the clips and edits in one of those rough cuts.
Instead of closing one project, opening the other, then copying and pasting clips – which takes seemingly forever, here’s a better way.
THE SOLUTION
Open the Media Browser tab. (To show that you are truly in the know, press the Tilda key ( ~ ) just above the tab key to expand the Media Browser to full screen.)
Type CMD+I to import your project, which offers you two principle choices:
When you choose to import the entire project, and you leave “Create folder for imported items” checked, Premiere creates a folder named after the imported project and promptly loads all sequences and media from that project into the Project panel.
I recommend you always put imported sequences and media into a separate bin in the Project panel to make them easier to find.
When you choose to import only selected sequences, Premiere fires up the Dynamic Link Server – which can take a few minutes – then displays all the different sequences in the selected project, allowing you to choose between them.
Again, leave “Create folder for imported items” checked to put the newly-imported sequences into a folder to make them easy to find.
NOTE: While writing this article, I had a problem where Premiere was unable to connect to the Dynamic Link server. After working with this for about an hour, and researching this on the web, I was unable to find a solution that worked. I’m currently checking with Adobe to see how to resolve this; Adobe’s help files don’t cover this issue at all.
Fortunately, the workaround is easy: Import the entire project. This does not require Dynamic Link Server and is very fast. You can then delete any sequences or media you don’t need from your project. Putting all imported files and media into a separate project makes this additional clean-up easy.
EXTRA CREDIT
By default, Premiere does not reimport any clips which are already a part of your existing project. If, on the other hand, you want to keep things super organized so you can see what media is being used in which sequence, check the bottom check box, which allows you to import the same media more than once.
Checking this box does not make your project file much bigger, it simply means that you may have the same clip displayed in more than one bin inside the project file.
SUMMARY
This ability to import media, sequences, even entire projects into a separate project make working with multiple projects and sequences in Premiere easier than ever before. And, even if Dynamic Link Server won’t connect, you don’t need it in order to import entire projects.
One Response to Premiere Pro CC: Share Sequences Between Projects
not my experience at all. premiere pro cc 2014 ALWAYS imports the media again, even if you have ALL of the media in the new project (i.e the one you are importing to) already. it’s very very very very very very…etc frustrating, meaning on a long form documentary my project gets bloated pretty quickly when i’m trying to work with another editor, share sequences etc. MAJOR drawback of Premiere Pro.