What are Productions in Premiere Pro

Hey there, this video we are going to look at something called the Production Panel, that's it there. A production in Premiere Pro is a way of working with multiple editors. It's a way of breaking up multiple jobs, like this one here, we've broken down our production into different projects, Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, 4, 5. It might be Video 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, it might be Episode, it might be Scene 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. It's a way of breaking down larger productions into smaller bite sized pieces, where multiple editors can work on it, called a Production. Let's jump in and see how they work. 

All right, first up let's talk about the kind of three different ways you can work, with another colleague, another editor. So the normal way, I'm using my little finger quotes again, and the most common way people use, and probably the most common way I use is, just to have your project, so your Premiere Pro project, on a kind of a shared drive, and that can be either a NAS drive.

So a drive, a NAS drive is just a hard drive, that is connected to the internet all the time. Look up "nas" if you are looking for something like that, it's basically just a hard drive connected to the internet, you can both share, or use like a remote file sharing service, like I use, I use Dropbox, that's all I use. So it's a similar sort of process, instead of your own physical hard drive, like a NAS drive, you're using Dropboxes. There's pros and cons for both of those, and basically we've got one Premiere Pro file, and we share that file together, and when he's got it open, I can't work on it, when he finishes and saves, Dropbox syncs, and I can then work on it. 

So that's fine for small projects, for larger projects you've got two options. There's one called Teams, and one called Productions. Now Teams is a little out of the scope of this course, mainly because you need a special license, you need like a Creative Cloud Enterprise license, or a Creative Cloud Team's license, for that special kind of team's projects, but for us, regular Joes, you get something called Productions. Now Productions are very similar to Teams, you get a lot of the perks for that. So let's look at Productions, this is more of like a demonstration, then following along this one, I want you to get the idea of how Productions work, rather than following me step by step. 

So I've got one that I've created here on my Desktop, so basically what productions are, not projects, projects is the thing we know and love already. Productions is a way of grouping projects together. So I've got one here, I've got this documentary, now that is the Production. To open it I'm going to go to 'Premiere Pro', and you can see, 'Open Project', and you've got this thing that you've ignored, you're like, "What did that do?" This is what it does, I'm going to open up a project, oh sorry, a production, I hate that they got the very similar name, it drives me mad. You can either hit 'Browse', or if you've recently opened it, it'll be in here. 

So I'm going to open it up, and that's what it is, it's a little panel, it's a bit boring, all by itself, but that's essentially what that file is, and all it does is connect other projects, to make them easier to organize. In our case we've got this documentary, we've got Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. Now why would you do it? It's because Tayla Coman, my other editor that I work with, he can be working on Day 3, I could be working on Day 1, and we can split a project. It will be connected up at the end, but it's a way of separating maybe Scene 1, Scene 2, Tutorial 1, Tutorial 2, we do a lot of, we'll have hundreds of tutorials in a course, like this one you're doing now. 

Let's open up Day 1, all right, so I've got Day 1 open, Tayla's working on Day 3, and it means we don't trip on each other's toes. I can have Day 1 and Day 2 open, it could be just used as a way of kind of connecting a large project. You can use this by yourself, it's probably a little extra work. You might find that valuable, but there is a few pros and cons for using Productions, but I can work between these two projects here, but I can see in the context of my larger production. 

This is an evolution of, if you shared projects before, it's same same, but no, it's called Productions now. So in terms of the color coding, over here, it's pretty clear why I think it is, anyway, green pencil, you are editing, red lock, somebody else is editing, Tayla Coman, in this case. If I close down this, not panel, close down this 'Project', you'll notice that, blank; blank means nobody's got it open. One thing to note is, I can open the one that somebody else is working on, but it's a read-only. I can't make edits to it, it's just kind of like locked. I can look at it, I can copy and paste from it, which is really cool, but I can't go and make changes to it. If it does go yellow while you're working on it, it means that Tayla's actually working on, at that second, and things might need to be refreshed. 

So you might need to close it and open it up again. So I'm going to close down-- you see the locks everywhere, so I'm going to go 'Close Project'. All right, now let's close down this project, 'Production', sorry, and get started from scratch. So let's, we've got, see, Close Project, and Production, so we're going to close this 'Production', I'm going to make a new, not project, you can find in here, a 'New', 'Production', and where am I going to stick it? I'll stick mine on my Desktop, I shouldn't, but I'm just doing it for this demo. 

Let's say this is my Production for my upcoming-- what course am I doing next? I'm going to do Figma, probably Figma course coming up. So "Figma, Training Course," I'm going to put on my 'Desktop', let's have a look. So what happens is, we get this panel, essentially what the production is, it's giving me my first project without asking, because I'm probably going to need one of those, and let's say this one's going to be 'Tutorial 01', and this is where I, over here now I have that project open. You could close this now, this Production panel, go in here, 'Close Panel', until you're ready to add your next video. 

Let's add another, so we're creating projects here, instead of going 'File', 'New', we're using this panel to create the new project, so that it can kind of connect them all up. So let's have a look, let's make a 'Tutorial 2' for this video. Now I've got two of them open, I can drag in my footage for it, what have we got, I'm just dragging in anything, yeah, these guys, this is my tutorial for Tutorial 2, I start my editing, start working on it, start building up my sequences like I do normally, and this here is just to help me connect this whole big project for this whole course, when I've got like 100 different videos, or at least 100 different projects, and it means that I can have multiple editors working on it. 

Often, I'll have somebody working on the first one and the last one, I'm kind of meeting in the middle, trying to, at least, and I can see which projects have been worked on in here, which ones are being worked on currently. Now the one thing to be careful of, with this Production, is that it's actually manipulating my Finder on a Mac, or on a PC, it's your Windows. So let's have a look where I stuck it, I stuck it on the 'Desktop', I called it 'Figma Training Course'. So it made a folder for me, thank you very much. Inside of here it's made a couple of projects, so it's made those for me, this here, remember, is, is the Production Panel, it's the file that connects them all together, don't delete that. These things will disappear, these are just the locks, that means that nobody else can open it. 

When I close down, watch this, Project Tutorial 2, if I close it down, let's go, let's do Tutorial 1, 'Close Project', 'Save', why not? You'll see in here, that Tut01 lock is gone, so just ignore those, they come and go, but it also means that you need to be very deliberate, when you are, say adjusting these things, which can be one of the slight troubles with it, no, you just need to know what's happened.

So in here if I go-- actually I'm not going to call them Tut 02 anymore, because that's a weird word, I'm going to call it just Figma 01 and Figma 02. What you'll notice is, see in my Finder, it's actually renamed the project. If I try and do it in here, and say, I'm going to call it, in here, Figma 01, it doesn't like it, normally, it normally doesn't, because it's open, it's updated, man, it never used to, maybe it does now. Just be careful, my advice is to do renaming, and you're organizing within this panel, not in your Finder. Maybe it's different on Windows, it's meant to freak out, good old Premiere Pro. 

The one thing about a Production folder, is that it doesn't want media in there. So on my Desktop, inside of, where is it, my 'Figma Training Course', I don't want to then go and put a folder in here called Footage, it doesn't-- it breaks it, honest, it breaks it, if I double my mp4s in here it won't like it. So they need to be in a separate folder, so don't put-- it's just a way of connecting projects in here, and try not to put all your assets in with it, in this particular folder here, where is it? This one here, that's one of the things to remember. If you need to add an existing-- let's close down this project. 

One of the other things, you can only have one project open at a time, multi-- sorry, Productions, come on, Dan. So you can't have more than one Production open at a time. Multiple projects, we know that already, but we can't have multiple productions. So I'm going to close that one down, save everything, and go back to the original. The other one I was working with, my documentary, I'm going to open up Day. If I do need to add an existing project, rather than making them in here, that seems to, I don't know, sometimes I do that, most of the time I forget, and I need to add it to it later, just right click and say 'Add Project to Production', go find it, I've got something somewhere, here's my Day 4, this is really important. 

So I've added an existing project just to tie this all together. It's going to say, a new copy has been created. So at the moment I've just got one copy, it is on my Desktop, where is it, there, Day 4, so I've got that copy, it's saying, it's going to create a new copy for it, and put it in with the rest of these. So let's say, 'Copy', all right, it's brought it in, there's Day 4, and now I've got two versions. So Day 4 there, you just got to be very careful on how you want to proceed. 

Do I back this up, do I not need it anymore, that I've got a duplicate, probably don't need it anymore, but inside my Ms Donut documentary, can you see, it's come along for the ride, and now because of my OCD, I'm like, it has to be called right, all uppers and lowers, 'Day 4', and you can see, it's updated here in my Finder. Now you'll notice that I'm doing online, on my Desktop, you need to do it either in Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, can't remember them all, there's a lot of shared drives, or on your kind of network drive, not on your Desktop, because Tayla can't get a hold of this file if it's on my Desktop. 

So just make sure, if you are using shared file services like I am, Dropbox, just make sure your, this folder here, this one here is in Dropbox or some sort of shared file sharing thing like Dropbox. Another interesting thing is, when we get to say a bigger project, let's say it's back to my Tutorial 01, and I'm at like, we've got like a process of, First draft, Second draft, Finals, the kiss of death, Finals. You can create folders in here, so this one's going to be 'Raw', and let's say that these ones are in Raw, and this one here is going to be in First Draft. That one's in First Draft, and being worked, oh, I can't move it because Tayla's working on it, he's got to go close it, First Draft. 

Now what's happening is, these down here, can you see, first notice, it's called New Folder, not Bin, you're like, "I thought Premiere Pro called everything a Bin," it does, these aren't the bins, like within projects, these are actual file folders which, can you see, inside of my Production, it's actually made folders, and moved them in. It's just shuffling them around into folders, and yeah, just interesting to know, that's how it works. Also, let's say that you've got 1 in here, you don't need Day 2 anymore, for some reason, you need to delete it, you delete it and you're like, "What happened?" You're like, "It did, it's gone," Day 2 is gone, I've got Day 3, I've got, oh, there it is, you see it disappearing, and it's gone, you're like, "What happened?" 

It's actually just moved it to a folder called Trash, which is really helpful. It means it's not gone forever, it's just kind of moved out of our kind of Production list. If you really want to get that deleted, you have to go to the file here and actually drag it to the Trash. Premiere Pro likes to keep it around, just in case, which I think is probably a good idea. If you are just a solo editor you can use Productions, just make sure you don't put files inside the folder, you don't need to use the shared network drive, if you are going to do it just by yourself, it's not a requirement, it's just requirement of somebody else, outside of your computer need to use it, you can totally use it on your own. 

If you are working with somebody, and it's either blank or they've got some weird user name, some sort of like, I don't know, some weird user name, you can get them to go to 'Preferences', remember, 'Edit', 'Preferences' on a PC, on a Mac it's under 'Premiere Pro', 'Preferences', go to 'Collaboration', and you can, where it says User Name put in the user name, and get them to update it, so that you actually know who it is, and it's not user123. What else? Oh, this is a big one, let's say that I'm working on-- I've made mine a bit messy now, haven't I? So I'm going to tidy it all up, I'm going to get everything out of the folders, get rid of the folders, anything in there. So I've got Day 1, 2, and 3, let's move this one back in. 

All right, so I've got Day 1, which has got a bunch of stuff on the Timeline here, I've got Day 2, which has got a bunch of stuff on the Timeline, let's do Day 4. Do we make one of these? Day 4 has lots of stuff on the Timeline, let's make a new one. So let's go to 'New', let's make 'Day 5', or, I don't know, Episode 5 or Scene 5, whatever it is. So I've got, oh, bad naming, let's fix that. 

So I've got my Days, this one here, has nothing in the Project window. I'm going to make a new sequence, let's go 'New Sequence', and I've got a sequence, and I've got no files in here, or no footage. Let's say that most of the footage is actually all in this first one. So Day 1's got everything dumped into the Project panel, so you can go and steal stuff from that project, which is handy. So I'm going to go to Day 1, I want to say, actually, I need this. So you can open these, still in there, Source monitor, find what you want, you're like this, yeah, this is the one I want. I want this bit of B-roll, of the apron, and what you do is, even if it's on the Timeline, let's have a look, Day 1, maybe it's over here, you can say, actually, I want this, I'm going to copy it, and I'm going to go back to my 'Project 5', my 'Sequence 1', I'm going to paste it in here, and what you will notice is that, can you see, it didn't come along, it's not in my project for Day 5, it's still referencing that Day 1, which has its perks, pros and cons. 

It means that you just have one project, with all the raw footage in, and all your other days, just kind of, like sample from it, rather than having to load them all back in here. So that's one thing to know, is if you're copying and pasting between projects, while you're running a Production, it will bring it in, and it will run fine, and you can do all your edits, except that, it's not going to appear in my Project panel. This Production will manage the-- "I remember that on this project, Dan copied and pasted from this project." we'll leave the clip in here, but we'll have it on the Timeline here, in Day 5, just one thing to know.

Another thing is, one last thing is, over here, when you go to 'Window', where is it, so 'Window', 'Workspaces', this one here, where it says Import Workspaces from Projects, this will, might drive you mad. So with it on, if I click that on, it means that if I-- say Tayla finishes his project, and saves it, and I open it up, it'll open up with his layout. What I mean by that, his work space might be like over here, and all this closed, and because he's working on a different sized monitor, so if you don't want that to happen, you just say, actually, 'Work Spaces', 'Don't import Work Space from Project', just leave my Work Space alone, please. 

There's one last thing you might want to do, working with the Production. All right, Production's great, if you're working with more than, I feel, like two or more different people. For me, most of my stuff is just between me and Tayla, so I often don't use Productions to connect things together, because we work on other sides of the planet, and basically if he's working on it while I'm awake, well, he does quite a bit, he works really late, but we're on different time zones, on completely different sides of the planet, so it works for us, but Production's handy for those really large projects, there's pros and cons, you decide where you are at, and what kind of projects you work on, where the Productions is a good system for you. All right, that's a lot of talking, Productions, finished, let's get on to the next video.