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Adobe Premiere Pro CC - Essentials Training

Weird Project Panel & strange file behaviour in Premiere Pro

Daniel Walter Scott

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Hi everyone, this section is more weird stuff that Premiere Pro does. I've broken it up from that first chunk of it. We did it earlier in the course, just so that-- this kind of stuff is more for experienced people, like yourself, just some of the quirks of Premiere Pro. So you can just watch this bit, so grab a cup of coffee, find a comfy seat, and let me show you some of the crazy things Premiere Pro does, and how to fix it up. 

We'll get started with the Project Panel and File Behaviors in this video. There's a few of them, we'll start with one of the weird ones, is if you go 'File', 'Import' you can import the same file more than once. So I've already got XD Intro there, 01, I can import it twice, two different versions. There's one there, they can even be in the same folder, with the same name, weird. Just something that happens. 

Now if I delete, because I've used it down here in my Timeline, if I delete this one, it's going to say, "Hey, it's all been used in my sequence," and I say "No.” I delete this other one, it hasn't been used, it doesn't say anything. If I've used both of them, they both will tell me I've got a problem, and just leave both of them in there, they're connected to the same file, weirdness in Premiere Pro 

Next bit of weirdness is, let's say that I've got this file here that I've imported. It's got a terrible name, it's got the name that came off my digital camera, MV_blah, blah, and I've started using it, and I'm working with it, but then later on I'm like, "Let's be fancy, let's impress people with my naming." You're actually going to do some naming, and this is for the client Bring Your Own Laptop, and it's their, it's the first video in there, welcome for YouTube video. We're going to call it 'v1', and we rename it, and in here it goes, ah, we freak out, and that's okay, we've done this before. 

So we locate it, we know that it's actually called, there-- there we go, click 'OK'. It's matched it up, but see what it did with the names. It keeps the old name, and you're like, "Ah, this is a whole waste of time." It is not good at picking that up, it doesn't want to, and it brings up the point of, let's say I rename in here. So I've got-- well, there's nothing you can do about it, you can't, like automatically re- update it. If you do know a way, please drop a note in the comments. So what I end up doing is this,  paying for my-- good naming, I have-- click it, copy it, and paste it in, '.mp4', and rename it that way, you can see down here, it's still the same, oh, geez. 

So just-- if you rename stuff, know that it does link to the right file, but it will keep the old name, it's pretty persistent. We can kind of use this to our advantage. Let's say that you want to keep this old name, and in here it's going to locate it, let's actually, let's offline it, this one here, I'm actually going to delete it. Let's say I import it again, and I don't want to do it the other way around. So I want to find it on my desktop, my lonely old desktop, where is he? And I bring this guy in, and I don't want to rename it out here, for whatever reason. I can actually rename it in here and give it a really good name, and it doesn't change the file name, it's just like a label that goes on the top. I'm going to call this one '01 BYOL - Welcome', and I don't have to put mp4, it's just like a label that goes over at the top of it. Underneath is the right file, but I can give these any sort of name I want inside of Premiere Pro, and it doesn't mess with anything, the file, or the connection. It's mainly a problem. You can use it to your advantage. All right, next session. 

The next thing to cover is, what happens when you create a Premier Pro file, it creates a bunch of files for you, let's have a little look. I'm going to do a 'Save As', and save this onto my 'Desktop'. At the moment, on my desktop there's nothing, there's a couple of files that are unrelated to this, and I'm going to go, save it to my desktop. I'm going to give this one a name. This one's going to be for the Bring Your Own Laptop client, it's their welcome video. Welcome video. Welcome video. And this one was shot in March 2020, and this one's going to be 'v1'. 

So I've got this new project, save it to the desktop, let's have a look. You'll notice that there's two files that are created. One is the main file, it's this prproj, longest extension ever. This is the one that you really want to keep a hold of. This one here is useful, it's where the auto saves happen. So automatically, in 'Premiere Pro', under your 'Preferences', some of you are on a Mac, 'Premiere Pro', 'Preferences', and go to 'Auto Save'. On a PC, it's under 'Edit', 'Preferences' and go to 'Auto Save'. It's going to, in my case save automatically every 15 minutes. This is kind of useful, if you're finding it's taking forever to do auto saving, and it's really stopping your flow you can increase it up, but obviously you run the risk of it crashing, and you not having an automatic backup. You can turn it off in General, but yeah, that's what you do, auto saves. That's where it generates them, you can go and delete them. It will just generate another one in 15 minutes. 

So they're not that-- don't be scared of them. And when somebody asks you for your project, you have to email to them, you just need this thing, plus all the raw footage that is in there, but this thing is not that useful. You'll end up with up to, I think a maximum of 20 auto-saves, that you can go back from, so if Premiere Pro crashes, and it loads up and it's not where you thought it might be, or you need to go back a few versions, it will be here, in the Auto Saves. Just keep opening up the different ones. 

The other thing that you will see appearing is your render files. We looked at these earlier, remember, let's add an effect. So Effects Panel, I'm going to add noise just so that I can add it to a small video, can you see, goes red above it, and remember it's going to find it hard to actually update that one. Where did that cir-- I remember him, go away, circle. So I've added noise here, if I raise up the noise a little bit, just so you can actually see it, it's going to need to-- it's not going to playback very smoothly. 

So do you remember what the shortcut is to do all the renders? Remember, it's the return key on your keyboard, so hit 'Return'. It's going to render out the files, where did they go? That's where they're going to be stored, right next to where your Premiere Pro file is. So it's going to chug through these, you can see it goes green. So it plays nicely, that effect, and in here you'll see a new folder. So there was my Auto Saves, and this is a new one, Video Previews. In there is basically just mpeg. Little renders that have helped this thing play smoothly, and again, gone to bin. It doesn't hurt it, just when it comes back in here, and tries to look for it, and I hit 'Play', it's going to run slowly again, and eventually goes red, eventually it catches up and goes, "Hey, I don't have that file anymore," but the color takes a little while to update. 

So I'll keep those, because I've done it, but that's the file, so that's the main one you need to send somebody. These ones here are just like little extras that happen. Keep them around, there's no point deleting them. Your previews can actually get quite big in terms of the file sizes. So if you're struggling for file size you can just bin them, but don't be scared to bin them. 

The next thing I want to introduce you to is a Title. Titles are from earlier versions of Premiere Pro, before we had the Essential Graphics. The Essential Graphics is lovely and awesome, and does really cool stuff. Before we had this we had to use titles, and the titles were a pain in the bum to use. So they look like this, the same kind of thing, a bit of text, that's a title. They work differently in the fact that they're actual units that appear in your Project Window, rather than just, like this, this thing here, this Sign Up Now button, doesn't actually appear as a unit over here, is like its own discrete thing, whereas titles do. You might open up somebody else's project, and have a bunch of titles, there's nothing wrong with them, except they’re Comic Sans. 

So we've broken the law, be prepared to be dragged away by the Type police, but you can edit them, there's nothing wrong with them. You just wouldn't be creating them, if you do need to. Say you're working with somebody that just deals with titles, it used to be in here, used to go here, and go to Titles. They've just hidden it away because they don't want you using it, like that's the old thing. You can still find it, I think it's under 'File', 'New', no, where is it? Here it is, they've really scrolled it away so you can't find it. It's under 'File', 'New', it's called 'Legacy Title'. So you can create your own title, and you end up, it matches the frame size, you end up in here.

There's nothing really wrong with this. You might-- you'd be-- you might have been using Premiere Pro for a long time and love this thing. I dislike it, it's a weird little separate thing, and I'm a lover of Essential Graphics. Now if you do get a project with it, to edit it you just double click it, down here on the Timeline this thing opens up. It's only like separate little window, and you can start doing all your bits and pieces in here, like at least default fonts, wow. Lovely, that's what we need, a green Drop Shadow. 

Anyway, Premiere Pro doesn't want you using it very much anymore, but you might get a file that has one, and you just use them like a video, drag them on, drag on my new title. Is there anything in that one? Nothing. Delete it, and to double click them just to open them, and edit them. 

All right, that is going to be it for the interesting things Premiere Pro does with the Project Panel and the files that it creates. Let's do a little bit more weirdness in the next video.