Importing, transferring, capturing, and digitizing

Premiere Pro imports the clip into the Project panel.

You can also drag clips from the Adobe Bridge Content panel directly into the Premiere Pro Project panel.

Channel support

Premiere Pro supports four-channel assets. Every processed pixel in the render pipeline uses four channels. When Premiere Pro processes a three-channel asset, such as DV, HDV, or MPEG footage, Premiere Pro automatically converts it to a four-channel asset. Premiere Pro converts a three-channel asset when you add an effect or transition to the asset.

Premiere Pro supports 10-bit color depth, sometimes useful for editing standard and high-definition footage.

Importing assets from tapeless formats

File-based camcorders from various manufacturers record video and audio into files of specific formats organized within specific directory structures. These formats include Panasonic P2 camcorders, Sony XDCAM HD and XDCAM EX camcorders, Sony CF-based HDV camcorders, and AVCHD camcorders.

Camcorders recording in any of these formats typically record to hard disks, optical media, or flash memory media, not to videotape. These camcorders and formats are therefore called file-based, or tapeless, rather than tape-based.

The video and audio from a file-based camcorder are already contained in digital files. No capture or digitizing step is necessary to bring them into Premiere Pro. Reading the data from the recording media and converting it to a format that can be used in a project is instead called ingest. Premiere Pro ingests files in any of these file-based formats from any of their media.

Adobe provides workflow guides for P2, RED, XDCAM, AVCCAM, and DSLR cameras and footage on the Adobe website.

XDCAM and AVCHD formats

You can find the video files from XDCAM HD camcorders in the CLIP folder, written in the MXF format. XDCAM EX camcorders write MP4 files into a folder named BPAV.

For information about the XDCAM format, see this PDF document on the Sony website.

AVCHD video files are in the STREAM folder. For more information about the AVCHD format, see the AVCHD website

The Panasonic P2 format

A P2 card is a solid-state memory device that plugs into the PCMCIA slot of a Panasonic P2 video camera, such as the AG-HVX200. The digital video and audio data from the video camera is recorded onto the card in a structured, codecindependent format known as MXF (Media eXchange Format). Specifically, Premiere Pro supports the Panasonic OpAtom variant of MXF, with video in DV, DVCPRO, DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO HD, or AVC-I formats. A clip is in the P2 format if its audio and video are contained in Panasonic Op-Atom MXF files. These files are located in a specific file structure.

The root of the P2 file structure is a CONTENTS folder. Each essence item (an item of video or audio) is contained in a separate MXF wrapper file. The video MXF files are in the VIDEO subfolder, and the audio MXF files are in the AUDIO subfolder. XML files in the CLIP subfolder contain the associations between essence files and the metadata associated with them.

Last updated 1/16/2012

Importing, transferring, capturing, and digitizing

Note: Premiere Pro does not support proxies recorded by some Panasonic P2 camcorders in P2 card PROXY folders.

For your computer to read P2 cards, it needs the appropriate driver, which you can download from the Panasonic website. Panasonic also provides the P2 Viewer application, with which you can browse and play media stored on a P2 card.

Note: To use certain features with P2 files, you first change the file properties from read only to read and write. For example, to change the timecode metadata of a clip using the Timecode dialog box, you first set the file properties to read and write. Use the operating system file explorer to change file properties.

Avid capture format

Avid editing systems capture footage to MXF files, generally into a folder called Avid Media files, with audio captured into discreet files separate from the video files. When you import Avid video files, Premiere Pro automatically imports their associated audio files. However, it is simpler to import Avid project files, in Advanced Authoring Format (AAF), than to identify and import individual Avid MXF video files.

DVD format

DVD camcorders and DVD recorders capture video and audio into MPEG-encoded VOB files. VOB files are written into a VIDEO_TS folder. Optionally, ancillary audio files may be written into an AUDIO_TS folder.

Note: Premiere Pro and Premiere Elements, do not import or decrypt encrypted DVD files.

More Help topics

Importing tapeless assets in Media Browser

www.mog-solutions.com/img_upload/PDF/MOG_SOLUTIONS_operational_patterns_NAB2007.pdf

Import assets from file-based sources with Media Browser

You can import assets into Premiere Pro directly from tapeless media. However, it is more efficient to transfer tapeless media contents to a hard disk before importing. Also, playback performance is much better from a dedicated internal hard drive or RAID than from a camera or memory card reader.

Use the Media Browser, instead of File > Import, to import files from tapeless sources. The Media Browser assembles the relevant files into coherent clips, and does not import irrelevant non-media files sometimes found in the folders of tapeless media.

1(Optional) Transfer the entire contents of one or more P2 cards, Sony Compact Flash cards, XDCAM media, XDCAM EX SxS cards, hard disk camcorders, DVDs, or AVCHD media to a hard disk. For information about transferring these media, see “About transferring files” on page 61.

Note: For XDCAM EX, copy the entire BPAV folder and its contents, not just one MP4 file at a time.

2If the Media Browser is not already open, select Window > Media Browser.

Note: You can dock or group the Media Browser like any other panel in Premiere Pro.

3Browse to the folder containing the media files.

The Media Browser shows a thumbnail or icon (depending on the format) and shot name for each shot in the folder. The Media Browser automatically aggregates spanned clips and shot metadata from the subfolders into single clips for any of these formats. The Media Browser shows different sets of metadata for different formats.

4 (Optional) To preview a shot before importing it, double-click the shot in the Media Browser.

Premiere Pro plays the clip in the Source Monitor without importing it into the Project panel.

Last updated 1/16/2012