Update: This issue has been resolved in the October 2014 CC release. See the my short tutorial.
Some of you may have already stumbled upon the issue of clip markers disappearing from the project files in Premiere. There is a solution to that: give Premiere read-only access to the media.
Even though Premiere saves the clip markers and other temporal metadata in the project file, the moment it encounters files with the information that is contrary to what it has recorded, the project data is discarded, and the new metadata is read from the file. Thus your clip markers and other information can be wiped out from the project file the moment Premiere encounters the conflict. However, it only happens when Premiere can write information to the files or to the XMP sidecar files.
This leads to a simple workaround, even though it’s a very finicky one. You must present Premiere with media that it cannot write to. Make the media files read-only either by changing the permissions (OS X), or file attributes (Windows), and Premiere will not discard the project information. If Premiere has no write access to the media, then it’s going to keep the project metadata, including your precious clip markers.
The downside is that you can’t log the metadata via Prelude or other applications, unless you create a separate account with a writing access to the media. But even then Premiere will not read the file metadata, defaulting to whatever had been previously saved in the project file.
There’s an important nuance that might be useful in some situations, when you want to actually dump the project data to files. If Premiere has write access when the project is being opened, it will remove all the project temporal metadata upon conflict. However, if this access is restored only when the project is already open, Premiere will save the project temporal metadata to the files, and remove the metadata stored there either during manipulation in the source monitor, or upon closing.
So to sum it up:
- If you want to retain project temporal metadata, including the clip markers, make sure Premiere can’t write to media files – make them read-only.
- If you want to save the project metadata to another set of media, open the project with read-only access, then change the privileges to allow writing into files, and close the project.
- Prelude and other applications can’t write or share metadata when they can’t have the write access to the media files.
- Some media write metadata in the sidecar XMP files – in these cases, make sure to flag the whole bins as read-only.
Note, that this workaround requires very careful approach, since the saving the project metadata to media files is not undoable.
Two other ways:
when i want to make a clip marker now (which are not there anymore) i cut the clip in two (c shortcut) and then group them together.
Another workaround to mark a position in a clip.
Or you can place another item in the bar above it, at the right position, (disable the other item if necessary) and group the two. So you iknow the position.
Another workaround to mark a position in a clip.
Kind regards,
Christiaan
Yes, there are many ways you can do it on your timeline. But they don’t help when you are marking the master clips themselves, as many people tend to do. These markers will disappear if you point to the other set of media where they were not saved. And this was the problem that I was trying to solve.
Hi Bart, Thanks for the tip. Strangely I can’t seem to find any other information about this issue, which seems like a kind of huge one to me. I’ve also tried your idea but it didn’t seem to work for me. Do you know if this issue is being resolved or if there are any other ways around it? Many thanks.
I think it came about in CS4, which is the update I personally completely missed, we jumped straight to CS5. You need to really make sure that the media is read-only for the user – not sure if you’re on Mac or on Windows. Sometimes it might not be possible, if the data for a given format is stored in the sidecar XMP files. But this is the unofficial workaround. No other ways around that I know, and I’m not sure it’s going to change anytime soon, since this is the design.
Thanks Bart. Seems a very weird thing to have as standard. I’m on a mac.
If you’re on a Mac, you need to make sure that the current user only has “Read” and perhaps “Execute” privileges, not “Write”. And the design works pretty well in shared environments, especially for exchanging marker information and metadata between Premiere and Prelude. The downside is that the current metadata state is not easy to backup if you’re not using some kind of third party media asset management system.
Hi Bart, that’s really great info. We’re really struggling with how to work around that limitation. I’m at a business on a shared storage with users simultaneously accessing the same source footage. We also work with our Projects on the same networked storage. I tried your advice on a Mac and found that it only worked if my Project was saved locally when I did it… Have yet to try on Windows. What I’d like to be able to do is collate different sets of marker metadata, that different users have created for the same footage, in both Prelude and Premiere Pro, but I think that might be a stretch. I know you can associate metadata in Prelude but I’m doubtful that you can associate several sets, compounding the metadata from different users. The use case on very tight turn around work being that one user might log, while another user transcribes. Ultimately we want all users to see all the temporal metadata. I suspect Adobe Anywhere is where that solution is being developed.
Actually, I think that in your situation, where all the users are accessing the same media files, the default mode seems to be the way to go. The markers and other metadata are stored within the files themselves, and they are immediately accessible to others right after somebody alters them. Simply create a marker in Prelude, and then everyone should be seeing the newly created marker when they open the files in Premiere/Prelude/After Effects. This is the workflow that enabled many large companies to cooperate. If you are logging in Premiere, make sure that you are linking the metadata with the XMP file by clicking on the little checkbox after the field – a chain icon will appear to signify that the metadata is linked.
Hi Bart, thank you for your response. Yes I think the default mode does work for users marking consecutively on shared storage. That does work fine. Where we are challenged is when users are adding metadata simultaneously. The first user who saves, wins. Others will see their own markers disappear, and the user’s markers who saved will appear. That’s in Premiere Pro, I haven’t tried the same test in Prelude yet. Your work-around does give me new options to try out. Brilliant!
P.S. Were you referring to the checkbox in the Preferences/Media for metadata linking? Yes I have that checked. Thanks again!