Hello,

I work at a facility that edits with Media Composer. However we have a new creative director that insists on working in Premiere, and would like to outsource editing to editors who work in Premiere.

This is frustrating for me as we have an ISIS 5500 with a huge library of footage on it ready to be edited with but instead for his projects I have to manually pull all the footage off of LTO to a hard drive so that a freelance editor can work with it in Premiere.

I would like to try and avoid this by setting it up so that we have a Premiere suite in-house that can access all the footage on our ISIS, and then the freelancers can remote in and use it. Unfortunately there's a lot of information online saying that this can be done, but as of yet I haven't found any instructions on how to actually set this up. It looks like this has been possible since 2015 and that I have the minimum version requirements of ISIS to accomplish this, but that's about all I know.

I was hoping that someone could point me in the right direction so that I could learn how to set up and configure this workflow.

Here is the specs of all the hardware and software involved:

Edit Suite

HP Z4 G4 Workstation

Intel Core i9-10900X 3.70 GHz

32 GB RAM

NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000

Windows 10 Pro

Media Composer

2021.5

ISIS 5500

Version 4.7.5.15920

Nexis Client Manager

Version 20.7.6.32

Adobe Creative Cloud

Version 5.7.0.1307

Premiere Pro

Version 22.3.1

 Thank you very much and I appreciate any assistance that might be provided.

There is nothing you need to do that is special. You create workspaces and users like you would with an Avid project.

Some things to consider:

1. The project may be an Adobe Production (multiple project under one folder structure). If you have issues (not saving, freezing during opening, etc.) hosting the production on your ISIS, you can move it to a standard NAS. Use SMB.

2. Your ISIS will only have a bandwidth of 300 MB/s per chassis. Calculate your bandwdith requirements carefully.

3. Always use the latest Nexis client if possible.

4. Never host Premiere's Media Cache file on the ISIS.

Thank you for this I appreciate the reply.

Unfortunately I'm still not quite sure how to get it set up, perhaps this says more about my ignorance with Premiere?

Our ISIS already contains about 5 pre-existing workspaces, with all footage spread sort of evenly across all of them. There is approximately 15 years worth of footage, comprising thousands of clips. When I open Premiere's Media Browser all of the workspaces are mounted and show up as network drives. So how can I then index those drives within Premiere so that I can import the shots I want into the Premiere project?

All the footage on ISIS has been transcoded through Media Composer so that they're all raw MXF files, all separated into different video and audio files. Is this indexible and usable within Premiere or do they have to be orginal camera files?

Do I have to set up an "Adobe Production" as said, or can it just be a regular Premiere project?

Does the Premiere project have to live on the ISIS or can I keep it locally on my computer?

Apologies if this is a lot, I'm just not sure what has to happen on the Premiere end to make this workflow possible.

Thank you.

I would strongly advise you to update the ISIS to 4.7.13, there are a number of important fixes in-between. 

There's this: Adobe Premiere Pro Editors, You Can Now Take Full Advantage of Avid Shared Storage.

And this: Collaborate with Avid NEXIS | PRO and Third-Party Software, Part 1: Adobe Premiere Pro.

The Premiere project can be local or on a workspace. Don't follow my video as far as setting the cache, Adobe only supports setting the cache to a local SSD, normally a dedicated local SSD. 

Adobe can't use the native OPAtom Avid media unless its been exported as an AAF and this imported into Premiere. If the plan is to share media, this isn't going to work. The editor would have to search for media in Media Composer and export an AAF to import into Premiere. 

Adobe Productions is the Premiere version of Media Composer Bin locking. If this is a stand alone Premiere there's no reason to use this.

1. There is a issue with Premiere regarding network storage. See here.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/link-media-on-network-drive-in-premiere-pro-cc/m-p/6083747

2. The proper way to bring in Avid Op-Atom files in to Premiere is by exporting AAF media-linked (not embedded) from Avid and importing that in to Premiere. This should allow you to link the media files that you already have.

3. You do not need to be in Production mode. If you can manage individual project files, you can retain that. Just expect your Premiere team to ask you about Production. This is now the standard for project sharing in Premiere.

4. If you are project sharing (individual files or Production) the files need to be hosted in a shared storage. If not, they can be local.

Thanks very much from both of you.

I was aware of the AAF method and have used it before, buy I mistakenly thought there was a way to view all footage natively through Premiere.

Well thanks for the help and information, I'll suggest the AAF method and see what we can work out from there.

Thank you!

There are a couple of things that can go wrong when exporting an AAF. First the codec might not be supported by Premiere, in this case the media should be exported as a DNx OP1a MXF. Also, the drive letter is in the AAF, if the workspace with the media is Z when exported, it will need to be Z in Premiere and can't change. I'd encourage you to consolidate/transcode the media and not rely on the clips from the AAF.

This should all be extensively tested.