I have a question about workflow for Premiere Pro, specifically how to adapt my Premiere Elements workflow to Pro.
Currently, I'm using Premiere Elements to edit years' worth of home movie DV-AVI footage. More than once, PRE has crashed and left my project in an unrecoverable state (meaning I lost all the time I spent) so on the advice of some very wise Elements forum members, I developed the following workflow years back:
1. Open a new project
2. Import the next 100 DV-AVI files to be worked on (I import my tapes using SceneAlyzer which splits each scene into a separate file, so each file = 1 scene)
3. Cull the clips, plop them on the timeline, do the usual transitions / audio / music, etc.
4. Save my project about every minute (seriously, Ctrl+S is my best friend)
5. When I get to the point where I'd be uncomfortable if PRE blew up and I had to start my project from scratch, I export entire edited project to DV-AVI
6. Go back to Step 1.
When my exported DV-AVIs (from Step 5) total around an hour, I'll open a new "master" project, import all the "Step 5" exported DV-AVI files, plunk them down sequentially on the timeline, add menu markers, etc. and burn a DVD.
Now transitioning to Premiere Pro, I'm wondering
1. Has anybody ever had a Pro project get corrupted and become unuseable? It seems like one big project might be easier to work with, but I definitely have an aversion to "putting all my eggs in one basket".
2. Can I (or should I) use Sequences to accomplish what I was using multiple projects for in PRE? Sequences are new and foreign concept, and seem pretty powerful - like maybe I could use them in place of my "mini projects" in PRE. But unfortunately they are pretty much glossed over in everything I've read, e.g. the Adobe "Classroom In A Book" gives them maybe 1 page.
My #1 priority is not losing work. After that, whatever is easiest for dealing with the literally 1000's of files I have to go through...
So what's everybody's real-world / best practice advice for converting my Element workflow to Pro?