I’ve been using PP CS6 for almost a year now. I’m running version 6.0.2 on a new Mac Mini with 16 GB of ram, OS 10.8.3. I also run CS6 on a year-old MacBook Pro 17” with 16 GB of ram...often at the same time.
My situation seems a bit out of the ordinary in that everything I shoot is aerial (AVCHD 1080p 60fps), and needs to be stabilized. Everything. This is why I often run PP simultaneously on two computers. As you might imagine, I’ve become intimately familiar with the Warp Stabilizer’s capabilities!
Before I can use a clip in a production, it needs a fair amount of post-production work-up to look its best, starting with the WS, but also including Unsharp Masking, Luma Curve, and Fast Color Corrector. In other words, I must prepare a “master file” of a given shot before it can be used.
Typically, I have a project with a single sequence, where the timeline is comprised of a series of excerpts drawn from a single long camera recording. An example would be three clips in the timeline, each one to six minutes long. The source file may have been 20 minutes or longer; I extract the “good stuff” and put it in the timeline for processing.
I’ve learned to keep my projects short (20 minutes or less), so as not to bog down PP when I want to work on just one series of related clips.
Obviously no clip this long would be used in a production, but I’m supplying source footage for editors who may be interested in parts of the shots that I cannot predict ahead of time. It seems easiest to give them the long clips and let them pull out exactly what they’re interested in.
I export ProRes 422HQ or DNxHD for them as the intermediate codec--as the case may be--and they’re pleased.
But now I want to use some of my own footage to create a short film of my own.
My question for PP experts is, what is the best workflow when my finished production may be 15 minutes long, but is comprised completely of short excerpts of longer clips that were previously worked up as "master files" (i.e., stabilized and enhanced) in other projects? Obviously, I could import just the parts of the raw clips that I want to use in my production and give them my usual treatment, but that seems hopelessly redundant when I’ve previously done all that work on those same clips. Is there such a thing as an intermediate codec for working within Premiere Pro?