Collaborating on long form video editing using Update with Links feature in Zoom

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Overview

A long form video editing project in video editing apps such as Adobe Premiere Pro can have upwards of 5000 elements including linked footage. A post-production supervisor or primary editor might create a master prproj file that inks to these elements & footage assets. These linked assets need to be shared with other team editors to finish the project that might be broken up into multiple project files. Each editor might work on a particular duration or sequence that eventually will need to be assembled into a master Premiere project.

For example the primary editor, Erin, creates a project file jobA/original.prproj that links with 5000 files in her U-SAN working copy. After she sync the  original.prproj to Zoom the high-res footage files are copied to the P-SAN using the VideoFX workflow and the original.prproj links are auto-resolved to the P-SAN footage file by the Zoom plugin. However the graphics that was not ingested as high-res files will be directly ingested in Zoom, the original.prproj now contains links to Erin’s U-SAN path to these graphics.

See diagram below:

Creating Smart Copy to edit in parallel

Since Justin needs to edit part of the long form video, he needs to create his own copy of the original.prpoj to start working independently on the sub-sequence. Using the Zoom Smart Copy feature he can fork of the original.prproj as smartcopy.prproj as shown in the diagram above.

This causes the following problems:

  • Smart copy of the original.prproj file points to elements that are in Erin’s USAN based working copy (WC).
  • Justin can check out all the links to the smartcopy.prproj by using the update with links feature in Zoom Asset Browser. Thus, Justin now has all the graphics in his personal WC on the U-SAN
  • However, Adobe Premiere will not resolve the links from Erin’s WC to Justin’s personal USAN WC even if ‘Resolve Links’ is clicked in the Zoom Adobe plugin
  • Smart copy of the original.prproj file points to the high-res/native assets on the PSAN as expected so no issues there
  • Sync/Check-in of the smart copy of the original.prproj will cause Zoom to try to check-in all the elements that are in Erin’s WC to Zoom MAM. The check-in will conflict with files with the same path in Zoom repository

Solution

  • Zoom MAM can already store the assets IDs that are linked inside a project file such as a prproj project in its database
  • Zoom Adobe plugin resolve link feature can already detect links originating from another collaborator’s working copy (WC) provided the prproj is not modified and links to elements are checked out.
  • Justin will start with creating a smarty copy of the original prproj file and would end up checking out the smart copy as the default “Convert to Working Copy” flag would be selected in the smart copy dialog:

  • Using the new 7.0 feature ”Update  (with Links)”, after a smart copy has been created and checked out, Justin can perform an Update  (with Links) and check out all the links (low-res proxy & graphics elements):

  • Resolve Links right after the above update will then switch links from Erin’s WC to Justin’s WC correctly
  • Justin can then make changes to the smart copy of the prproj and create or update sequences and the sync/check-in with links preserved correctly
  • With the above feature, only a single job folder will need to be created for a complex long-form video job spanning multiple premiere project files
  • All the links from a smart copy of an original file will be resolved to the checked-out assets in folders such as graphics. Any PSAN link will continue to work as before
  • Thus the other editors such as Justin can create a smart copy of the original.prproj to edit the sequence using the links inserted in original.prproj
  • If another editor wants to work on the same prproj, instead of creating a smart copy they can (checkout with Links) the entire project and associated links and then perform a resolve links to update the links to their WC. They must not modify the file before using ‘Resolve Links’.
  • Master/primary editor, Erin, can then keep syncing/updating with links Justin’s changes to merge back into the master Premiere Pro file (original.prproj)