Hello everyone,
I work for a university where students edit long-form video projects using CS6, CC, or CC2014 on multiple workstations. All of the workstations run MAC OSX. Students work on multiple workstations because they are all shared workstations, and a system that a student used one day may be in use by a different student on another day.
So here's the problem.
Whenever a student moves to a new workstation, all of that student's media begins to conform (in the case of AVCHD footage) or generate peak files (in the case of MOVs), even if that student already has conformed all of his or her footage at a previous time on a different workstation. This is not a sustainable workflow, as each student is working with several terabytes worth of footage, and conforming can take up to ~6 hours in some cases. It goes without saying that editing can't begin until all of the conforming is complete.
I tried to engineer a workaround - I directed students to follow these steps:
1. Open a new, blank project file.
2. In the media tab in "preferences," set the media cache files to a folder on your external hard drive (where your footage is located)
3. Save and close the blank file.
4. Open your project file. The media cache folder will still be set to the location on your hard drive as you directed it.
I did this under the assumption that Premiere simply couldn't find the peak files before. However, in many instances, the program will proceed with conforming regardless of this process.
Again, this happens whenever a student migrates from one workstation to another.
Suggesting that students stick to one workstation is not a viable option. There are four workstations for fifteen students in our department. They should be able to migrate their projects from one workstation to another without having to conform their footage each time. This isn't an issue with Avid or FCP 7 - it shouldn't be an issue with Premiere.
Any advice would be appreciated.