Importing Multiple Video "Movie" clips into PT6

[David Hunter]

I'm an editor/mixer. My clients supply feature film video masters on either (1) digibeta or (2-3) 3/4" tapes. I digitize them, and import/spot them into the PT session. Why won't PT allow me to import more than one video file into one session? They aren't going to overlap in time. Currently, I have to copy the PT session and name them part 1, part 2, and separately import the video files into the two different PT sessions. What a pain.

[froyo]

Hello. Yes Pro Tools unfortunately does not allow for more than one QuickTime movie at any one time. Basically you have two options here. If it's at all possible, have your clients provide you with QuickTime movies instead of tapes. That way, their video editors can author a QuickTime with all the video, in one movie.

Or you can do this yourself, but it takes you a litle bit longer. You would have to capture the video and author the QuickTime yourself. This however is greatly simplified by iMovie. Capture your video into iMovie, put some black in between material, say 10 or 15 seconds. Then you can make your own QuickTime movie that will include all the video material in one QT movie.

Yet a third option is to either have one session per QuickTime movie or to just have the one movie at a time in one session. This of course is clunky and inefficient, as you have to close sessions, or replace movies every time you want to see the other one, etc.

In my opinion, since your clients are obviously going through a video department, it is much easier for them to create the QuickTime's. Have them put all the material into one long movie separated by black.

[David Hunter]

My clients have a vast videotape library and won't spend the time/money to digitize and combine parts into a single QT movie, then ship out a hard drive or do some overnight FTP. I don't see that ever happening for older material. Thanks for the suggestions, but they will cause me to spend more time than it takes to copy a session and reimport/resync the video clips. Pro Tools needs to have this feature. I can't imagine that it's that complicated to re-write for this, and no one has asked for it?

[Vaphoron]

You can have multiple quicktime movies if you buy the AVoption for $12,000. I personally thought we paid enough money already to have a feature like this but I guess I'm wrong.

[trakbytes]

You can have multiple quicktime movies if you buy the AVoption for $12,000.

Not quite correct. AV option will not playback Quicktime movies. It uses its own Avid codec for digitizing and playback. These movies will also not playback in quicktime-only systems.

This "one movie file per session" has been a problem since the earliest days of digital video in Pro Tools (anyone remember Post View? It was a $1,000 add-on that enabled Quicktime in version 2 or so of Pro Tools. The feature was free in later versions). The solution is to use one session per quicktime reel, or get used to importing and spotting the movie for additional clips. If you have master video/track Pro Tools sessions for your video , you can save some time by using the "Import session data" command and importing the movie track already spotted to proper timecode.

Of course if you wait long enough, there will be a new AV option that will cost many thousands of dollars that might someday work on a Mac.

rcm

[Ray Fabi]

Another workaround, would be to import each QT movie, and create a memory locate point for each of them, and then when your client sends you new videos, you import them, and recreate a locate point as you get them.. That way allows you to essentially work with multiple videos (not continuously but... i's a work around). I've used this often working on features or series work, and then I get a small edit, or another reel, I import, and PT tells me it will remove the current video (it's OK, I've kept a memory location). Hope this helps.

[Mark Wheaton]

If you really need to link the movies together, use Quicktime Pro to copy and paste the clips together after capturing them. Keep in Mind however, that if smpte is as issue, these pasted together movies may not correspond to your timeline. And if you are scoring cues, you may need bar 1 beat 1 at the start of each cue to match a printed score. This unfortunately is not possible in Pro Tools. Which is why many composers use Digital Performer which allows multiple "sequence" within one file or session and you can set a different start time and smpte offset for each. I do not really find it that big a deal to keep the sessions seperate for each reel or cue. This helps keep the session file sizes in check since you can then have a different audio files folder for each session.

[froyo]

Hello. I suppose in your case then, if you find it prohibitively time consuming to go to iMovie or QuickTime Pro to put multiple QT's into one that includes all, then I would say that indeed having one session per video is best.

It doesn't take that long however, specially if you are in a moderately fast computer.

I also wanted to make the comment about clients. Many times we placate way too much to their likes and/or dislikes without finding out a lot of the facts. And also sometimes we do this and it ends up hurting us in the long run. I know some years ago, I think about 2 years ago, we made the decision to ask (nicely) of all our clients to deliver video via QuickTime. Most were OK with it, actually relieved. There was one or two of them who more or less had to come kicking and screaming.

Could we have lost the gig because of it? Maybe. But we decided to do it and risk it. In our view, it was much more important in the long run to standardize and streamline the process than to cave in and placate to every little single client idiosyncracy.

QuickTime are pretty much standard now. As much as any tape is, and then some. If a client can't be bothered to make something as simple as a QuickTime, then maybe it's a client one doesn't need.

That's an individual call, on a case by case basis. I am just saying that it's not always best to just automatically say yes to anything the client asks.

[mxman1]

You might want to check out ReVision by Granted Software www.grantedsw.com
This $29.95 rewire quicktime player might be a solution for you although I've only used it with Live. It's worth checking out their free demo to see if you could cobble together a workable hack.
Todd Kasow

[Noiz2]

One other point, if the timeline isn't critical and working with one big quicktime is a possability. Then it doesn't have to take very long because in QT pro you can make a reference movie. It's quite small and takes no time to create, but it's pretty hard to get your QT's to start at specific TC places.