Moving your Avid MC sequences into Premiere Pro

With the many agencies using Media Composer as their primary platform looking to transition to Adobe's product line, confusion is mounting as to how to get the two to play nicely together. Here's a simple procedure from Adobe for getting your Media Composer sequences into Premiere Pro CS5.

To import a Media Composer sequence into Adobe Premiere Pro:
1. In Media Composer, select a sequence and click File > Export.
2. In the Export dialog box, select AAF and select “Link to (Don’t Export) Media”.
3. Name your exported sequence, browse to a location to save it, and then click Export.
4. In Adobe Premiere Pro, open a new project from the Welcome screen by clicking the New Project button, or choose File> New> Project (on a Mac, Option+Command+N or Cntrl+Alt+N on a PC). Click OK.
5. The new Sequence Dialog Box will appear. Continue without creating a new sequence.
6. Double click on the empty project pane of the new Adobe Premiere Pro project, which will open up the Import dialog box.
7. In that dialog box, find your exported AAF file and either double click on it or click on it and then click “Import.”
8. A dialog box will open requesting the location of the media files. Navigate to the Avid MediaFiles folder and find the first of the missing files. Adobe Premiere Pro will recognize the other missing files in that location and import them automatically. Your media will be imported into the project with the same media names that you had in Media Composer. Your sequence will also be imported and you can double click it in the Project pane to open it into the timeline.

If Adobe Premiere Pro and Media Composer are running on the same system, all media should link up automatically. If, however, you are moving from one computer to another, Adobe Premiere Pro will prompt you for the location of the source media. If moving from a Mac to a PC, be aware that certain QuickTime codecs have not been released for the PC, and the source media in those formats will not play on the PC. This includes, for example, QuickTime files that use ProRes. If you experience problems with QuickTime media in Adobe Premiere Pro, check to see if the source media will play correctly in QuickTime Player on the PC first before troubleshooting in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Enjoy.