Streamline your workflows and collaborate with teammates across the globe with Adobe’s new Productions feature inside Premiere Pro.

Back in 2017 Adobe gave Premiere Pro users two exciting new workflow tools. The first was the ability to open multiple projects at the same time. This gave editors the option to quickly move assets between projects via simple drag and drop actions. These elements could move between Project, Source, and Timeline panels of different projects.

The second tool was Team Projects, an all new way to collaborate via the cloud. Premiere Pro and After Effects users could now work together on video projects from anywhere in the world via syncing changes through the cloud. With Team Projects, files are stored and saved in Creative Cloud, allowing users to revert and sync project files across multiple workstations. Teams can see who’s online and resolve editing conflicts in real-time.

With the latest version of Premiere Pro, Adobe has upped the ante again in the workflow/collaboration department, this time with the all-new Productions workflow. Let’s take a closer look.

See who is online and share tasks.

The Evolution of the Project File

When you boil it down, a Production is essentially a collection of Premiere Pro project files. With Productions, what was once a single Premiere project file is now a Production folder. Bins are now component projects stored inside of the Production folder. Still with me? Here’s what that structure looks like compared to a standard PP project.

Try an all-new editing and organizing structure.

But fear not—Productions are not replacing the standard Premiere Pro project file structure. This is just another feature available to users.

The Benefits of Using Productions

While it’s easy to think of Productions strictly as a collaboration tool, it’s actually much more than that. Ot’s true that larger productions working on episodic content will benefit the most. However, editors working alone can also harness the power of workflow improvements. Here’s how they can use Productions to help.

Productions can assist teams of any size—even solo editors.

Speed & Organization

The fact that Productions are broken up into smaller component projects helps with both the speed and organization of larger projects containing a lot of elements. This new structure makes the editing process much less taxing on an editor’s system. A computer will only devote system memory and processing power to the clips and sequences that are open within that particular project component of the production.

Duplicate Clips

Prior to Productions, importing projects into other projects or moving assets between multiple open Premiere projects would result in duplicate master clips. This workflow was extremely insufficient and frustrating. Productions brings a whole new method of clip referencing to Premiere Pro, making duplicate clips a thing of the past. This new method is really at the heart of what makes this new feature great.

Cut back on memory-eating duplicates.

Reusing Projects

While opening multiple projects in Premiere Pro allows you access to multiple assets, Productions now allows you to use projects as easily accessible assets. For example, now instead of sharing SFX assets between multiple projects, you can just create a SFX project to add to your production.

Collaborating

All of the new features listed above makes Productions a perfect collaboration tool. By cross referencing clips and using projects as assets, teams using a shared local network can streamline their workflow in no time. Just take a look at the Production panel in an active production to see how it works.

Stay on track with your entire team.

The Production Panel

When collaborating in Adobe Premiere Pro, the Production panel gives you a good lay of the land. Projects can be opened or closed, with specific lock settings. Symbols make it easy to see which projects are available for editing, which ones are read only, and which are currently being worked on by other team members.

The interesting thing about Productions is that changes you make in the Productions panel in Premiere Pro will reflect on your local storage as well, and vice versa. This is at the heart of the collaboration aspect of this new tool.

Productions make is possible for teams to stay connected, no matter how far apart the are.

Team Projects vs Productions

So what’s the difference between Team Projects and Productions? While both are incredibly powerful collaboration tools, Team Projects is a premium cloud-based service. Productions is geared for individuals or a team working on shared local storage.

Speaking of which, in an effort to support the community as they adjust to working remotely, Adobe is currently offering Adobe’s Team Projects video collaboration capabilities to Premiere Pro and After Effects users with a Creative Cloud for Individual license. This offer will be available until August 17, 2020 at no additional cost. (Prior to today’s announcement, Team Projects was only available with a Creative Cloud for Teams or Enterprise license.)

To take a closer look at Productions, download the latest version of Premiere Pro.

Cover image by Gorodenkoff.

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