Premiere Workflow - Cineform File Size

Aria Faye · October 30, 2019

So I recently got an A7R IV and am finding my machine can't handle timeline scrubbing of the video footage (even at 1080p) - So I took advice from Linus about encoding the original files to the Cineform Codec, which worked like a charm for fixing my timeline performance.

My issue is that the file sizes are so large (going from 1GB to 5GB), I don't want to keep the Cineform files, but I do want to keep the original files for future use in other projects, and am willing to just re-encode them as needed. Is there a way in Premiere to have it change the source files from the .MOV files back to the MP4's when I finish a project so I can delete the Cineform formatted files?

Current workflow is this:

1. Ingest footage & encode to cineform

2. Create video & export final

3. I now have 2 duplicate files, one which is MP4 straight out of camera, and another that is .MOV from the Cineform encoding. I'll need to re-open this project later but it's ok if the timeline performance is slower on the finished version of the project. Not sure what to do in order to save vital space.

For the record, I create around 100GB a week of video footage, so I can't really afford to have duplicate files at 5x the size. Any help or advice on workflow is greatly appreciated!

Aria Faye · October 30, 2019

Thanks so much, this is EXACTLY what I was looking for, but had no idea what terms to search. If you don't mind a few other related questions.

I noticed the option "create proxies" and so I clicked it and it looks like it's able to create a lower resolution version of the Cineform codec from those options. Is this a better solution for me instead of creating full resolution versions which I think is what I'm doing with the media encoder?

Does it render the full resolution when I export-> media automatically or would it render the proxies if I forgot to turn them off?

At the moment I'm dragging the cineform codec from the preset browser to the clips in media encoder. I thought an Ingest preset was what I was looking for, but when I go to create one it seems like it wants me to define a hard location of where to output the files, instead of allowing me to place them within the same folder as my source files. Any suggestions of what I could do to automate the encoding process slightly more? This is my first time ever touching encoding so I feel very lost as I know basically nothing about codecs.