For this tutorial, I'm using the Media Browser.prproj file.

You can find that with the media associated with this tutorial.

Just double click on the project file to open it in Premiere Pro CC.

I'm also using the Assembly workspace and you can reset that workspace by clicking on the Assembly workspace panel menu and choosing Reset to Saved Layout.

The Media Browser is a panel that allows you to browse multiple media types, preview them and import them.

Here in the Assembly workspace, Media Browser shares a panel group with the Project panel.

Like any other panel, you can move it where you like but it's likely you're going to want quite a large Media Browser panel to access and preview multiple files.

On the left, I've got a number of different folders here I can expand, my local C drive on Windows, this would be the Macintosh hard disk on Mac OS, and if I want to I can browse down into the Users folder, - into my user folder - and here I've also got Desktop.

On the desktop, I've really just got two folders an Other Files folder and a MEDIA folder.

We're going to look inside the MEDIA folder, but I think it's fair to say that browsing for the desktop through all of the sub folders is a bit of a journey, so I'm going to right click on this desktop item on the left in the navigator and I'm going to choose Add to Favorites.

Now, at the top of the list, I've got Desktop as a favorite, I can click on it at any time to access the contents.

You'll notice as well when I right click on an item on the left, I have the option to Reveal In Explorer - this would be Finder in Mac OS - and it just means I can open whatever I'm clicking on in the regular file browsing interface.

Since I haven't right clicked on some media, the option to Import isn't meaningful just yet.

And in fact, the option to open a piece of media in the source monitor isn't even available and it's the same for the option to open a project.

Whatever you select on the left, here for example, I'm choosing Desktop in the Favorites, and I'm going to display the contents of that by clicking this disclosure triangle and then I'm going to click into the MEDIA folder, you can see that you get the contents displayed on the right.

Right now, I've got my thumbnails displayed particularly large and that's a control down at the bottom of the Media Browser.

Let's shrink that down just a little for now.

You'll also notice I can toggle between viewing List View and viewing Thumbnail View, but the Thumbnail View is particularly useful as you'll see in a moment.

Premiere Pro CC allows you to open multiple projects at once and for that matter to import whole projects.

I can right click on this project file and I can open it or import the whole thing.

You can even browse inside project files within the Media Browser panel but that's not what we're here to look at today.

I want to browse inside this Source folder.

I'm going to double click to open this up.

You can see it's highlighted on the left in the navigator.

Right at the top, I've got an option to choose between some recent directories that I've explored.

I've also got a Back button and a Forward button.

If I pressed Back, it's a little bit like using a web browser.

I also have an option at the top right here to perform a search and you might be familiar with this from using Premiere Pro CC and browsing inside the Project panel.

Here for example, if I type in the word 'garden' only the clips that have 'garden' in the name are displayed.

I'll just clear that search box to see all of the items in this folder.

It's worth noting that what I'm looking at here is actually the media files inside the folder as they appear in Finder on Mac OS or in Explorer in Windows.

But I have some useful filtering options.

Up at the top here, I can choose for example, to only see TIFF files.

I've got some TIFF image files in this folder and now I'm excluding items based on the file type.

So, I can use the name at the top right or the file type right here.

I'll just change this back to All Supported Files.

We also have this Directory viewers option which is set up to allow me to choose to view particular types of media from cameras like RED or even within Premiere Pro Projects.

And for now, what I'm looking at is a regular File Directory so that's the option that's highlighted.

But look what happens when I go inside this Panasonic P2 folder.

Right away now, I'm seeing the contents of the P2 folder as whole clips.

These clips were all recorded using S-Log 2 so, they're very flat, they don't have a lot of dynamic range just yet, but it's easy to add later on.

You'll notice if I just increase the size of these thumbnails quite a lot, I can actually use any of the thumbnails as a little Preview monitor, just as you can in the Project panel.

If I hover the mouse cursor on the left, I'm now seeing the beginning of the clip and if I drag the mouse over - not clicking - I'm just moving the mouse cursor over towards the right, I'm seeing the end of the clip.

This is a little more obvious here if I drag through where there's some action.

I can press Control A or Command A to select all of these three items and I'll just shrink these thumbnails a little so they're more manageable and I can right click and choose Import.

And now there are those three clips inside my Project panel.

I'm just going to go back to the Media Browser.

I'm going to deselect by clicking on the background and now I'm going to right click on one of these items and choose Reveal In Explorer.

Now, what's special about the Media Browser when working with what I would call fragmented file types is that as you can see in the background in Premiere Pro CC, we're getting three individual clips.

But if I navigate up a little here in Windows Explorer so you can see the CONTENTS of the P2 folder, well, if I browse one level down you can see we've got multiple folders that contain different parts of our media.

We're not seeing any of that in the Media Browser which just gives us the combined files as clips.

This is really the magic of the preview functionality of the Media Browser.

Remember that when you import into Premiere Pro CC, unless you enable the Ingest options - which have a shortcut here at the top of the Media Browser panel - nothing's going to happen to the original media.

Again, I'm going to navigate up one level here by clicking on the Source folder on the left and I'm going to click into the right side of the Media Browser panel I'm going to press Control A, that'd be Command A on Mac OS, to select all, then still holding the Control key in Windows or the Command key on Mac OS, I'm going to click on this P2 folder because we don't need it we've already got it imported and now I'm going to right click and choose Import to bring in both the TIFF files and the MP4 files.

If you move the Media Browser to another part of the interface, you can of course drag and drop from one panel to the other.

It's worth noting as well, if you do import a fragmented file type folder, like P2 or XDCAM from this view, then you are likely to get errors.

Let's try this right now.

There we go.

This error message is just advising me that I've selected things like an XML file or an XMP file to be imported as media and they're not really media.

I'll just click OK on this, no harm done.

It just means that some of the items I selected can't be imported but if I expand this newly imported P2 folder, you can see I've got just the parts that are normal media, in this case, it's some bitmap files which isn't very helpful.

The P2 viewer is triggered when you step inside a P2 folder and of course, the same is true for XDCAM and RED and so on.

Once you're inside the directory, Premiere Pro CC knows how it should interpret the media.

It's worth noting as well, if I just go back to the Source here and pick one of these MP4 files, you can double click to open a file in the Source monitor.

This doesn't import the file.

It just gives you the opportunity to view it using the Source monitor rather than the smaller thumbnail.