Hi, I'm Jason Levine, and welcome to this episode of Short and Suite.

Today I'm going to talk to you about how to edit and ingest exactly what you want inside Adobe Prelude CS6.

And most importantly, I'm going to feature working with footage that I shot on my Nikon D800.

Nikon for the rest of the world, Nikon for those of us in the U.S.

So, now again, in Prelude CS6, one of the beautiful things is that I like to think of this application almost as the Lightroom for video, where you have the option to first review all the content that you've shot.

You can independently select the media that you want to work with, you can also tag and add metadata and then you can even convert this to another file format which is known as transcoding.

Which you would do with stills images where you take the raw images off your camera and then convert them from any .nef files or .cr2 files into a more standard format, something like DNG.

Well, Prelude CC allows you to do all of that in a very Lightroom kind of way but for video.

And again, I'm going to feature footage that I shot on a safari with my Nikon D800.

So, we're going to launch Prelude CC here, and before I even begin, I'm simply going to take the CF card, that I shot everything with, place it into my card reader, and now when I go into the Ingest dialog, it's going to start sifting through all the media that I shot on this card.

Now, I have hundreds and hundreds of clips here, so it's going to take just a couple of seconds to provide me with all the thumbnails for these.

Now, while it's doing that, let's talk about some of the transfer options.

Because this is really - this is the bread and butter.

This is really where Prelude CC becomes essential to your workflow.

It'll save you time editing later, it's also going to speed up the whole process of just selecting and working with the media that you want, - and only the media that you want - by allowing you to perform what's known as a partial ingest.

So, if we go over to our Transfer Options, the first thing that you'll see here is Transfer Clips to Destination.

Now again, typically because we work natively with DSLR camera formats, and of course all these other formats that you're familiar with, you don't have to transcode, you don't have to convert.

That's why you can simply transfer.

Transfer them off the CF card to a local drive or to an external drive.

But if you want to perform a partial ingest, and by that I simply mean taking something like a 10-minute clip, but you only want a minute that's in the middle, well if you're going to partially ingest that minute, you actually have to transcode to some kind of file format.

You won't be leaving it in its native format.

And for that, I'm probably going to choose something like ProRes if I'm on the Mac, or perhaps something like Avid DNxHD, if I've got Avid installed in my system.

And then of course, you have all the other flavors of QuickTime in H.264 and DPX and all these other flavors that we support inside of Prelude CC.

So, other than simply transfer, I'm actually going to click the Transcode button here.

And I'm going to choose QuickTime, because I happen to be on my Mac, and I also purchased Compressor, this is a very inexpensive way to get the ProRes codecs to use with Premiere Pro CC and all the CS6 applications.

Again, if I didn't want to purchase all of Final Cut, I don't have to, simply by purchasing Compressor from the App Store, it's going to give me all the ProRes that I need on the Mac.

Now, if I go to my drop down here, we're going to see that we already have some presets related to QuickTime and we've got some ProRes presets here.

And you can see I've got 1080p 23976, and I have a 422 HQ at 720p.

Now, that might not be exactly the format that I want to go into.

Why don't I see all the other flavors?

Where's ProRes 444.

Where's ProRes 422 LT?

Well, these are simply presets.

These are actually presets that we created in the Media Encoder CC and those same presets will show up here inside Prelude CC.

So, if I want to choose a flavor ProRes that doesn't already show up here because I haven't built a preset for it, here's how I do it.

I'm simply going to go over to the Adobe Media Encoder CC where you will see that I actually have a sequence that I just sent, queued from Premiere Pro CC.

So, what I can do up here, you'll notice, an User Presets & Groups, here's those same two ProRes presets that we just saw in Prelude CC.

Now again, I built these, so I'm going to build another one.

Let's say that I actually want to go from 1080p 23976 or maybe 1080p 30 to a 720p 2997.

What I can do is inside the Queue panel here in the Media Encoder CC, I can click on the preset here.

This will actually launch the Export Settings dialog.

This is the one that you're familiar with from Premiere Pro CC.

And now I can simply choose ProRes 422 (HQ), and by the way, here's all the variations of ProRes that I have.

Let's do an Apple ProRes 422 (HQ).

Let's go ahead and scroll down, and I'm simply going to change this to 1,280, 720, and while we're at it, let's make this 29.97.

Let's go ahead and save this preset.

And we'll call this "ProRes 720p 29 Sq Max Bit Max Render".

Everything else is still square, pixels, it's still max bit depth, max render quality, we'll leave that alone.

Click OK.

Click OK here.

Now, that preset is selected and you'll notice here now we have a new preset in my User Presets & Groups.

Well, because we now have built that preset into the Adobe Media Encoder CC, when I click back to Prelude CC, let's go ahead and choose a different format here just so it can refresh.

Go back to QuickTime, now you can see, there's the preset that we just created.

So, that's how you're going to build ProRes presets that you can access them inside of Prelude CC.

Similarly, if you've got Avid on your system and you want to use DNxHD or Meridian, or any of those codecs, you can build the presets in Media Encoder CC, they will show up inside of Prelude CC.

So, once you have that selected, I'm actually going to choose the 1080p 23976 Sq Max Bit Max Render.

Now, we can begin the process of doing the partial ingest.

Now again, in the simplest terms, what is partial ingest?

Well, it's the ability to simply choose ingest, select, just the parts of the video that you want.

And very commonly, if we're shooting a documentary or anything with a dialogue, you're probably capturing lots and lots of time, but you maybe only need 30 seconds of a 10-minute clip.

So, why ingest, why transfer, why transcode, 10 minutes when you only need 30 seconds?

Well, you don't have to with Prelude CC.

So, what I can do from within the dialog here, - again we've got hover scrubbing, which we also feature in Premiere Pro CC - I can hover scrub over my clip so I can actually find the clip that I want.

And I can come over here, like this one on the... the... what is this animal?

This is an elephant, and I can use my JKL keys on the keyboard.

And again, I can shuffle forward.

I can find the section that I want, so maybe we'll start about here.

I'm going to set I for my In Point.

Scrub forward, O for my Out Point.

And now this region that you see, this is going to be a region that I will ingest.

Just that region itself.

I'm going to select this clip.

Let's go to another one, perhaps this one at the top here.

That one isn't so great.

Again, this is why we love Prelude CC.

I don't need this clip, there's nothing in here.

It's all out of focus I was trying...

I was on a Jeep.

This is the rig that you see here, this is all I had to film.

Nothing good in there, I'm not even going to bother ingesting that clip, let's go to this one over here.

Let's kind of scrub through this.

By the way, you can also just grab the play head and perhaps I'll set an I over here, like that, OK, there we have that region, and perhaps I go ahead and select this one.

And let's scroll down and find some other animals.

Here we have a leopard, leading me in the dark here, so again, I can select this clip.

I can JKL to scrub through it.

Again, very shaky, this is all hand held, so I just want to find one good section.

Maybe right about here, I'll set an In Point.

Come over here set an Out Point.

And now because I have Transfer and Transcode selected, I need to tell it where to go.

You can see I've chosen "untitled folder", appropriately named.

I'm going to use QuickTime ProRes 1080p 23976 Sq Max Bit Max Render.

When I click Ingest, and be sure to select the clip here on these three clips, Ingest.

What is now happening is that those clips are actually being ingested in the background in Adobe Media Encoder CC.

And you can see that we have this little progress bar down here.

If I click over to the Adobe Media Encoder CC, you'll actually see that it'll begin the process of ingesting that media and if we twirl down the Output Preview, now you can actually see that it's beginning work - actually first it's going to queue that first Premiere CC sequence that I had in here - and then it'll hit these other sequences that are obviously going to Prelude CC.

The brilliant thing here is that while it's doing this, - let's go back over to Prelude CC - I have the option to click on Ingest, I can go back to my folder and ingest more media.

Now, a couple people have asked me recently, "can you ingest multiple sections on a single clip at one time?"

Well, currently the answer is no.

So, if I wanted to ingest another portion of this first clip here while it's ingesting in the background - and you can see that that ingest is happening down below - I can go back into the Ingest dialog, I can set new In and Out Points, like this, re-ingest those clips, have that happen in the background and keep on working.

I can even review other cards in my system.

Again, this is brilliant because while this is happening in the background, I can continue to review all of the hundreds of clips that I have on my CF card which is really convenient.

OK, so I'm also going to take a couple of clips, so we can let this finish working and not do a partial ingest.

I'm going to ingest the entire clip here.

So, let's go ahead and uncheck everything.

Let's go ahead and scroll down here, you can see it's still filling in some of the thumbnails.

We've got a couple shots here of some lions in the grass, a couple of rack focus shots that I liked.

So, again I'll select one like this.

This one actually looks pretty good.

Let's go ahead and select that whole thing.

Come over to this one.

Again, lot of shots when you're capturing animals.

They don't always do anything, so you got to sort of just keep filming until something happens.

Here's one where he starts walking away.

OK, let's go ahead and select those.

By the way you can now see those clips appear inside Prelude CC.

They're done, already ingested.

I've got some new clips.

Let's go ahead and select a few others.

Here's a few that are on the Jeep.

Here's the back side of a rhino.

I'm simply going to transfer these to a destination.

Go ahead and ingest now.

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom - done.

It's done because all it did was copy them from the CF card to that untitled folder in the original H.264 format right off the camera.

So, it didn't convert those files to ProRes.

Those are in the original file format.

Only the partially ingested clips, which you see up here, which I can double click on now.

Those are the ones that are currently in ProRes 422 HQ, 23976, etc., etc.

And now we're inside Prelude CC, and now we have the option to start cutting all these together.

So, that's a very basic look at partial ingest inside Prelude CS6.

And again, really, the most common question that I hear all the time is what format should I transcode to?

Well again, if you're on the Mac side, the most common one, the most popular one, is probably going to be ProRes.

And the easiest and most cost-effective way to get all the ProRes codecs if you're using CS6, is to purchase Apple Compressor.

You don't have to buy the full version of Final Cut.

Simply buying Apple Compressor is going to give you all of the ProRes flavors that you need.

Now, if you want to work with the Avid codecs DNxHD or Meridian, actually you can go to the Avid site and whether you're on Windows or Mac, all of those codecs are free for download.

Pretty awesome.

And similarly, if you wanted to use something like CineForm, again as long as you own that codec, if you've got it installed, you can build your presets inside the Media Encoder CC, Prelude CC will be able to access those and then you can use those presets, to partially ingest your media.

So, that's a very brief look at this very cool feature inside Prelude CS6.

I'll be doing a lot more tutorials to show you some of the cool little workflow tips and tricks inside the application, just to help you speed up the process speed up your production process and keep everything short and sweet.

Until next time, we'll see you then.