Displaying Dates in Editor/Universal Leader

[StevenG]

Hi,
I am new here, and have gotten a great response to my first post. As this community is so helpful, I thought I would try again.

1. I notice that in Organizer, under View, if I click on Details, the date and time the movie or still was taken is displayed. I find this extremely helpful when organizing the sequence that I wish the clips to appear in the movie. In Editor, I do not see this option. Is there a way to get the date and time of the clip to appear in Editor? If so, this may eliminate the need for me to use Organizer, as my photos and clips are already organized in LR5. Edit:I just looked again, and notice that only the date and time for movies is listed. For stills, only the number of the image is listed. The still clips are listed by date imported, not date taken. Editor lists the number of the clip and still as well. This is helpful, but date and time taken is better. The clips and stills are not listed in number order. If clips and stills cannot be arranged in Editor by date and time taken, is there at least a way to list them by image number?

2. In Editor, in the top far right corner, there is an icon, which when clicked on, allows one to choose "view, sort, new folder, new item". Under new item, there should be a choice for "universal leader", which inserts the old fashioned 8 second count down. This option is missing from my "new Item" icon. How can I get it to appear here?
Thanks.
Steve

[Steve Grisetti]

1. It's long been a frustration that stills are listed by date stored to your hard drive rather than actual date taken. Unfortunately, I know of no way in Premiere Elements to change that. There is a program called DV Date that may be worth looking into, though someone else will need to fill you in on what all it does and how.

2. The Panel Options button in the upper right of the Project Assets offers a number of clip options, including the Universal Countdown Leader (Listed under New Item). This option is not, for some reason, available on the Mac version of the program. Is it safe to assume you're on a Mac?

Meantime, may I suggest you click on the Control Panel link above the forum and add your computer specs as your signature, as I've done? This will let us know exactly what computer you're using and on what operating system, which can often make it easier for us to diagnose your challenges.

[StevenG]

Steve,
Thanks for the response.
This is a huge disappointment, as I often take trips of 2-3 weeks, where I do not bring my computer.
Then, I when I get home, I upload the pictures to LR. It may then be another several weeks until I get around to making a movie, and importing the pictures to PrE13. So, the date they are imported is useless. At least, is there a way to get the pictures arranged by image number? That would be better than nothing. I do keep a log of the date each group of images is taken, so I can refer to that. But, having the date and time stamp, as in iMovie, made the process of sequencing photos very simple. Hopefully, this will be addressed in a later version.
Thanks.
PS. Yes, I use a Mac. I will see if I can figure out how to enter specs as signature, as you suggested.
Steve

[Steve Grisetti]

There are any number of ways to arrange the order of clips, Steve.

Do you arrange them in the Organizer's Media Browser, in the Project Assets panel or on your timeline?

And have you looked into DV Date? It's a free download.
http://paul.glagla.free.fr/dvdate_en.htm

For photos, there are also programs like Picasa that might be worth looking into.

[StevenG]

With no date and time stamp, I think for my purposes, the best way to sort is by image number. I think I figured this out.
In Organizer, sorting by Oldest seems to work; in Editor sorting by File Name seems to work.

This raises another issue.
I organize all of my photos and film clips in Lightroom.
Do you recommend importing directly into Editor, or into Organizer and then adding media from Organizer into Editor.
I am just looking for the simplest way to create a Project that will have a large number of photos and film clips.
Thanks.
Steve

[Steve Grisetti]

Again, I don't know anything about Lightroom -- so it might be worth posting this as a new question so that it gets the attention of someone who knows that program.

[Bob]

I organize all of my photos and film clips in Lightroom.
Do you recommend importing directly into Editor, or into Organizer and then adding media from Organizer into Editor.
I am just looking for the simplest way to create a Project that will have a large number of photos and film clips.

You don't need to use Organizer at all if you don't want to. Since you are using LightRoom to organize your photos and film clips, the Organizer is superfluous. LightRoom is not integrated into Premiere Elements, so it's not just a simple drag and drop from the Organizer. You would first need to export the clips and photos you want from LightRoom to a folder on the hard drive and then import them into the Premiere Elements Editor. Once the media has been added to the Project Assets panel, you can drag and drop to the timeline from there.

LightRoom is non-destructive. Changes made within LightRoom are stored in the LightRoom Catalog and are not applied to the original media. The export process applies the changes and creates a new file incorporating the changes. That's not really an issue for still images. But, for video it is. That's because video is compressed, and, with the codecs normally used, that compression is lossy. Every time you uncompress it to make a change and recompress it to save as a file, you lose more detail and the quality degrades. You want to limit the recompressions to as few as possible. While LightRoom can trim clips, adjust color and contrast, and even transcode to a different file format, if you are going to be using an external video editor, such as Premiere Elements, it is better to do those tasks in the video editor and avoid the recompression that LightRoom will add. If you do not make any changes to video in LightRoom and export specifying original format, LightRoom will copy the video file rather than recompress it.

I recommend creating a separate folder for each project. When you create your project, specify that as the project location. Export the media to be used in that project to that folder. For large projects, I would recommend that you create sub-folders to organize the media. For example, one folder for video, another for stills. When you import media into Premiere Elements, you can import by folder and the folder and media will appear in the assets panel keeping your media organized. You can also add additional folders to the project as needed.

I am using LightRoom 5. I've encountered one issue when exporting video from Lightroom. I always get a LightRoom error message saying the file name could not be found and it can't export the file. I don't know what's causing that message, but it's not true. The file gets exported and it's fine. If you get that message, check to be sure it did export, but otherwise ignore it.

Edit: recompression of still images is an issue, but within the Lightroom to Premiere Elements workflow with one compression for export and one encoding for the video export, it's trivial.

[StevenG]

Hi Bob,
Thanks for your comprehensive reply.
I have tried this with a small sample of photos and videos, saved to my desktop, in folders, then imported the media into project assets.
The folders came in, as you said.
I also received the same error message you did: This type of file is not supported, or the required codec is not installed. I ignored it, and the movies were imported.
I have one question: When exporting there are three options under Video Format: DPX, H. 264 (the default), and Original Unedited File. I went with the default. Is that correct?
Steve

[Bob]

The export video format setting tells LightRoom how you want to convert the exported video. If you have made no changes and do not want to recompress the video, choose "Original, unedited File". The file will be copied to the destination location.

DPX is a digital intermediate format used mainly by post-production facilities and visual effects labs.

"H.264" tells LightRoom that you want to use the H.264 codec for compression regardless of what the original video format was. In general, the video will be recompressed. I get an MP4 file on my Windows system when I use this option. If you have made changes to the video in LightRoom, choose this option.

[StevenG]

Thanks Bob.
Very clear answer.
Greatly appreciated!
Steve

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