Relentless Problems Importing Premiere Project into Resolve

I can see all the code. But not sure which portion is the XML for my project or what to do with it. If I just copy/paste and save as XML or what.

It's Premiere's own format. As an end user there's probably not much you can do with it aside from maybe lowering the number in the version tag if you want to try opening the project in an older version for whatever reason.

I was mostly talking about the possibility of a developer writing a converter from Premiere's own format (that doesn't look too complex to me) to something like Resolve's or FCPX's. And no, I'm not doing it; too many languishing projects already.

If the file frame rates of those clips were reinterpreted in the Premiere browser (usually done to conform files that were shot over or under crank), you'll need to manually set the same frame rate interpretation on those clips in the Resolve media pool. I can't say that's the cause of your error message, but that was the solution for me the last time I had that message.

None of those clips were over or under cranked, so in theory that shouldn't be a problem... but this isn't what I'd call high grade software. This process just seems to get worse with every Premiere iteration.

I'd say the FCPX to Resolve interchange isn't just a little bit better, it's actually light years ahead of where things are at with Avid and Premiere. I kicked out an XML from a FCPX sequence delivered to me the other day, and it came into Resolve completely intact -- speed changes, text, stills, transitions, even the compound clips came across. It was flawless. I've never once even come close to that experience with an XML from Premiere or an AAF from Avid (and that's assuming Avid will even allow an AAF to be exported, as many times it simply won't, but that's another story...)

I have yet to get any export from Premiere that wasn't hosed in some fashion in the process. Even a baked edit ended up being a royal pain, since the colors were so totally hosed in the render that there wasn't enough left to recover them... I've been forced to retrieve and restore the original files into the conformed timeline because entire scenes were mangled, even though the originals look fine. And it's random; some clips translated from original to render without a hitch, and others are so far off that at least one channel is clipped rather badly. I don't get it.

The story continues, as do the problems.

The latest attempt included a reference clip with media timecodes... and supposedly the XML exported with no titles imported into Premiere fine, but around half of the clips didn't match up. So I ended up looking them up by file name and matching them... though the media timecodes from Premiere didn't make any sense; often I was seeing timecodes indicating longer clips than what I was working with.

What has me concerned here is that this is a teaser trailer, and I had to rebuild about half of it manually because the conform didn't work at all... and the next big thing will be the feature film. If that conforms as badly as the teaser trailer did, it will take days to conform.

This process seems to get worse with every update from Adobe.

What has me concerned here is that this is a teaser trailer, and I had to rebuild about half of it manually because the conform didn't work at all... and the next big thing will be the feature film. If that conforms as badly as the teaser trailer did, it will take days to conform.

A good assistant editor is worth his or her weight in gold. Have them work overnights prepping the material for you and manually dropping the correct clips in before you come in during the day. There's a hundred students out there who would gladly do this kind of work in return for a feature credit and reasonable pay. Since we've determined this is not a Resolve problem but an issue with the material and/or Premiere, the best answer is to deal with it, move forward, and get the job done as best you can.

Whenever I'm confronted with a massive mess in post, I'm not afraid to roll up my sleeves and say, "OK, let's get to work. It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it... and once it's done, it's DONE." Even if each shot took you 1 minute to locate and conform (which is longer than it will be in real life), it's not going to take more than 4-5 hours per 20-minute timeline. And that's not the end of the world. The entire feature could be reconformed in 3 days. Is it boring? Yes. Is it challenging? Yes. Is it necessary? Absolutely.

Hello, Need some help with moving a 80 minutes premiere project to Resolve. Tried XML which seems to work pretty fine but all of the audio is out of sync in Resolve. Data is connected correctlly but timing is not right.

I am planning to edit the whole documentary in Resolve, but unfortunatelly started editing first hours of demo intervies in Premiere. From now I would like to continue and finish whole project in Resolve.

Any suggestions how to get my audio synced in Resolve as in Premiere?
thank you

I've had very few successful Premiere -> Resolve conforms, but so far even the most success hasn't included audio. The most successful format for Premiere in Resolve seems to be AAF, though if you use Premiere proxies it seems to hose things up royally.

Your best bet might be to use the technique that I've adopted, which I learned from Marc Wielage:

Render a reference version from Premiere with burn ins for source clip name and timecode.

Export AAF from Premiere, and import that into Resolve. I find that works better if you import your footage into Resolve first.

Select that reference render in the media pool and right click -> add as offline reference.

On the Edit page right click that imported timeling and select the offline reference clip.

Now in the source viewer you can select the offline reference, which now includes the original clip name plus the in and out timecode. Most of the time, you can look for the clip by name with the search feature and select it, then use the "force conform with media pool clip" option. For the cases when that doesn't work, you can scrub to the in time code and set an in point, then use the replace edit command to replace the placeholder with the selected clip starting with your in point, and matching the length of the placeholder.

And then you can cancel your CC subscription and save yourself money while you edit in Resolve henceforth.

First time aaf import (from premiere) and yay - the audio seems to have disappeared. It's weird - the audio was all that showed up in the bin - as L-R tracks, not seeming to be attached to clips, but with the same names. After I imported the clips separately, the video all appeared. While no audio plays in the timeline, if I double-click an audio track, it pops up in the source viewer, with the right in and out - but won't edit in anywhere (F10, F9 and dragging onto the timeline don't work.) You mention something choosing about offline reference for the timeline, but I can't find that option. And the premiere editor is out of touch ... so any ideas on how to make this work, gratefully received.
ETA - tried a few different imports - eg, with all media already in bins, and with audio attributes changed to mono (if there is a way to make this the default import, I'd love it - stereo audio in clips is the work of the devil, and if there's a reason you'd ever want to use it, I cannot think of it) but nothing has worked. So tediously just getting first words and approx location on the clip by double-clicking audio in the timeline and using the source viewer, then opening the actual clip and finding those words, and cutting the first part of the clip in, then dragging it to length. What a PITA Two more sequences to go ...

Continuing travails - after getting all the sequences tidied up and audio in place, etc, I thought I'd import them from Resolve into another Resolve project. But does aaf export of a single track of audio and video export/import into another project on the same machine ok? The heck it does. Same problem as with Premiere export - the audio disappears, except it's there if you double-click in the source window. Will try xml - but so far, feeling aaf is a total waste of space!
ETA: fcpxml and edl both worked fine, for this most basic of operations. Except I lost all audio editing, which is a bit annoying but no great shakes.

Continuing travails - after getting all the sequences tidied up and audio in place, etc, I thought I'd import them from Resolve into another Resolve project.

To move timelines between Resolve projects, just copy the sequence in the original project, open the new project and paste it there. Or, if you need to media manage at the same time, you can use the Project Manager. AAF and XML export are there to exchange data with other applications, not to move sequences between Resolve projects.

The main reasons you'd ever need to export AAF from Resolve is to send audio to ProTools (or a similar DAW software) or in a round trip workflow when sending a sequence back to Avid Media Composer as individual graded video clips.

When moving a project from Premiere Pro to Resolve, I've had far fewer issues using XML, so I recommend using that over AAF out of Premiere Pro. As far as I can tell, Adobe rarely tests their AAF export for anything but export to ProTools (and even then it fails shockingly often).