I've read that Adobe recently fixed a spanned clips bug. Well here's another one (at least on my system):
I have several spanned clips recorded with my Sony FS700 (MTS-files in AVCHD-container) and my Panasonic P2-camera (P2 MXF-files). When using Adobe Media Encoder (AME) to convert to ProRes, the spanned clips are joined right, but AME encodes the same material several times. The result is several copies of the exact same encoded material written to disk.
Here's how it works:
In one case, my camera had split my recording into 4 individual files. I expected AME to a) either join them and output one long file or b) not to join them and just output 4 individual ProRes files. Instead I ended up with 4 joined identical 32 GB files on disk. I did it again and noticed that AME actually encoded the same material 4 times in a row. What a waste of time and space …
When using Sony MTS-files, AME creates different filenames for each clip (0001.mov, 0002.mov, 0003.mov. When using Panasonic MXF-files, AME put _1, _2, _3, etc. at the end of the filenames.
In my opinion, AME should have a tick box where you can chose "join spanned files" or not. If it had such a box, it would chose to leave it off most of the time. That way it would be much easier to check if AME has converted all the files or not. It would be 32 files in = 32 files out, not 32 files in = 2 spanned files + x small files out … Nowadays, I have to doublecheck everything before formatting my cards.
I'm using Adobe Media Encoder v. 7.2.0.43 (64-bit) and OSX Mavericks 10.9.1 on a late 2013 Macbook Pro 15-inch Retina 2,3 GHz i7 16GB RAM 512 SSD.
