Batch import MXF on Premiere Pro Cs5 (Panasonic P2) ?

Question

HI,
Does anyone know of a way to import more than one mxf file at a time without having import the content folder as separate files? To be clear. I know several ways of import mxf files into premiere. The first is to simply click File>Import and browse for the file. Another way is via the media browser and yet another is to right click on the project panel and selecting import. They all share the same problem. You can only import one file at a time because you need to select the mxf file within the video subfolder. Premiere then composites the audio and the video together. If you instead select the 00#### folders you can select more than one but you get whole bunch of separate audio and video files for each clip. (You do also get a composite file but the extra files are a nightmare when it comes to organizing).  This is what the file looks like when you browse for it using the Flie>Import or the right click>import methods:
The Media browser option is slightly diferent in the once you browse into the 00#### folder you see the composite file instead of the contents folder. But still you can't select more than one file at a time unless you only browse into the 00#####'s parent folder Then you can select all the 00#### folders but you get the same jumbled mess of files you get by trying this the other way. You can just drag them to the project panel or right click>Import to import the files. This is what it looks like:
The problem is this is what the file looks like when you import the folder:
The only necessary file in that whole folder is the last one. So does anyone know a way to import more than one mxf file at a time that only produces one file per clip in premiere pro CS5?

Answer 1

Ah, yes... you're sort of in a tough spot. The Dual Adapter has been the source of much consternation since the advent of P2. Addonics makes an adapter that works decently on PCs, but is also a no-go on Macs.
You have a couple of options, as I see it:
Keep on keepin' on... not fast or friendly, but if it works for you, so be it
Partition your Mac Book's hard drive so that you can install 10.5 (Leopard) and 10.6 (Snow Leopard). That way, you could boot into 10.5 in order to use the Dual Adapter to offload cards, and then boot back to 10.6 for editing.
If you are a Mac-only-kind-of-guy, pick up an old PowerBook that actually has a CardBus/PCMCIA slot--it'll work just fine for offloading.
If you are willing to dabble in PC land, do a little research on small, inexpensive Windows laptops that either have a CardBus slot, or have an ExpressCard slot and will work with the Addonics adapter (the Dual won't work on Windows Vista/7, and probably won't since it's been discontinued).
Pick up the Panasonic AJ-PCD2 single-slot USB reader. It's the long overdue appliance the P2 shooting world has been clamoring for.
They're all viable, and arranged roughly in the order from cheapest to "less cheap." Other than #1, I'd say just about any of them are decent solutions. Personally, I suggest the PC laptop route--even if you single-purpose it for offloading P2 cards, it will prove to be the most flexible and robust solution.
As for the logging, maybe we don't need more thrid party software. Maybe
the answer lays in cross compatibility with the current software.
Premiere=FCP=Vegas=Avid. Seems like less steps to me having the metadata
embed on the clip.
That would be the ideal, but unfortunately, the NLEs are incapable of editing the file metadata for any MXF clip. Rather, they can edit the clip metadata for a particular imported clip, but then that stays with the project itself, and doesn't travel with the files if they go elsewhere. So at this time, logging outside of an NLE is really the only means of associating usable, transferable metadata with a particular shot.