Relinking Media everytime I open a project

By the way: Adobe After Effects doesn't have this issue, all projects and assets load fast.

Hi,

I'm still having the same issue.

For me it is still a thing between ExFat and NTFS.

The solution for me: since the issue, I bought an extea external SSD and I formatted that as NTFS. I now start all my new projects on that SSD and everything works just fine.

Any old project that I open, that is on ExFat SSD's (project file and assets) keeps taking forever to load the media, and I don't even have very large projects, let's say around 10 ProRes files of each 5 minutes of footage.

When duplicating an old "slow" project to the NTFS SSD, project file and assets, and opening the project from the NTFS SSD, all is working perfectly.

When starting a new project file and assets on a ExFat SSD, the issue remains...

So for me it is still a thing of Disk Format...

Hope the issue can be resolved someday.

Meanwhile I just slowly change my workflow to NTFS and within time I can arrchive old project files so that I can clean my current SSD's and reformat them and re-use them.

Thank you

Jan

Hi @dimimiles - I appreciate you taking the time to share those details. You mentioned that importing everything into a new project resolved the issue, which is really helpful to know. I’m just trying to better understand what might have caused the behavior you were seeing, so any additional information you can share would be greatly appreciated.

@jamieclarke the project originally was not created in an older version of Premiere Pro.

Hi @dimimiles - Was this project originally created in an older version of Premiere Pro?

I was referring to the fact that relinking media is a normal part of the process when opening a project.  it’s part of how the application verifies file paths and media availability. This process can take longer on projects with a large number of files, which is why many users working with extensive media libraries find the Productions workflow helpful for improving performance.

@jamieclarke I'm afraid, based on my previous extended experience working with Premiere Pro, there's nothing 'normal' about this process. I have several projects that contain a large number of files, and it's the only one that relinks all files every time I open it. I had to start a completely new project from scratch, import all files to it again, and then the problem did not bother me anymore.

Hi @dimimiles - This is a normal part of Premiere Pro’s startup process. I noticed you’re working with a large number of media files in cases like this, many users find the Productions workflow helpful, as it allows you to organize your media into separate projects and can significantly improve performance.

@jamieclarke 

• Issue – Every time I open a specific project - it starts re-linking all media files. It takes a relatively long period of time - up to 5 minutes and I cannot start working on the project until it's done.
• Steps to reproduce – Open a file project. See files not linked. Nee progress bar saying "Relinking Media".
• Expected result – Media re-linked in 1-2 seconds (or re-linking process does not start at all).
• Actual result – Media re-linked in ~5 minutes. It happens every time I open the project.
• Screen recording – Attached 
• Adobe Premiere Pro version – 25.5.0 (Build 13)
• Operating system – MacOS 15.6.1
• Comparative information 
  • Does it affect all projects or only some projects?
    • It affects only one specific project
  • Does it affect new projects?
    • So far, it did not affect new projects
  • When did the problem begin?
    • The problem began ~5 hours ago, when I tried to open a project that I created several days before.
• Can you let us know how you originally imported the media files?
  • Originally media files were imported with drag-and-drop to the project from Finder.
• I do not use Media Browser

Hi @JanVdB - please let us know if this issue started recently by updating your PC?  The operating system's exFAT driver implementation can affect performance, I wonder if this is what is happening.

Hi @dimimiles - Can you answer the questions from the pinned post?