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bbbigelow
Inspiring
June 17, 2024
Open for Voting

Feature Request: timeline tells you if clips are already in use

I'd like a feature I can turn on which will tell me if a clip in the timeline is already in use somewhere else. Ideally the clip would change color and also show me which timecode range is in use elsewhere in my timeline. 

Often with edits using B-roll, it can be easy to accidentualy re-use the same clip twice. 

4 replies

NK Films
Participating Frequently
September 16, 2026

I got tired of waiting for this so I built it.
 

Trace is a free UXP panel for Premiere Pro. Click a clip in your Project panel and it lists every place that clip is used — every sequence, every timecode, including uses buried inside nests. One button then selects every use in that sequence, so you can replace or delete them together, and one press drops a marker on all of them in a colour you pick.
 

It also spots when the same file has been imported twice, which is usually why a "replace all" only replaced half of them.
 

Free, no account, no licence key. Premiere Pro 25.6 or newer. https://www.nkcourses.co.uk/trace?SQF_SOURCE=adobe-forum
 

Happy to answer anything about it here.
NK

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bbbigelow
bbbigelowAuthor
Inspiring
June 17, 2024

Ah thanks! I knew about the metadata info, but not the timeline one. 

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mattchristensen
Legend
June 17, 2024

@bbbigelow Oh and also there is a metadata column you can turn in the Project panel (in List View). Right click on the column headers, choose "Metadata Display..." and then search for "Video Usage" and "Audio Usage" and turn those on. Now those columns show you how many times a clip is used in a sequence, with a quick way to jump to where.

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mattchristensen
Legend
June 17, 2024

@bbbigelow Good news – this exists! You can find it in the wrench menu in the Timeline panel, called "Show Duplicate Frame Markers". With this turned on, when you cut the same region of a clip in a second time, it'll get a colored bar on it showing which frames are used elsewhere in the sequence.

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