Import media as proxy

So it seems like this feature was already there!!! thanks @7356536!

We desperately need this feature! This workflow would be a game changer for remote editors

@ Antoine Autokroma.

Still forced to resize media. Generally not finishing at 4K.

Thought I'd chime in case it's any help. I've just finished a project and was in the same situation, my workflow was this:

- Set Preferences/Media/Scale to frame size (important to do this BEFORE importing your proxies)
- Bring the 1080p footage into Premiere and edit it in a 4K sequence.
- When you get the full res 4K simply attach them to your proxies : Proxy/Reconnect Full Resolution media
- Any reframing or change to scale sticks. Then just export as HD if that's the resolution you're delivering.

Only thing, as mentioned here and which Adobe really need to fix, only works if proxies have identical no. of audio channels.

Hey, not sure if this is good workaround for you, but you could just create a quick premiere project and make a stringout of all the raw footage in a timeline. Then attach the proxies. Then select all the footage and set it to "Offline". Give the editor that premiere project. Once they open it up all the Raw media will be offline, but the proxies will still be attached at the correct aspect ratio/resolution

The only bummer is that you have to give them the project file with the original media imported first for this to work.

As a workaround until this is a feature:

You can make 'dummy' 4k camera original files filled with black frames, derived from the proxies you already have. Import these dummies in to Premiere first, then attach your existing proxies to those dummies, then when you get the genuine originals later, you can use the 'attach full resolution media' command to relink those dummy originals to the genuine originals.

Do this with FFMPEG, which is free and open source. You'll need to add it to $path.

Then:
1. Make a 4k sequence in Pr, insert a black video, 5s in length. Export video to folder with proxies, choose different file format than the proxies.
2. Open Terminal (this only works on Mac, natively, but the technique can be adapted to windows)
3. Change directory to the directory containing all your proxies.
4. Run these commands (you'll need to substitute parts of it specific to your situation)

for i in *.mp4; do ffmpeg -stream_loop -1 -i 4k5sBlackVideo.mov -i "$i" -shortest -c:v copy -c:a copy -map 0:v:0 -map 1:a /pathToYourChosenOutputDirectory/"${i%.*}.mp4"; done

NOTE:
* I'm guessing your proxies are mp4s hence "*.mp4".
* I called my 4K 5 seconds of black video "4k5sBlackVideo.mov", you'll need to change this to whatever you called yours.
* The "/pathToYourChosenOutputDirectory" refers to wherever you'd like the dummy files to end up, easiest way to get the path and avoid typos is to drag that folder in to the terminal window when you're ready to enter this part of the command, it will then enter the path for you.
* The timecodes of the dummy files will be wrong and all start at 00:00:00:00, however this doesn't matter, when you relink the originals all your edits remain intact and those master clips switch over to the correct timecode.
* This uses BASH commands which won't work natively on windows out of the box, but can be enabled or otherwise made to work. Either that or you'll need to research how to adapt this in to scripts you can write in to .bat files. I couldn't provide examples because I can't test them.
* If you want to also remove x number of characters from the end of the source file in the resulting output file you can change ""${i.*}.mp4"" with ""${i%?.*}.mp4"", where the "?" represents how many characters to remove. For example if your proxy files have "_proxy" suffixes, you could alter the command to read ""${i%??????.*}.mp4"". I'm not sure if that's necessary or not but I think it helps with automatically linking all the proxies to the dummies at once, rather than one at a time.
5. This should near instantly create duplicates of all your proxies, except with no vision, just black. The duration, the audio and number of audio tracks will be the same however.

6. Import clips in to Premiere, attach your real proxies, enable proxies, edit, then when you get the genuine camera originals, disable proxies and reconnect full resolution media.

There is a lot to unpack and understand and there's a second workaround that can be done entirely in Premiere that I also figured out but there is a 5000 character limit to replies and the full write up came in at 18000 characters. This workaround is better for many reasons than the in-Premiere one I came up with. Good luck.

EDIT: As a final Addendum - You could do this entirely with just tools at your disposal and without FFMPEG and command line, and just use Media Encoder, the reason I don't suggest it though, is that I couldn't figure out a way to do this that satisfied all the requirements needed for it to work, but would also not take unreasonably long because of transcoding. This method involves no transcoding. The dummy files are made with just COPIES, of the contents of the 5s of black video, which is copied repeatedly until the resulting file is the length of the audio of the proxy file. There is no re-encoding of audio or video involved. If you have time and space to spare, you could just queue all your proxies in media encoder set them to export at 4K and use those as dummy originals. It's just that you'd have to wait for those dummies to be encoded and at that point you'll have wasted a lot of the time saved by downloading the proxies first before receiving the camera originals. (That's not the in-Premiere method I mentioned, I can post that too if anyone else comments any interest in it)

@10392933 Wow! Thank you for that! It sounds like that would totally work. I so appreciate your long thoughtful post and hope it can help lots of people. And such a great illustration of why this is needed!

This would be a stand out feature for sure.

This is an excellent idea! For all of us who work with proxies, this is a missing link. It’s also a forward looking idea. Advance proxy workflows need to become the norm in nonlinear editing software.

Paul is a seasoned technical and creative genius. This workflow seems like a no brained to add to the power of premiere. I too have used Ae since it’s early days and marvel at the connection and disconnect between apps like Pr and Ae. It’s time to unite and clasp hands across the isle. If this pandemic has taught us anything’s it’s that we are all in this together, and that proxy workflow is the future.