Prefer relative paths after project transfer

Forum|Forum|1 day ago
August 13, 2026
6 replies
30 views

After transferring a project and its media to another disk, I noticed that the absolute path is still used.

The original path in that case is a dying harddrive but it still is connected as I need it.

The thing is: why is the original path even used in that situation? The structure of the project didn’t change, only the drive did. Now I have to go through the process of offline all the media and relink it manually.

There should be an easier way to do that and from my perspective, I would prefer it, if relative paths were the default, not absolute ones.

Stan Jones

Community Expert

@athletic_fact6385,

The project path is absolute, but the media file paths are relative.

Keep the copy (particularly the media) you made on the new drive location.

Open the project on the original drive. Do a save as to the new drive location. If you want to keep the original name, delete or rename the copied project file first.

Rename the original folder so you know it is working. (It actually won’t matter unless you open the project from the recent files list.) Open Project, but navigate to the new location. The project opens without relinking the media.

Last exported locations etc are absolute paths, so first time for several things may require relocating.

I did not try moving cached files. I’d just redo those if this is a one time change.

Does that work for you?

Stan

A

athletic_fact6385Author

Known Participant

That doesn’t sound like relative paths but relative paths after jumping through hoops to be honest.
Relative should always take the current location and then look relative to that location (so for example two folders up, three folders down).

But I tried it anyway:

If I understand you correctly, I copy the media from the old (D drive) to the new location (G drive).
Then I open the project in the original location (D drive), media still is linked to D, and save it to the new location within Premiere (after saving it there, the media still is linked to the original location D).
I close Premiere, open the project on the new location (G drive, relatively it’s at the same spot to the copied media).
I don’t have to rename the original folder, because I check the metadata for the location of the media and use the open location command… still the old location (D drive).

Didn’t work on my end.

Stan Jones

Community Expert

@athletic_fact6385,

My method works for media files that are in the same directory/subdirectory paths as the project. But I erred in assuming that is what you have.

The media files have a relative path, but it includes the drive letter, I assume since it is not in the same directory as the original project. And this is, of course, a very common usage.

For my second sample, I put the media files in one directory (separate from the project directory). Renaming the original folder forces the media offline in the new project. So I was prompted at opening the project to relink, and it took only linking one file to get all the files. That could, of course, be more complicated if there are several directories or drives at issue. Some kind of relinking is almost certain to be required.

Stan

Peru Bob

Community Expert

Can you temporarily disconnect the original hard drive and then relink or is the failing drive the OS drive?

A

athletic_fact6385Author

Known Participant

I could but as it is an internal drive I’d rather not. Because that would be even more of a hassle than to unlink and relink the media.
Same story with network drives. I wouldn’t like to disconnect them just for the purpose of relinking media in a Premiere project.

I know, that would be a workaround (manual relinking also is an option that exists), but that feature requests purpose is to not longer be dependent on such workarounds. The use of relative paths would save some steps for such project transfers (same story when I collect media to send it off to another editor or the customer and want to test the collected project for issues… the media still links to the original drive)

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