BUG: Use Previews....Doesn't Use Previews.

I see this is now ii the "discussions" section of the forum. Leads me to believe the devs (or their managers) have no interest in making this former feature available anymore. I guess, it is not considered a bug, even though the checkbox still exsists to mock us of how it used to work. I have been doing GFX work for the past year or so maybe I'll finally ditch and go to Resolve if I get back into the editing ring. This lack of TLC has always left a poor taste in my mouth when it comes to Adobe software. Seems like Adobe is just interested in chasing investor $$$ with splashy AI image gen tools vs actually making this the most robust post workflow availiable. Between this and the busted project manager and buggy multi-camera waveform behabior, this app really has some major holes they need to fill.  

Suggest checking the timeline/sequence and see if any 3rd party effects plugins are being used.  I've found this to be something that causes problems when using "USE PREVIEWS" on export.

@Kevin-Monahan thanks for clarifying and for continuing to advocate for this internally!

Hello @Scott.C.,

Thanks for the question, and sorry for the confusion. Changing the status of a bug report to "Needs More Info" signals the editor and the product team to collaborate more to ensure enough information is in place to reproduce and fix a bug.

The community has provided a lot of information here. Thank you! Since this bug has a history and many upvotes, it would be great if a product team member could comment on what else is needed. I will submit the issue again with them on internal channels to see if we can get more traction here.

This is a reminder that I'm not a Premiere Pro product team member, but I'm doing my best to solve this issue for the community. Sorry for the frustration.

Thanks,
Kevin

@Kevin-Monahan What more info do you need? I feel like we've provided a lot here. I'm happy to walk through whats going on if it moves the needle, but a little alarmed that someone can look at this thread and come up with "needs more info."

The status of this bug report has been updated.

That may well be true. But it doesn't change the fact that a checkbox exists that is named "Use Previews" that doesn't use preview files when encoding to any format. If Adobe doesn't deem this a bug they should remove the checkbox because it doesn't do anything. And the preset Match Sequence Settings may as well have an internal Use Previews mechanic.

But I'm pretty sure that hasn't been the intent. And multiple users including me claim this function actually used to work but years have past since and it's still broken...

Sorry I meant to add here : from a logical point of view - the fact that Smart rendering does not work when you choose the Codec yourself ( and have to use Match Sequence Settings) suggests to me the piece of code that looks to see what Codec you have chosen to output to - now doesn't exist. It only looks for Match Sequence Settings.

That's my theory !

Yes,  agree with you both Shebbe & Scrozier on the point about H264 output when you have a say, a fully rendered ProRes timeline available.

I must admit I have been banging my head against the wall for nearly two years just trying to get the Smart Rendered output working when Use Previews was ticked, so that has been my focus.

Now I can get the master I can re-encode to H264 etc, but yes, its more time wasting and shouldn't be necessary really.

I think there is a need for some serious code re-work in the Export area now for Premiere Pro.

Yea I too realized last week that picking Match Sequence actually works but manually selecting identical codec format doesn't. Yet another area where the whole Use Preview mechanism is simply broken. And for reasons the entire thread even exists; encoding to H264 from a ProRes 422/4444 rendered timeline is one of the biggest desires in speeding up workflows which now still would require another conversion step after the ProRes render if going with the workaround. Nobody should ever set h264 as the timeline preview format, it would defeat al means of QC after rendering the timeline.