Collect Files and Copy to New Location not working

Question

I’m extremely frustrated.I have a nearly two hour film that I’m trying to copy to an SSD for the colorist. The footage is RAW 4k, so very big files. The complete project is almost 7 TB but I assume the timeline that I’m transferring is a fraction of that.I’ve tried to copy the files with the Project Manager twice now. The first time, it simply copied over all of the proxies over about two hours. It said that the original media was offline. So, I detached all proxies and relinked the original footage.The second time, it went through the “Analyzing” phase fine, and went along with the copying phase for a while. But at about 40 percent, the progress bar got stuck. I decided to leave it for as long as I could, but it didn’t move for four hours!When I finally cancelled, I checked to see if there were any new error messages. But there was nothing. Then I checked the SSD, and NOTHING had transferred over in all that time! Unlike the first time there wasn’t even a folder there to mark any progress whatsoever.What could be wrong, given no error messages or anything? The files are showing up in the project, so they appear to be linked (even though they’re huge and the project is very slow and jerky now). The file names are the same as the proxies, so I don’t think there’s anything weird there.I don’t even know how to figure out what’s wrong. What can I do? I have very little experience. I can try to figure out which specific files are in my completed timeline (how do I do that easily?) but isn’t it better to only copy the relevant parts of those files through project manager? What do you recommend???

LelandD · Answer

Hi @NoviceUser85 — for a colorist handoff, I’d treat Project Manager as one option, not the only proof that the transfer is safe.

A few things I’d check first:

In the timeline/project, make sure the sequence is linked to camera originals, not proxies. Premiere can look “online” while Project Manager is still seeing old/offline proxy references somewhere in the project.
Try a duplicate/test project with only the final locked sequence imported into it, then run Project Manager on that smaller project. That helps isolate whether some unused bin item, proxy reference, or broken clip in the larger project is causing the hang.
For RAW camera folders, avoid trimming unless you know Premiere supports trimming that exact media type safely. A lot of camera-original formats are better copied whole, with Exclude Unused Clips used carefully.
Before sending the SSD, open the collected project from the SSD itself and confirm the timeline plays with the original media linked from that SSD, not from your original drive.

If you just need to know which files the finished sequence actually references, you can also audit the sequence/project before copying. That’s the part I would verify before deleting/moving anything or trusting a stalled Project Manager run.

Disclosure: I’m building Clip Sweeper, a macOS tool for auditing Premiere project references before moving/deleting media. This is exactly the kind of situation it’s meant for: checking what a .prproj actually points to, so you can see whether the locked sequence is referencing originals, proxies, old folders, or unexpected drives before doing the handoff. But even manually, the important idea is the same: verify references first, then copy/archive.

For a colorist, I’d also ask them what they actually want: full camera originals + project/XML, or a consolidated/transcoded handoff. That answer changes whether Project Manager is the right tool or whether you should be doing a more controlled media copy/XML/AAF-style turnover.

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