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Answered

DSLR not recognized as media drive for importing footage

Forum|Forum|10 months ago
March 19, 2025
4 replies
503 views

Premiere Pro v.25 does not see my camera as a device or media drive so I cannot easily import footage directly from it into a project. Lightroom and Lightroom Classic have no problem recognizing my 10-year-old DSLR (Canon EOS 5D Mark III) as a "device" in their import modes. (I'm on an iMac M1 and connect the camera via Mini-USB.)

I realize Lr and LrC are intended for photography, but DSLRs shoot video too and so you'd expect Pr to recognize any camera as a device for importing media when you're in the Import mode.

Btw, my Canon records on both CompactFlash card, for which I have no standalone card reader, as well as SD card, for which I do have a card reader. But the CF holds more data (64 GB vs. 32 GB) and records data faster (160 MB/sec vs. 90 MB/sec), so I'd prefer to record on CF rather than SD—and find an easy way to import videos into Pr.

I'm left with two possible workflows:

Launch Lightroom.
Import the video seamlessly from the Canon into Lr.
Export the video from Lr.
Import the video into Pr.

or

Launch Canon's EOS Utility.
Export the video from the Canon to a folder.
Import the video into Pr.

While the second workflow is preferable to the first, it requires a (dated looking and behaving) utility app to do the work that Lr doesn't require. I'd like to know why Pr can't do what Lr does.

Import

Correct answer Rag and Bone

It really seems from the info on the Canon site that they don't support mounting the camera as a drive on Mac OS. It seems to me that Lightroom's behaviour is the anomaly, rather than Premiere's. Not that that helps you 🙂

Rag and Bone

Correct answer

Community Expert

It really seems from the info on the Canon site that they don't support mounting the camera as a drive on Mac OS. It seems to me that Lightroom's behaviour is the anomaly, rather than Premiere's. Not that that helps you 🙂

H

Hey Stefan G.Author

Participant

So the Pr engineering team needs to talk to the Lr engineering team! 😂

MyerPj

Community Expert

On Windows, when I've had issues finding my NAS, I gave it a drive letter, and most programs can see it from drive letter, but many do not see it from the IP address. So I would assume that's what happens with Premiere. On a mac, etc. Anyway, I never use any adobe product to get files off my camera, in fact I almost never plug in my cameras just get the memory card off them and use that directly in Windows.

R Neil Haugen

Legend

I don't know if you are aware, you may well be ... but Premiere's normal "import" function does not copy the files to a new location. I point this out because this confuses many new users, who assume that "import" means Premiere actually physically moves or copies the files.

Premiere does NOT move or copy files in most "import" operations. It only sets a reference in the project metadata to the file's current location.

In the MediaBrower panel, you can set in "ingest" function option to do this. And on the Import page, if you set the right options in the upper right corner, you can get Premiere to copy the files to a new location, even doing a cheksum.

So "importing" the files from the camera connected to the computer is not a normal operation in Premiere. It expects the files to already be in a proper location on disc. Which for most video pros is an exacting part of the job ... having a precise and consistent folder structure for project, media, and other assets.

You organize the media, then you create a project and "import" assets into that project.

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

H

Hey Stefan G.Author

Participant

Hey Neil, you are correct; I mentioned that too in my reply to a previous post in this thread.

Still begs the question posed by my title, though. If Pr can see a camera card that's been mounted via an external card reader, why can't it see it when it's still in the camera? (At least on macOS.) Lr/LrC have no problem doing this.

R Neil Haugen

Legend

Premiere can be picky about "seeing" drives depending on how they're "mounted", and as a user, this is outside of of knowledge as to why.

Everyone's mileage always varies ...

MyerPj

Community Expert

Does you Mac recognize the camera as a drive? That's what I think would happen on Windows. Then copy the files to a folder, and drop them into PP. But for sure, don't try to import using the camera as a drive. The files in PP are linked to via the program/project, the files don't actually go into PP they are just linked inside the Project to whereever you have the files stored.

H

Hey Stefan G.Author

Participant

No, the iMac does not show the camera as a mounted drive in Finder. At first I thought that might explain Pr's inability to see the camera too—but then why does Lr/LrC see the camera without any effort on my part?

Btw, you are correct that imported files are simply links to actual media on whatever drive they're on, whether it's a dedicated media drive or a temporarily mounted SD camera card. That's why the Import mode in Pr has a Copy Media toggle. (And why the older Media Browser workflow provided a Copy action in the Ingest Settings panel.)

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