FAQ: Issues with screen recorded footage in Premiere Pro

If you're a gameplay editor, you've probably noticed by now that your footage makes Premiere behave strangely. This can look a few different ways...

• Slow import processes
• "Not Responding" hangs and freezes
• Bad playback or strange interface behavior

This poor performance arises from the fact that screen recorded footage is shot in a variable frame rate, meaning a single clip can be 30 fps as a baseline, but the frame rate will speed up or slow down in order to accommodate the visual onscreen. Here's an example. If you're playing a game, the frame rate may slow down if you're hiding as your health recovers but speed up as you run, jump, and fight your way through the game. As the visuals vary, so does the rate at which frames are displayed.

Premiere Pro favors footage shot on a camera due to the constant frame rate of the footage. This kind of footage is easier for computers to process so that we can cut, adjust, and manipulate the images. However, online content is growing rapidly and we intend on supporting all emerging creators! Our developers are in the process of supporting modern video capture. Members of our video community will have access to the improvements as soon as we know they work!

Here's how to move forward. The guaranteed way for your footage to behave as expected in Premiere is to transcode your footage before importing it. This will repackage your recording as a constant frame rate piece of footage. You can use Adobe Media Encoder to perform this step!

• Adobe HelpX documentation
• Artlist.io "Beginner's Guide to Transcoding with Adobe Media Encoder"

You can also use a third-party service like Handbrake to repackage the file.

• Handbrake

If you'd like to help us solve this issue faster, please send me a private message here on our community! We're looking for folks who are willing to share test files with us so we can assure proper performance. To share your screen recording, upload the file to a share service like Google Drive or Dropbox and send me the link! I'll get it into the right hands.

Happy to answer any follow-up questions as well!

- Caroline