Stop Footage from auto importing/ingesting into Media Encoder

Meg's correct.

That Ingest box 'tells' Premiere to do whatever it is set to do by the options for Ingesting media that is set in the menu that comes up when you click the little wrench icon next to the Ingest box. This is so if you want a specific thing, like transcodes or proxies made when you ingest media, the program does it without your having to tell it every time.

So ... Ingest checked, Premiere follows the instructions from the Ingest menu. Ingest not checked, it doesn't. User choic.

Neil