Now in Beta: Use Media Encoder to analyze your videos for visual search in Premiere Pro

Report · Apr 01, 2025

New in Media Encoder (Beta) 25.3 build 35 you can generate visual analysis sidecar files so that editors in Premiere Pro will be able to use visual search as soon as they import the media.

Read the Premiere Pro Beta Feature page and the FAQ page to learn more about Media Intelligence Search.
With this new functionality in Media Encoder, you can:

Analyze individual files in the Queue using the Visual Analysis system preset
Create an Ingest Preset that includes a Visual Analysis step
Create a new Analysis Watch Folder

These will write a sidecar .prmi file next to the media file which contains the visual analysis. When that media is imported into Premiere Pro, the sidecar file is used so that editors can search immediately without analyzing the clips in Premiere Pro.

Analyze files in the Queue

If you need to analyze just a few files outside of Premiere Pro, follow these steps:

Drag your media into the Queue panel in Media Encoder
Select all the items in the queue (Edit > Select All)
In the first dropdown menu on the first job, change the menu to “Analysis”
All the items in the queue should then change to “Analysis” with the preset “Visual Analysis”
Run the queue

Analyze individual files in the Queue

Use Visual Analysis in an Ingest Preset

If you already use Ingest Presets to transcode, copy, rename, or add metadata, now you can add Visual Analysis as a step, resulting in a .prmi sidecar file written next to the output file. Check the box “Analyze for visual search and write a sidecar file” in the Ingest Preset options.

Create an Analysis Watch Folder

Point this new type of watch folder at a folder full of media (and subfolders). The watch folder will automate the analysis for you, writing .prmi sidecar files next to each media file with video that it finds. While Media Encoder is open, any newly added media files will be processed. Unlike the existing watch folders, all media files are left in place in an Analysis Watch Folder. Follow these steps to create an Analysis Watch Folder:

Open the Watch Folder panel in Media Encoder
Click the + button, then choose “Add Analysis Folder…”
Choose a folder in the file picker

Analysis Watch Folders process all existing and newly-added media

Please give these new Media Intelligence analysis features a try while they’re in Beta. We look forward to your feedback!

Report · Jun 12, 2025

If you process the media analysis in this way does Premiere automatically look for the sidecar file every time you do a search or do you have to attach it or let Premiere know it's there in some way?

Secondarily, is there any way to see if a clip has been analyzed in Premiere by way of metadata? I enabled "Content Analysis" thinking maybe that would show it but the field is still blank on all of the files i processed for visual analysis within Premiere.

Report · Jun 13, 2025

@mc_finney Great questions. Premiere Pro is only looking the the .prmi sidecar files written by Media Encoder at the time you import the file into a project. If there is a sidecar file, that data is indexed into the .prin file next to your project. If you import the media into Premiere Pro and then use Media Encoder to write the sidecar files, Premiere Pro won't see them. In this case you should turn on Visual Analysis in Premiere Pro, which will go through each file and run an analysis for any that are missing.

There is no way to know which files do or do not have analysis already inside of Premiere Pro. When you turn on visual analysis in the preferences, Premiere Pro will make sure all video files in the project have been analyzed.

Also just to clarify the two new types of files:

.prmi = sidecar files for media, representing the visual analysis for that specific media file

.prin = sidecar files for a project (.prproj), which is a database of all the visual analysis for all imported clips in that project. When you do a search in the Search panel, this .prin file is what is being searched

So if you use Media Encoder to pre-analyze your media, the flow looks like this:

Media Encoder writes a .prmi next to the media >> While importing the media to a project, Premiere Pro detects and reads the .prmi >> that data from the .prmi is written into the project's .prin database >> you do a search, and the .prin database is what is used for the search.