Deploying and enforcing custom preferences in Adobe Premiere Pro

[Chad Baker]

Adobe Premiere Pro has two options for deploying and managing a common set of Preferences. Both approaches can be useful to administrators who need to manage groups of editors and can save a lot of time spent manually configuring new machines in your production studio or classroom. We have created some resources to help you understand and apply these preferences.

External preferences are a way to set preferences and lock them so that they're managed centrally. Here is a link to a dropbox folder with instructions for creating and deploying external preferences (video included):

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jroesdcwor7dol4/AACWMwXCG-c6jDAwJF1M0wepa?dl=0

The pdf attached to this thread also offers detailed instructions.

A default profile provides a way to ensure that all users, for example, in a lab environment, start with a common set of preferences.

And here's a video on setting up a default profile:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/dq9mml6tpxz5ix5/AACAh87GoUp9CDc1D2iNXJIha?dl=0

[Ant Falcon]

Hi Chad,

We're having a bunch of issues getting this to work. I'm wondering if you can shed some light on what we might be doing wrong?

My first question is, what location should we be storing the "External Prefs Config" file?

The documentation points us to:

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Premiere Pro CC

The video points us to:

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Premiere Pro 2017 CC (so we tried both this and 2019 as we are on CC 2019)

We have also tried:

/Users/afallon/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Premiere Pro/

and

/Users/afallon/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Premiere Pro/13.0

and just in case...

/Users/afallon/Documents/Adobe/Premiere Pro/13.0/Profile-afallon

...So far nothing is working for us.

Here is the contents of our External Prefs Config file (note: it has no extension)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

     <ExternalPrefsConfig>

          <Path>/Volumes/TRANSIT/Transfer/Tools/ADOBEPREF/Assistants</Path>

          <PreferenceKeys>

               <Prefs.MediaCache.PurgeSize/>

               <Prefs.MediaCache.PurgeDays/>

               <Prefs.MediaCache.PurgePolicy/>

               <BE.Prefs.AutoSave.Interval/>

          </PreferenceKeys>

     <RegistryKeys>

          <DatabasePath/>

          <FolderPath/>

          <InsertDocIDsOnImport/>

     </RegistryKeys>

</ExternalPrefsConfig>

Our preferences file, "Adobe Premiere Pro Prefs", is stored in this location:

/Volumes/TRANSIT/Transfer/Tools/ADOBEPREF/Assistant

The file is a copy of my user preferences file with the preferences set as I would like them.

Any help would be very helpful!

Regards,

Ant

[tekniska83690215]

We had this working perfectly up until last year (I presume the release of Premiere 2019).

Has anything significant changed in the way that Premiere reads the EPC?

[tekniska83690215 · Accepted solution]

We figured it out. From Adobe Premiere CC 2019 and later, the folder in /Library/Application Support/Adobe/ isn't called "Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2019" anymore. They removed the "CC", so the correct folder name is "Adobe Premiere Pro 2019".

[Guy Steels]

A tip when you want to use the "External Prefs Config" file in a Windows environment. Make sure to use backslashes in the "Path" config (eg C:\Users\YourUserName\...). Using forward slashes ((eg C:/Users/YourUserName/...)) does not work. Just lost an hour figuring this out 😉

[Nicolas27674916zn08]

Hi @Chad Baker 

I would like to use external prefs configuration with CC2022,

I used the procedure : Premiere Pro Preference Management, but impossible to lock preferences with this method.

can you help me to try to solve it?

br,

Nicolas

[kglad]

@Nicolas27674916zn08 

open the support tab on your admin console > start chat or start case or request expert session.

https://helpx.adobe.com/enterprise/using/support-and-expert-services.html

[Nicolas27674916zn08]

update:  i was wrong, it works fine with CC2022.

[kglad]

@Nicolas27674916zn08 

thanks for the follow-up.

[DKH310]

Following up with this previous user for transparency, as well as combining what other users have mentioned in this forum, On mac we confirmed compatibility in Premiere Pro 2023 by using the folder name Adobe Premiere Pro 2023 (instead of Adobe Premiere Pro "CC" 20XX - dropping the "CC"). Additionally it APPEARS the user CAN change the preferences however affter clicking save/apply/OK and going back to the preferences it appears they are not in fact saved. No longer do we get a menu stating that prefs are managed by a sys admin, but users cant change them as intended. Hope this helps future users.