120 fps proxies no longer work in Premiere Pro

[RedFoxProd]

To my understanding Adobe has always had trouble with really bad workarounds to make proxies for 120fps footage within adobe premiere. Everything ive followed online to make succesful 120fps proxies WITHIN adobe never works, always buggy or something that tweaks out and is extremely inconsistent. 

I have been using shutter encoder to make my 120fps proxies and it has worked flawlessly for a year or so now. Woke up to an update (22.6.2) and 120fps proxies no longer work.
24 and 60fps works fine. But 120fps proxies are now literally slower to scrub, playback,and render than without proxies now. 
Im using my sony a7siii: XAVC S 4k, 120 fps, 10bit
( if you're a a7siii user, you know that premiere does not like these codecs/formats and chokes really hard trying to playback this footage so proxies are an absolute must)

Does anyone have a fix or any possible solutions? 

Lots of people seem to settle with interpreting the footage within premiere and having their proxies playback slowed down. This is not an option for me. I need my proxies to play back in real time and slow them down as needed. 

[R Neil Haugen]

Well ... though it seems like it should be, "interpret footage" isn't meant for changing clip speed. That's meant for use such as going from 29.97 to 23.976, where the 'cadence pulldown' has to be done correctly. And that's why using Interpret Footage for slowing clips before making proxies doesn't work. It ain't the right tool.

Speed/Duration is the correct tool. Apply that, then make proxies, it works perfectly.

Now ... using Speed/Duration is a bit of a pain because you can't simply give a framerate, you have to specify the change by either percentage or time unit. Such as, use at 40% speed or play over 00:01:23 of time on the timeline. Not nearly as easy. You need to compute the percentage change, really. Make a postit by your computer for those you regularly use.

Not that any of us are happy with that but this way it simply works. Change your clip speed with Speed/Duration, then make proxies, the world is happy. Right.

And 4k 10-bit long-GOP files like that are a hella pain for the computer ... it's got to create and store to RAM what, up to 100 frames at times before it can show one?

So it's understandable why both ... 

• the camera maker likes it ... gives you SMALL files comparatively, and a specialized chip makes writing them a quickie in-cam ... but ...
• it's nasty as all get out during editing, as the computer doesn't have the exact replicate reverse chip ... it may have some internal generic chip that helps the decode process.

And yea, you will get far better playback with an intraframe proxy, either ProRes, Cineform, or a DNx variant, proxies that are quite a bit larger on disc than a long-GOP file would be. But will playback/edit beautifully because there's no need to compute many frames to show each frame successively.

Neil

[RedFoxProd]

UPDATE: I found that rolling back all the way to V22.1.2 allows my 120fps proxies to work with no problem!!  Any newer version after that, it does not work whatsoever for adobe 2022 and 2023 doesnt work either 😞
Again, this is for making 120fps proxies externally with "Shutter Encoder", so this may not apply to those making proxies within adobe/media encoder.

I always prefer to do everything i can within the same program so i dont have to hop around to differnt applications, but in this case shutter encoder has made my editing workflow tremendously easier than trying to get consistent workable proxies within adobe/media encoder. at the time of me trying to make proxies in adobe, it didnt allow me to make any proxies over 60fps. ( there may be new adobe proxy making methods im just not aware about at this point though!) 

This put me out of work for quite some time so i hope this helps any fellow Sony a7siii users that are on the same or similar workflow to myself! 

[R Neil Haugen]

Are you using the clips on 120fps sequences?

Neil

[RedFoxProd]

I am using them in a 23.976 sequence! 

[R Neil Haugen]

And expecting slow motion?

If so, Speed/Duration set to around 19 or 20% would adjust that to your sequence I would think.

And then you could make proxies in Premiere's native process. 

[RedFoxProd]

Will give that a go! thank you very much!

[Kevin-Monahan]

...and don't forget to engage Optical Flow, Allen. Good luck.

Kevin

[R Neil Haugen]

Kevin,

Is my math close here? I sometimes reverse the blame thing.

Neil

[Kevin-Monahan]

120fps in a 24fps sequence is 20%. Here is a nice reference for you and others on the thread: https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/how-to-achieve-perfect-slow-motion-results-in-post/

[RedFoxProd]

Will do! thank you!

[R Neil Haugen]

Thanks Kevin.

[chrish3883429]

Hello. Recently I've been experiencing the same issue i think. I shoot in K 120, XAVC S, 4K, 10 bit. I also edit on a 23.976 timeline sequence. I'm not sure what has happened but its a nightmare editing my slow motion footage now. I normally use proxies all the time but for some reason it has made it even slower! Are you saying the solution to this is to downgrade to an earlier version of premiere pro? All my other footage works and edits seamlessly. This is a frustrating ordeal with premiere pro....

[chrish3883429]

Also, is adobe aware of this issue? Are many sony a7siii users experiencing this too? I hope they can release an update soon on this....

[chrish3883429]

All of my 4k 120 slow motion footage is completely uneditable and my work is at a standstill. I normally proxy all my footage and even doing this has made it worse. Which version should I downgrade to? 

Anybody have a solution? 

Mod note: Edited for content

[RedFoxProd]

Im not making proxies with media encoder so it may be different for you if thats your method of making proxies.
Im using a 3rd party app, "Shutter Encoder" which i had to revert back to and older version of adobe for it to work properly again. Version: 22.1.2 
 As far as a fix for media encoder, I cant say from first hand expierence but one of my editors makes his 120fps proxies in media encoder and said the update messed up all of his current projects with proxies for him as well. He also couldnt find a fix and had to revert to an older version 

[chrish3883429]

Thank you for responding, I am currently chatting with adobe support and it's going nowhere. They are saying to revert to an older version.

[RedFoxProd]

22.1.2 was the most recent version that would work for me. anything newer than that i still had the same problem
Hope it works for you! Best of luck!

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hey Chris,

Sorry, man. What kind of computer system do you have? CPU, GPU, RAM, HD, etc.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Myles Charron]

I assume I'm going through same problem. Using shutter encoder to proxy my AVC-S 4K 120FPS footage and it's completely uneditable with proxies on. TImeline is horrondusly slow. Beyond frustrated right now. 

[RedFoxProd]

reverting to V22.1.2 worked for me, very frustrating but it did fix that issue for me

[RedFoxProd]

Try reverting to V22.1.2, hope this helps!

[kru5e]

Bump!
This issue is still present in Verion 23.3.0.
I use proxies all the time as they enhance speed so much.

But ProRes Proxies of 120p footage are unusable. Just displaying one frame takes around 10 seconds in Premiere. 
At this point it's faster to work with the original, highly compressed footage. 

Reading that this issue was not present in older verions and wasn't fixed in noumerous updates is so frustrating! 

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi kru5e,

Thanks for your message. May I ask what the frame rate is for your sequence in Sequence Settings? Are you interpreting the footage to 24 fps? Let us know. Hope to help. 

Thanks,

Kevin

[kru5e]

Hey Kevin,

Thank you for responding!

The frame rate of my sequence is 29.97 drop-frame, and my source footage and proxies are at 119.88 fps. The resolution of the sequence also matches the source footage.

I am not interpreting the footage, and the files are stored on fast SSDs.

Ironically, directly imported 119.88 fps proxy files work without problems and play back smoothly.

I tried to create ProRes files with another encoder in different resolutions and had the same result:

The proxy files are not the issue.

It's only when you link the 120p proxies and toggle proxy mode on that the performance drops significantly and media pending screens start to occur.

Thank you,

Michael

[eddy007]

I also have the same problem - 119.88 fps video file on a 29.97 timeline, realtime playback (no re-interpretation or slowing down).
1. Original HEVC file plays fine
2. Once proxy is created, playback freezes/it's incredibly slow
3. Proxy file itself plays fine, both in a system player and when imported directly to the same timeline
4. This doesn't happen when the original file is ProRes 120fps
5. This happens on both MacOS and Windows
6. Premiere version 23.3.0

Adobe please fix this