120 fps proxies no longer work in Premiere Pro

Report · Dec 07, 2022

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.

Report · May 06, 2023

Same issue happens with VFR videos (variable frame rate). Also when the video doesn't have an audio channel (only on some files though, and adding a silent audio track fixes the issue). The behavior is exactly the same. I have files to reproduce, where can I send them?

Report · May 29, 2023

I've been editing in Premier Pro for 7+ years with almost the exact same workflow with proxies. 23/30 FPS and 60/120 FPS off Sony and Canon cameras. Now after recent updates to Premier Pro (yay...), any footage above 30 FPS that I created proxies for WILL NOT play compared to the 30 FPS and under footage. This has royally screwed multiple projects of mine by decreasing the speed I edit by 5x if not more. I edit 10+ videos a week and my business and reputation has suffered thanks to updates like these.

Report · Sep 22, 2023

My 120fps footage slowed down to 20% is not working at all.

Report · Sep 22, 2023

Are you changing speed with Speed/Duration?

Report · Oct 05, 2023

I THINK I FOUND A SOLUTION! In my case, it's to manually interpret the footage using the original frame rate. If I manually tell Premiere to interpret the footage that it already sees at 119.88 FPS again as 119.88 FPS, then I get smooth playback!

This issue of 120fps proxy footage not scrubbing smoothly has plagued me now for years! I have footage from a Sony FX3 that I shot in 120fps. It plays okay, but I want proxies, so I can easily scrub through the footage. The proxies themselves scrub smoothly and instantly. But when I pair the original video with the proxy in Premiere, it takes 10 seconds to scrub to a single frame!

Report · Jan 04, 2024

I had the same problem, I did find a workaround -

In Premiere go to - File - Project Settings - General - Video Rendering and Playback - (change to) Mercury Playback Engine Software Only

Dont know why it works but it works for me.