Skip to main content
M
mjshade
Known Participant
December 21, 2022
Answered

Consolidate Duplicates Not Working

  • December 21, 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 1240 views

Running Premiere 15.4.5

 

I am having trouble getting Consolidate Duplicates to work. Details:

I work with another editor on a production on a NAS. We have assistant editors who work remotely doing selects, translation and captioning, etc., and they have all of our media on local storage (they can't connect to our NAS). The assistant editors' media drives are clones of ours.  

 

This morning an AE sent me a sequence in a project file that only contains media relevant to the sequence. I first opened my project file with all of the original footage imported and sorted. Then I did "Add project to production" to import the project from the AE, which brought in the sequence and associated master clips (which are duplicates of my original media that has already been imported and sorted in my production). So far so good.

 

In the past, I have dragged duplicates from projects sent to me by AEs into my original footage folders and then run "Consolidate Duplicates" so I don't have a bloated project full of duplicate masters. Sometimes it works right away, and sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't I try a few solutions: remove clip ins/outs, make sure the audio channel configuration is the same, make sure the clip names are identical, make sure there aren't separate proxy references, put the master clips in the same root folder in the project, etc. My problem in this case is that nothing I do makes 'consolidate duplicates' do anything.  Any advice on how to make this work would be appreciated! 

    Correct answer Amonitas8475

    Hi!

     

    I believe I've found the solution!!! Let me know if this works for you!

     

    1) Go into your project, click in an empty spot in your project panel.

    2) Go to File > Export > Final Cut Pro XML

    3) Open up a blank project and import the new XML!

     

    This should bring in all your timelines as well as just ONE instance of all the media!!!

    1 reply

    A
    Amonitas8475Correct answer
    Participating Frequently
    May 5, 2023

    Hi!

     

    I believe I've found the solution!!! Let me know if this works for you!

     

    1) Go into your project, click in an empty spot in your project panel.

    2) Go to File > Export > Final Cut Pro XML

    3) Open up a blank project and import the new XML!

     

    This should bring in all your timelines as well as just ONE instance of all the media!!!

      R
      Rosen Sunvisor Systems
      Participant
      July 29, 2025

      While this workaround works, it may not be practical in all situations, ie you want to save transitions and certain effects that have been applied. 

       

      What fixed my project was to right click all the media and unlink (obviously choosing to not delete the original files) and then re-linking the media.  After that, consolidate duplicates worked for me.

       

      I think it was because I was editing off of an external SSD, and the drive letter changed.  I relinked all the media originally in the project to the new location, then imported all the clips from that new location, including a lot of media that was already in the project.

       

      While the clips were all pointing to the same files, I'm guessing somewhere in the metadata or whatever other information that was stored about that clip, it felt that there was a discrepency in the location, since the original clips had been in a "different location," ie, located on a different drive letter when they were initially imported.

       

      This was on Windows 10.

       

      Hopefully that works for everyone!  Obviously, depending on the size of your project and how many media clips you have, this in and of itself could be a time consuming process, but it worked for my situation.

        Kevin-Monahan
        Community Manager
        Kevin-MonahanCommunity Manager
        Community Manager
        July 29, 2025

        Thanks so much for adding your tips.

         

        Kevin

         

        Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community and Engagement Strategist – Adobe Pro Video and Audio
        Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
        Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices