I can't find the premiere pro project file

[julianm44443758]

I have the original files from the camera but i can't find my edited Premiere Pro project file. I looked for everywhere including Premiere pro auto save and preview files. Also went down to Media browser and search and put one of the words in it that's part of the project file name but i assume it only looks for the main folders i've already went through. I know i have it somewhere. Help ?

[Ann Bens · Accepted solution]

Do a explorer/finder search.

[julianm44443758]

you mean at the right upper hand corner of the media browser window at the left bottom of the screen ? It seems that premiere pro saves the project files in different random places just to complicate things or something ? I assume by default the auto save files are not deleted ?

[Ann Bens]

julianm44443758  wrote

It seems that premiere pro saves the project files in different random places just to complicate things or something ?

No it does not. You tell Premiere were to store the project when creating it. Default is C:/Documents.

I meant a search with explorer when on Windows, on a mac there is Finder.

[julianm44443758]

I don't know where the specific finder search is, i just see one in the lower left window panel.... I couldnt find my premiere pro file yet , btw every time after updating Premiere Pro are the autofiles or files saved in some other place etc. ?   and regarding the place where premiere pro saves files by default, as a feedback to the tech guys, I would assume saving under video files would make much more sense.

[Ann Bens]

btw every time after updating Premiere Pro are the autofiles or files saved in some other place etc.

No

regarding the place where premiere pro saves files by default, as a feedback to the tech guys, I would assume saving under video files would make much more sense.

No.

[andrewr41201396]

You're not providing any help by just saying "no".

[ALB24062798chwq]

Omg thank you for saying where the default is! I just found all of mine that I usually get to by the 'recent projects' feature but the one I needed had dropped off the bottom. At least I know now and can save them all properly

[jayebird777]

Hi,

I can’t find some files, either.  They were saved as mp4 and QuickTime to a file. They are not there. We found a Premiere Pro file , but it will not open.

[R Neil Haugen · Accepted solution]

In Premiere, bring up the Export dialog and click on the blue highlighted file name. It will open the OS file system for your OS. Finder in Macs, Explorer in PCs.

It defaults to the last location it used.

Look there.

Neil

[Petr Mk]

Ok, I personally don't really understand the point of the new import dialogue. Why is the default location of the project set to a completely different folder than the one where the clips for the project are located? This is so confusing!! Plus, I've now lost the work I've been working on for 3 hours because the original project has been lying around for who knows where. This software has been driving me crazy for a long time !!

[R Neil Haugen]

I would imagine that, like for any of us, there are many parts of the app you're not actually familiar with enough to know why it is like it is.

The new import page replaced the old one, which had a place to type name, select location, and a whole raft of locations for other things that were all 'sticky' so really, no one ever used 90% of that dialog. At the bottom was the 'Create' button.

The new one has a place to type name, select location, and at the bottom right, the Create button. With yes, other options for importing that are used heavily by apparently TV newsrooms and corporate video departments. Where the editors get lots of different small projects assigned to them every day.

They don't need the heavily strucrtured projects that many of us do. And apparently, that is a heavily used startup for those users.

For the rest of us, it's still as it was before ... name, location, create project. Ignore the import options there, make sure nothing is checked/starred in the middle or blue/selected on the right-side options.

Then click create, your blank project opens as before, import via MediaBrowser or Project panel as you did before. Although it would be a LOT nicer if we could just tab from the Location option to Create. Ah well.

Neil

[28740458hg19]

ive been looking for my files for the past week and still can't find my missing files that just disappeared from Premiere Pro.

[R Neil Haugen]

Are you talking about the project files themselves? Those are .prproj files. So you can search for them.

And also, maybe check to see if your system is 'hiding' those files. As some files are normally hidden so users don't muck them up. If your system decided to hide .prproj files, that's nasty but I've seen that happen before on posts here.

Neil

[Jarrett30721584tcf0]

Hello and thanks for this most recent note. 

What do you mean 'hide' a project file? 

I have been looking for a missing project for a week. I left work and saved everything and no trace of it since. Very odd and beyond frustrating. 

I have searched for the name, project files, looked in recent projects, auto save locations, etc. No where to found. I wonder if there is some location trail of the project somewhere within my system (MAC), but haven't found anything yet. 

One thing I haven't done is close Audition, which has opened/linked audio files to that PP project in the file panel. I do not know how, but there must be footprints to follow. 

I am desperate here. Can you explain the hidden thing? 

Thank you. 

[R Neil Haugen]

In Premiere, you can easily choose to hide things in the project panel. This is something that some users have done accidentally ... and yea, it's a real pain to figure it out. 

For that issues ... right-clicking a 'blank' space in the Project panel, and checking the "show hidden" option ... might help. It might not be the issue for any one user, of course.

The other thing is if the file is hidden by the OS ... both Mac and Windows allow for "hiding" certain file types and/or files, so they can't be ... maybe, mangled? ... incidentally.

For that, you need to check and see what the process is when using Finder (Mac) or Explorer (PCs) to also "show hidden" ...

Neil

[dust.newton]

I had the same issue, but ended up finding my missing projects in the "TEMP-CACHE" folder for some reason. Looked for an hour, so annoying...