Is it possible to use HTTP proxy video rather than local?

[Guest]

Our full resolution video is frequently in the order of GBs in size, and corresponding proxy video maybe 100s of MBs. However the video content is in AWS S3 rather that the local file system. If we want to allow editing against the smaller size proxies then there are various ways to work around the fact that the files are in S3:

1. We could copy of the proxy video from S3 to the local file system.
   That might be doable since this will probably be triggered from a CEP panel extension where we'd have some control over the process. However there would still be a long delay before the proxy file had been downloaded and imported into Premiere Pro.
2. We could use one of the various options for mounting an S3 bucket as an emulated file system share - TNT Drive, CloudBerry Drive, AWS Storage Gateway etc.
   Most of these are platform specific (eg. TNT Drive and Cloudberry Drive are Windows only) and they have well documented deficiencies in terms of what's possible when trying to simulate the file system over S3.
3. We could share the S3 files directly as HTTP URLs (AWS allows an S3 object to made public and accessed at a public URL).

Option 3 seems by far the preferable option as it's a standard feature of S3. Moreover it seems that playing video from an HTTP URL works pretty well, assuming there's enough bandwidth for the bitrate. I can play back an S3 hosted video via its HTTP URL in VLC, PotPlayer, or the standard HTML5 <video> element and it plays back as smooth as silk, even allowing changing the play position to a future point in the file and immediately starting playback from that point. I guess that means those players all use HTTP range requests (start:end) and that AWS honours those requests.

However, it doesn't seem to be possible in Premiere Pro to attach proxy video files via URLs, only as local files (or on a network share). Have I missed something, or is that just not supported? I don't see any obvious reason why it couldn't be supported, given that the proxies are read-only.

Thanks.

[R Neil Haugen]

This is way past the knowledge of most of "us" here, as these are user-to-user forums primarily. As with another post today of a different highly technical question ... the best way to see if "we" can get an answer is to get Product Support Manager Kevin-Monahan​ or one of his super helpers to get the answer.

There are a type or two of PrPro for team & collaboration work, but ... as a one-man shop, I don't deal with those. They might be more to your needs, as they're designed to work even for major motion picture teams.

Neil

[Guest]

Thanks Neil

I've sent Kevin Monahan a message, so will see if that has any results.

[Jeff Bugbee]

Not sure if you're on a PC, but I've used this old program in the past to good results, though I'm not certain it will work for what you're trying to do.

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