Opening a project in premiere

Report · May 01, 2020

I am a new/beginner user of PremierePro. I have my projects saved. When I open my project I see a message pop up telling me "media is missing". And the footage on the timeline also displays that message in many languages. Do I need to plug in my external hard drives to work in my projects? How can I work within my projects without my external drives. One last question, The dialogue box asks me if I want to search for media. Searching within my computers hard drive? Or external drives?

Thanks for your help.

Paul

Report · May 01, 2020

If your footage is on an external drive, then it needs to be connected in order for Premiere Pro to see it.

If Windows, you need to assign a fixed drive letter to the drive so that Windows always sees it as the same drive.

The only way to use the media without the external drive connected is to load the media onto an internal drive.

Premiere Pro does not store your media, it only references it.

You want to search for your media in the place it is located.

Report · May 01, 2020

Thanks Bob,

That’s what I am finding out. which means either I go buy a 2tb drive with all the media I want/need or load up my internal hard drive.

Thanks for responding.

Paul

Report · May 01, 2020

Paul, "media" does not mean hard drive space. It means the source files you are using in your project. For example, if you are editing footage from a soccer game, you will probably have a video file somewhere called SoccerMatch.mp4. That file is your "media" and Premiere needs to be able to see that file in order to work with it.

If you are getting a "media offline" message, that means Premiere can't see that file. This could be because it was on an external drive that you unplugged, or because you moved the file after you had imported it to Premiere. "Searching" for the file is a way to relink the file in Premiere.

Report · May 01, 2020

Thanks Jeff,

Appreciate the response. Since I am new to this most if not all of my "media" is on external hard drives. I don't usually store footage on my laptop.

So in order for premiere to see my footage and for me to tweek the project, the external drives have to be plugged in?

Thinking about buying a 2tb drive and when I edit plug it in for my projects.

Right now I have 5 or 6 drives around me and I'm forgetting which drive has what on it and need to plug in all the "media"

Thanks again.

Paul

Report · May 01, 2020

Yes, that's correct. Get yourself a drive to work from and keep all of your projects nicely organized there. Try not to spread things out in multiple places (especially across multiple drives). At bare minimum you should make a folder for each project, and ideally within that folder you can make sub-folders for Project Files, Media, Exports, etc.