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DarrenManden
Known Participant
October 6, 2019
Question

Premiere Connecting to the Wrong Media after using Replace Footage

  • October 6, 2019
  • 37 replies
  • 8674 views

Hey there,

 

We are running into a really frustrating bug.

 

The basic problem is this: When working in one OS, if you replace an asset, save the project, and open the same project in another OS, the "replace footage" command will have been forgotten, and you will have reverted back to the old asset. Pretty scary if you're working in a team, and all of a sudden the next person dealing with the edit is inadvertently working with incorrect media.

 

I've posted this to UserVoice here:

 

https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro/suggestions/38734459-premiere-connecting-to-the-wrong-media

 

A bit more detail on the issue:

 

In our office environment, we edit off of a server, and have done so for a long time now, without issue.

 

All systems used to be Macs, but we've started introducing some PC systems into the mix, and now we're starting to run into complications.

 

This is one of the more gnarly complications. To recreate the bug, we just follow this simple procedure:

 

1) Create a project in OS A (could be Mac or Windows), and then edit something.
2) Replace an asset in the timeline.
3) Save the project.
4) Open the same project in OS B (the opposite of whichever you chose in Step 1).
5) Marvel as your clip (replaced in Step 2) is linked to the old media.

 

Please note that the file name for the new media is completely different to the original, and often the codec is different as well.

 

A typical edit sees us using watermarked music in the early stages, and then once the client has approved the music, we will license the track, and replace the watermarked asset. So, it's not uncommon for the file names to change like this:

 

"demo_music.mp3" changes to "final_music.wav".

 

This only seems to happen with media that has undergone the "Replace Footage" treatment, and this never used to happen when we were only using the single OS.

 

Update (19/10/10):

 

One thing which I haven't previously mentioned is that this wasn't happening before the most recent update.

 

We've tried testing with Shared Projects as we were advised that this could help, but we had no luck, and ran into the same issues.

 

We also tried brute forcing our way around the issue, but unfortunately failed again. I'll explain, using the music example again.

 

When replacing demo music, instead of putting the licensed file into the same folder as the demo track, create a new folder, and put the licensed track in there. Within Premiere, use the replace footage command to link to the licensed track in the new folder. This should make Premiere look for 1) a new filename, and 2) a new folder.

 

No luck, unfortunately.

 

System Information:

 

All systems are running the latest Premiere release (13.1.5)

 

PC:
Windows 10 (1903)
Intel i9-9900X
64 GB RAM
Nvidia RTX 2070 (431.36)

 

Mac:
OS 10.14.6
iMac Retina 5k, 27-inch, late 2014
4 GHz i7
32 GB RAM
AMD Radeon R9 4GB

 

If you need any further information, please don't hesitate to ask. I'm happy to provide whatever might be needed. This is definitely something that is concerning us.

 

Cheers,

 

Darren

37 replies

Participating Frequently
June 26, 2025

I'm here from the future, June 2025, and this issue still exists in the latest version. Using team projects too, on shared storage media server, one pc one Mac. Any update on this? It's painfully slow to import a new, updated animation for example and have to dig into every sequence that uses that clip, alt+shift drag to replace each instance used in every sequence, often dozens. 

Participating Frequently
June 26, 2025

Make that 5 years... and in the meantime apparently people have made their own plugin for a workaround. Once again, if Adobe actually cared about fixing this... they would have done...

Participating Frequently
June 27, 2025

What's the plugin? Please share.

Known Participant
May 22, 2022

I thought I had searched this forum before posting a new topic, but it seems like this post fits the description of the issue I'm having on Premiere Productions:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/productions-real-time-collaboration-on-mac-and-windows/m-p/12958693

Premiere not being able to translate absolute to relative paths and visa versa, meaning you'll always have to relink media when collaborating and switching between Mac OS and Windows systems.

Which cost a lot of time (the relinking on Windows after a Mac OS save can take several minutes) and I keep feeling it isn't very stable for how Premiere Productions copes with project ID's, linking between multiple projects etc.

If it's only 10 people in this post that are struggling with this, I understand why it's not a priority for Adobe to fix this.

As of a recent update, Premiere is able to automatically find a file that was moved up or down a folder. This 'backward searching' seems to be the solution to the issue we're all having. Right now Premiere is still struggling with backslashes and front slashes.

R Neil Haugen
Legend
May 23, 2022

Even the main Adobe DVA teams constantly work with both Macs & PCs in their shop when working on the programs. I know they run shared storage systems for doing so.

 

I just hope someone who knows can pop in ... maybe @Bruce Bullis might be able to help?

 

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...
Bruce Bullis
Community Manager
Community Manager
May 23, 2022

I see lots of speculation above and in the referenced discussion, but I have yet to see either a concise definition of the problem being encountered ("When I do xyz, the following thing happens"), or a step-by-step explanation of how to reliably reproduce the problem...?

Inspiring
April 28, 2022

Hi All,

So wow, i have read alllll the comments on this thread and it was enlightening and also made me feel like i wasn't going crazy.

I am also running into this same issue however its all on one machine connected to a NAS (synology).

 

To summarise:

 

I have an edit that uses "Footage_Watermark.mov". I then finish the edit and want to replace all instances of "Footage_Watermark.mov".

 

From here I then reveal the file in Premiere, click on replace footage, choose "Footage_high res.mov". It has now instantly replaced all instances of this file with the watermark in my project, with the high res version. Everyone is happy.

A few weeks later, i need to come back to the project. Open up, and i find that the file in Premiere is still named "Footage_high res.mov" but it has linked to "Footage_Watermark.mov".

Now this has been happening to me FOR YEARS. And no solution has ever come.

My new way around this is to do the following:

When i go to replace the footage, instead i unlink the media first and choose "media files are deleted". Now I link that clip in premiere to the high res footage file, then (just for good measure) i do a "Replace footage" with the same high res footage file.

Now tell me thats not ridiculous....


So my system is:

Windows 10

Intel i9-9940x CPU

64bg Ram

Quadro RTX 5000

All updated.

Files all on a NAS (synology)
Cache on internal SSD

Prem 22.1.2 (but has been happening over multiple versions)

 

Many thanks

Mat

Participating Frequently
April 19, 2022

Hey, it's 2022 and we've just checked with the latest version of Premiere (22.3) and this is still an issue. Has anyone at Adobe had a look at this issue?

R Neil Haugen
Legend
April 19, 2022

Let's get @Bruce Bullis involved here ... as yea, that's a painful issue.

 

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...
Participating Frequently
April 19, 2022

If Adobe actually cared about fixing this, then they would have done already. It's been flagged for 2 and a half years. 

Participating Frequently
August 26, 2020

As of now the only solution we can think of is to rename every single clip that has been replaced on either OS, with the prefix "OLD_" in explorer/finder. 
This however will bring up the "Link media"-dialogue, and we will have to manually relocate every single clip, as the file name Premiere is looking for, is the old. (See screenshot)

Please bump this to the developers, as cross-platform work is effectively no longer an option. 

Participating Frequently
December 3, 2020

I'm running into the same exact issue.

 

Cross platform/system project file sharing. On my PC though it seems to be connecting to other media with the same file name and then automatically creating a new directory for the "linked" media. 

 

Basically I have no clue on my end which clips are the correct/origonal ones.

 

I have a hunch i might be ablet o fix this by manually and individually relinking every file rather than having premiere do it automatically. that would take hours to do and isn't even gaurunteed to work. I'll try down grading to an old version first though. I'm working on 14.6.0

Participating Frequently
December 3, 2020

Older versions didn't work. Now I'm gonna open on a different PC and see if that helps.

Participating Frequently
August 24, 2020

Just wanted to say that we are also running into this problem, and it is really frustrating. 
Any solutions - other than renaming old files? 
This is not a solution as it will require us to relink every single file that has been changed, every time we switch between OS.
Our next step is to change our windows machines to not use the drive letter. 

Participating Frequently
August 24, 2020

Changing our windows machines directly to the share didn't work either. 

Jeff Bugbee
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 24, 2020

Did you attempt any of the troubleshooting steps I detailed above?

DarrenManden
Known Participant
October 29, 2019

Hi there Kevin,

 

Any word on this yet? We've downgraded to 13.1.3, and things are working as expected, but it would be great to know if we could upgrade at some point.

 

Out of curiosity, we use After Effects across OS's on a frequent basis, and although I know that you're dealing with less footage in there, we never seem to have any problems at all with re-linking, etc. The worst we'll ever come across are plugins that might not be installed on all systems, or a font that needs to be synched/installed, but that's about it. The files just re-connect. Do you have any ideas on why that is?

 

Anyway, definitely looking forward to being able to upgrade Premiere again. As always, if any of the engineers need any further info, or if they'd like to hop onto a Bluejeans chat, I'm more than happy to.

 

Cheers,

 

Darren

Participating Frequently
July 1, 2020

Hi Guys, 

 

I was wondering if there has been any update on this yet? We have this bug and it is the most infuriating thing. One editor will make amends on their workstation (say replacing watermarked stock with purchased) and then this amends have to be re-done if opened on another OS. We are all working off the same server and same drives - they appear as the same file path name but Premiere decides to recevrt to the original file path. Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

 

Cheers

 

Jay 

DarrenManden
Known Participant
July 1, 2020

Hey there Jay,

 

Our only consistent solution was a brute forced exercise in frustration. So, after we replace an asset, we do a bit of renaming of the original file.

 

Original file: Example01.mov

becomes: E_xample01.mov

 

Adding the underscore as the second character tends to break any of Premiere's resilience to the original file. We tested having it as the first character, but it just reconnected to the original media.

 

Premiere is definitely resilient at the worst of times.

 

Hopefully that helps.

 

Cheers,

 

Darren

DarrenManden
Known Participant
October 14, 2019

Hi Kevin,

 

No sweat. Again, please feel free to contact me directly for any further information.

 

This has never been a problem, so we're just really looking forward to it getting resolved. Anything that we can fire through to help, we're more than happy to.

 

Cheers,

 

Darren

Kevin-Monahan
Community Manager
Community Manager
October 14, 2019

Hi Darren,

Sorry I missed your link there. It's been a busy day.

I made sure the team saw your post along with your bug in our internal chat client. No response yet. May take a little time getting an answer. Sorry.

Hope we can get you some answers soon as that will clear up how we support this workflow, as well.

Regards,
Kevin

Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community and Engagement Strategist – Adobe Pro Video and Audio
DarrenManden
Known Participant
October 14, 2019

Hi Kevin,

 

"I put in an ask from engineering as to any secret sauce that needs to be considered."

 

This was working just fine until the latest version, so I'm not sure why we would suddenly need to start adding plugins, or changing systems. The temporary fix is to drop back to 13.1.3, so surely something has gone awry since then if it is working as expected there, and worked just fine before then as well.

 

Regarding bugs: I'd filed a bug before creating this post, and have had a link to that bug in the main part of this post since then. UserVoice is the only place for filing bugs, correct, or is there somewhere else?

 

Just to clarify:

 

We are editing off of the NAS. The systems have been able to play together nicely before 13.1.5. Once that came out we started getting the weird reconnection issues.

 

Cheers,

 

Darren