Premiere Pro 2025 inserting random footage into my timeline

[Avery26318277bw5f]

I have some projects that have been in progress for a couple of months, and have never had any issues up until just now with the timelines. For some reason, Premiere Pro has replaced some of my existing footage with other random footage from a completely different project. 

To give some context, this client is a gym with 3 locations. Each location gets 6 new videos a month (2 horizontals, 2 square and 2 vertical versions of the same video for that month). Since I have the layouts of the videos pretty much mapped out, all I have to do is replace the main talking head clip each month and the other clips stay the same. The talking head clip exists on track V1, so all I have to do is replace that with the new footage and the videos are good to go. For some reason, premiere has replaced my V1 footage on one of the locations (each location is a separate project) with totally random footage that I had used in a separate project. Even the splices in the random footage match up with what used to be there. I figured maybe it was only affecting one of the sequences in the project, but it also manipulated the other sequences that are the square and vertical versions. 

I've tried clearing the cache but didn't seem to work. I've also opened other auto-saved versions of the file and it still is replaced in those versions as well. It's very odd, because the way the new random footage is spliced matches exactly what the original footage would have been. 

These projects are all saved on an external hard drive. It almost feels like this is a glitch considering it also affected the other sequences in this project, but not sure how to resolve this. 

Any suggestions?

[jamieclarke · Accepted solution]

Hi @Avery26318277bw5f  -  Thanks for submitting your bug report. We need a few more details to try to help with the issue.
What are your system specs?

It sounds like some of your media shares the same naming convention and has linked to the wrong file. To correct this, navigate to your project folder, select the clip, and choose Replace Footage.

For complete accuracy, you may want to first select Make Offline, then relink the clip to the correct file.

Let us know if that helps your issue.
Sorry for the frustration.

[Avery26318277bw5f]

Thank you! 

Specs are 

macOS 14.1.2 (23B92)

Memory 32 GB 2667 MHz DDR4

Processor 3.8 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i7

Startup disk Macintosh HD

Graphics AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT 8 GB

For some reason I am now not able to find my original footage on my hard drive. Is it possible that the original files were deleted through the naming issue? There should be around 30 clips in the folder on my hard drive and I am seeing none of the raw. I only see the premiere pro working file. 

This will not affect the new videos as I will be replacing the said footage on track V1 anyway, I just want to make sure I don't cause this issue again if that makes sense. Sometimes during export I will forget to change the export location, and will have to move it back to where it's supposed to be, I'm wondering if that had anything to do with it? 

[jamieclarke]

Hi @Avery26318277bw5f - I don't know how you have your media organized.  Do you dump it all into one folder, if so do you remember copying it over and selecting replace all media?  

I can't see your entire screen from your screenshot but if you have a file in the source that is supposed to be on track V1 then you can relink your clip on V1 to your media clip in the source.

[Avery26318277bw5f]

All of my raw footage gets copied to my external hard drive from the SD card and added into individual folders for that date. I then click and drag the raw footage into the respective project file in premiere pro. Whenever I open this project, it will locate all of the raw footage on my hard drive. This is the only time I have not been able to find the original source footage and it being replaced by something else in the timeline. It's making me think that my original source footage doesn't exist anymore.

Does that answer your question?

[Avery26318277bw5f]

For example, clips C0003 through C0014 are from a completely different shoot than C0015-C0016. Both of those shoots do not pertain to this project, and this project hasn't been opened in a month. It appears that whatever clips were there initially have been replaced by my newest video footage to date. The Red/black truck footage was saved and copied to a different location than the red/yellow footage at the bottom. I am not sure how they would both be appearing in this one specific project.

[Avery26318277bw5f]

I have some projects that have been in progress for a couple of months, and have never had any issues up until just now with the timelines. For some reason, Premiere Pro has replaced some of my existing footage with other random footage from a completely different project. 

To give some context, this client is a gym with 3 locations. Each location gets 6 new videos a month (2 horizontals, 2 square and 2 vertical versions of the same video for that month). Since I have the layouts of the videos pretty much mapped out, all I have to do is replace the main talking head clip each month and the other clips stay the same. The talking head clip exists on track V1, so all I have to do is replace that with the new footage and the videos are good to go. For some reason, premiere has replaced my V1 footage on one of the locations (each location is a separate project) with totally random footage that I had used in a separate project. Even the splices in the random footage match up with what used to be there. I figured maybe it was only affecting one of the sequences in the project, but it also manipulated the other sequences that are the square and vertical versions. 

I've tried clearing the cache but didn't seem to work. I've also opened other auto-saved versions of the file and it still is replaced in those versions as well. It's very odd, because the way the new random footage is spliced matches exactly what the original footage would have been. 

These projects are all saved on an external hard drive. It almost feels like this is a glitch considering it also affected the other sequences in this project, but not sure how to resolve this. 

Any suggestions?

[Avery26318277bw5f]

I see now that I have removed the SD card from the computer, that that's where the media was being pulled from. 

[Kevin-Monahan]

Editors rule of thumb: copy footage from any SD card to a media drive before beginning your project. I hope the info helps you, @Avery26318277bw5f. Have fun ediiting!

Cheers,
Kevin

[Avery26318277bw5f]

Yes thank you, I always do this. I always copy footage to a hard drive so that the files are linkable outside of the SD card. Either I somehow didn't do it this time, or something crazy happened. I'll take the blame lol

[Kevin-Monahan]

Oh, I've been there. Trust me! Best of luck.

Cheers,
Kevin