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R
ravidnr
Participant
May 9, 2025
Answered

Premiere Pro Keeps Creating .prin Files – What Are They and Can I Stop It?

  • May 9, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 4678 views

Hi Adobe Community,

I've noticed that Adobe Premiere Pro keeps generating .prin files in my project folders. I'm not entirely sure what these files are for. They seem to appear after saving or sometimes even while I'm just working on a project.

A few questions I have:

  1. What exactly are these .prin files?

  2. Are they necessary for my project workflow?

  3. Is there a way to prevent them from being created, or at least have Premiere clean them up automatically?

I'm using [insert your version of Premiere Pro] on [your operating system], and this has been a consistent issue for me. It's cluttering my project folders, and I want to make sure I'm not doing something wrong.

Thanks in advance for any help or clarification!

Best regards,

    Correct answer Alexander_DVA

    Thank you for your feedback.

    These files are part of the new media intelligence feature which powers the visual search in Premiere Pro. Premiere Pro analyzes all the video data in your project and creates a search database from the visual information. If you then hit the "search" button in the top right of the header bar you are e.g. able to search for complex expressions like "drone shot of a red car in a city"
    The media intelligence settings to enable/disable this feature are available on the import page or through the app preferences.

    See more details about media intelligence here: Adobe Helpx - Premiere Pro Media Intelligence Search

    Hope this helps - and happy searching!

    Best regards,
     Alexander

    2 replies

    Christine Steele
    Christine Steele
    Participating Frequently
    March 26, 2026

    I realize this is an older thread but I think the .prin file stores all kinds of info related to AI features in Premiere. So… even if you delete it, or turn off Media Analysis, this file will get recreated if, for example, you used an AI feature in your Premiere project, such as Scene Edit Detection, or Enhance Sound, or Remix Music, or Auto Reframe to 9x16, etc. I don’t know why anyone would want to NOT use media analysis because it enables the use of the Search panel which is amazing (for me anyway). The .prin file enables faster performance in Premiere, and keeps the Project file itself lighter by storing AI info in a separate sidecar file. If you used any AI features in Pr, then delete that .prin file (or moved the project and don't take the .prin file too) then your performance in Pr will be temporarily slower when you re-open that project...while it rebuilds the .prin data so your enhanced speech or remix track or AI Masking effect works correctly every time without having to use more resources to recreate it the next time your playhead hits it. Hope this helps!

    Keep Creating...
      Alexander_DVA
      Adobe Employee
      Alexander_DVACorrect answer
      Adobe Employee
      May 9, 2025

      Thank you for your feedback.

      These files are part of the new media intelligence feature which powers the visual search in Premiere Pro. Premiere Pro analyzes all the video data in your project and creates a search database from the visual information. If you then hit the "search" button in the top right of the header bar you are e.g. able to search for complex expressions like "drone shot of a red car in a city"
      The media intelligence settings to enable/disable this feature are available on the import page or through the app preferences.

      See more details about media intelligence here: Adobe Helpx - Premiere Pro Media Intelligence Search

      Hope this helps - and happy searching!

      Best regards,
       Alexander

      N
      No Interest
      Participant
      June 11, 2025

      Thanks. How do we automatically save these PRIN files to a separate folder, like audio previews, auto-saves, etc.? 

      R Neil Haugen
      R Neil Haugen
      Legend
      September 10, 2025

      Just jumping on the bandwagon here as I recently updated to 25.4 from 25.2, which did not have Media Intelligence, so the PRIN files are new to me. I've disabled every toggle you can to prevent them from showing up because I don't see myself using the Search feature at the moment, I'll test it in the future. But re: PRIN files, these should really just exist in the Adobe-Common folder of your user library, not next to project files. I echo all the sentiments about a clean folder structure. When I teach Premiere, when I consult as a trainer, and in all of my tutorials that I've created, I aggressively stress the importance of good clean file structure organization, and my cardinal rule is that the ONLY FILE that should be visible to the naked eye in a project folder is the one and true current project. Having PRIN files all over the place, say if I am duplicating my project file and changing the version number on a daily basis, is going to create unwanted clutter. I would be totally fine if the PRIN files ended up in a folder called "Adobe Premiere Pro Cache Files" in this long list of other Scratch Disk friendly items, thus keeping everything in one place and keeping the main project folder clear of unwanted clutter.

       

      But yeah, super disagree with Neil above that this is just part of the project file. It isn't, it's a media cache file of sorts, it needs to be sorted with other cache-like files, either in the Adobe-Common folder, or in its own Scratch Disk type of folder.


      If a project uses any of the machine learning stuff, the data of which is stored in the .prin file, not the project file, then ... move the project, you lose all the stuff in that file. Perhaps if they'd simply left this in the .proj file like all the sequence data, users wouldn't be complaining.

       

      Over the last forty plus years, I've used all sorts of database and other apps that would have two or three 'main' files you had to keep together. So you copy move the folder.

       

      That was always a clean and efficient way to work with them. 

       

      With that background, I simply cannot see this as something different than what I've dealt with without any issues many times before.

       

      But naturally, we are all different.

      Everyone's mileage always varies ...
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