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Inspiring
January 15, 2025
Question

premiere proxies with multichannel audio - audio offline

  • January 15, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 1193 views

As Premiere or Media Encoder cannot create proxies with audio passthrough, I create them externally - mostly with apple compressor or EditReady from Hedge.

I am creating them for my Sony Fx3 with four audio channels 24bit audio. So originals and proxies have the exact same audio configuration. However if i take my originals offline some of the audio tracks go offline as well - the last time channel 3 and 4 went offline. There does not seem any reliable offline proxy workflow. Is it right that premiere doesnt know how to deal with multichanel audio proxies? If I just transcode the files with audio passthrough it works, but I cannot deal with the file size of UHD ProRes files for a documentary so I relly need a reliable offline proxy workflow.

3 replies

Community Expert
January 17, 2025

Hi Peter,

I'm a bit confused by your statement "Premiere or Media Encoder cannot create proxies with audio passthrough.." If you use the Create Proxy command in Premiere and choose the QuickTime/ProRes option it will create a ProRes Proxy file with matching audio channels. Are you using that workflow?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------JVK | Editor/Designer/Software Instructor. Pr, Ae, Ch, Ps, Ai, Id
Inspiring
January 18, 2025

I tried it again as you told me, its still the same:

Instead of passing four audio tracks with one 24 bit audio channel each it creates a single audio track with four audio channels in 16 bit. This can lead to issues later on and this was the reason I switches to another transcoding workflow with audio passthrough. Heres the screenshot of the comparison view in media info: An original file in the middle, on the left is the conversion by AME and on the right side the conversion by editready, in apple compressor for example its exactly the same as it offers passthrough audio as well. 

Community Expert
January 19, 2025

What ingest preset are you using to create these proxies that are converting 24-bit audio to 16-bit audio? I tested all the QuickTime ingest presets in the "Create Proxies" window (ProRes, H.264, Cineform), and in my tests, the audio stayed 24-bit.


Just to confirm, are you creating these proxies directly in Premiere Pro, or are you using Adobe Media Encoder on its own?


Also, can you share more details about the issues you’re running into when the proxies have one audio track with four channels instead of four audio tracks with one channel each? In Premiere Pro, it usually doesn’t matter whether the audio is grouped into one stream or split into multiple streams, as long as the total number of channels matches the original media.

Community Expert
January 16, 2025

When creating proxies in Adobe Premiere Pro, the audio in the proxy files is set to passthrough by default. This means the original audio configuration is maintained in the proxies.

If your proxies go offline, relinking them with the Link Media window can occasionally cause issues with audio channels. In such cases, I recommend using the Attach Proxies option instead:

  1. Right-click the media in the Project panel.
  2. Select Proxy > Attach Proxies.
Inspiring
January 17, 2025

Thanks for your help, I had lots of issues creating proxies from my Sony Fx3 files with four 24 Bit audio channels, as there is not true audio passthrough option. Or am I wrong? As far as I know all Media Encoder Ingest settings reencode audio to some 16 bit audio and try to keep audio channel configuration - but not always. This issue has been discussed earlier in this forum. Apple Compressor and Hedge Editready have this simple option: Just a checkbox "enable passthrough audio" so the audio is not altered at all and can be processed further. So usually I do it exactly as you descripe: I create proxies externally (adding _Proxy to the filename" and then chosse Proxy-> Attach to add them. But this does not seem to work reliably when originals go offline, then some audio tracks go offline as well.

 

The proxies are still attached, but just some of the audio channels are not found.

Community Expert
January 17, 2025

Sorry to keep asking but it's not clear to me: are you making the proxies from within Premiere using Proxy > Create Proxies, or are you just dragging the clips directly into Media Encoder?

 

Also: do you have a small sample clip to share that we can test on our systems? Unfortunately I don't have access to one of those cameras.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------JVK | Editor/Designer/Software Instructor. Pr, Ae, Ch, Ps, Ai, Id
Kevin-Monahan
Community Manager
Community Manager
January 15, 2025

Hi @Peter Reef,

Thanks for detailing your issue. Things can go wrong if files are not encoded by Media Encoder. I hope a community member can assist here. Perhaps @John V Knowles, @PaulMurphy, or another community member might want to chime in here. I hope we can help you with this shortly. Sorry for the problem.

 

Thanks,
Kevin

 

Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community and Engagement Strategist – Adobe Pro Video and Audio