Please allow us to generate a text-based log or summary of our Preferences settings

[braydon]

Clearing our Preferences is the first suggestion that's given to every problem. But do the people who direct us to do this know how long it takes to get Premiere back to the way we've set it? I've done it a few times in the past and it's taken me weeks to iron out all the little settings and get Premiere behaving the way I like. This process become a huge disincentive for me to clear my Preferences.

Since it's the first port of call for every little problem, it would be WONDERFUL if Adobe would provide us with a way of generating a log or digest of what our settings are before we clear them, so that rebuilding them can be a straight-forward process.

Yes, I take screenshots of every page of the Prefences dialogue box, and I take screenshots of the layout of the panels in each workspace, and I try to take screenshots of all the menus in the main menu bar, and the hamburger buttons, and the wrench buttons... but it's unweildy and complicated.

It would be great if there was a one-click method of exporting all Preferences and ancillary settings to a text file (just like Premiere can easily export EDLs) so they can be easily rebuilt manually. I'm not saying a way of exporting and re-loading our preferences, because the bugs would just carry over. Just a way of being able to see what they were, once they're gone.

I did try to put this the Feature Request forum, but it's broken, there's no way to advance past the introduction screen (at least, not with the two computers and three different browsers I tried).

[R Neil Haugen]

This is the replacement for the old Features Request thing. So your post is in the right place, and all posts as Ideas are logged and veiwed by the devs.

I've always asked for a quick easy to navigate to folder where ALL user prefs and everything we set individually in Premiere was stored. So I'm happy to upvote anything going that direction.

And I've told staffers at NAB that I simply don't understand this not already being A Thing.

"Well, they go into the Users folder and this other place"

How many steps is it to find the right folder in the User folder tree, I ask ... 

"Um... not too buried, especially if you go there often enough ..."

Why should we need to learn the durn tree to get there, and WHY aren't all user things stored in one place?

No answer to that.

[braydon]

Thanks @R Neil Haugen for confirming that this is now the place for feature requests - and also for confirming I'm not crazy in my frustration with this issue! I spend so much time troubleshooting Premiere (especially now that I've moved to the Productions workflow, which is proving so flimsy and unstable), it's having huge ramifications on my actual producivity. The support we recieve from you and the other members of this community is invaluable - but it shouldn't have to be this way! Premiere is supposed to be a professional tool for professional editors, not professional troubleshooters!

[R Neil Haugen]

Sad you're finding Productions unstable ... I've used that nearly exclusively for all my one-person shop projects ... and a few with a partner in Cape Town via LucidLink ...and not had any issues.

I don't know if you're up on the changes and best practices?

These documents are probably the best ever put on by Adobe on using Premiere ... largely because Jarle Leirpoll was the primary author I think.

Premiere Pro Productions Introduction

Using Productions in Premiere Pro

Adobe Long-form and Episodic Best Practices Guide 

Jarle’s blog expansion of the pdf Multicam section: Premiere Pro Multicam

[mattchristensen]

@braydon I hear you, this is a good request. For now the best I have for you is that your preferences are all stored in your user's Documents folder (Mac or Windows), and in there it's in: Adobe > Premiere Pro > [version number] > Profile-[username]

So on my Mac the folder with all my settings is:

/Users/matt/Documents/Adobe/Premiere Pro/25.0/Profile-matt

The main preference file is the one called "Adobe Premiere Pro Prefs" (no extension). If you make a copy of that folder before clearing your preferences, you can swap that folder back later to restore them.

That said, I think everyone could do with clearing their preferences less. I'm not exaggerating when I say 99% of the time I see people say they tried to clear their preferences, there was no reason to try it. You can tell this yourself, because they will invariably say that it didn't help.

Here are some situations where, after trying other solutions first, I might then try clearing preferences:

• Premiere Pro won't launch, or crashes on launch
• Some specific behavior isn't working like it used to, and that behavior is related to a preference. For example say you try to change a clip's label color and one color doesn't work but the others do. 

For most other Premiere Pro issues, there's no point in clearing your preferences.

[Stan Jones]

@mattchristensen,

I like this post of yours! And I note that the pages on preference resetting, backing up, and restoring have all been revised this year. For example:

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere/desktop/troubleshooting/preferences-and-settings-issues/why-reset-p...

> I'm not exaggerating when I say 99% of the time I see people say they tried to clear their preferences, there was no reason to try it. ... after trying other solutions first, ....

So true. One of my favorite "other solutions" is resetting the workspace. (It is true that there's a current bug where that brings the bad behavior back. But that's the exception that proves the rule.)

Stan

[braydon]

Thanks @mattchristensen - I didn't know I could copy this folder and use it to quickly restore all my preferences. This is hugely valuable knowledge!

[braydon]

Cheers @R Neil Haugen, I actually have read the second two resources you linked to, I sat down and read them in their entirety before beginning working in the Productions workspace, along with a number of solved problems people posted about here (it was helpful to learn from their mistakes, and avoid repeating them as I turned my uber-Project into a Production. I'll make a point to read the first one, from Element TV.

As the crashes mounted up, I began to suspect it might be my computer rather than Premiere, and sure enough it was. There were some conflicting drivers and damaged kernel files, and after taking a day to repair all that nonsense, my Production in Premiere is seeming remarkably stable... so far. Touch wood it remains so. 

[R Neil Haugen]

Glad to hear you're getting stable results now! That's the aim, always ...