Premiere proxies: All clips freezing at the same point

[LuckyArc]

I'm shooting 5k on a Red Scarlet Weapon with the camera creating 2k ProRes 422LT proxies in-camera. I'm importing the Red clips into Premiere via the Media Browser. I'm then right clicking and choosing "Attach Proxies" and then attaching the ProRes proxies that the camera created. Everything looks great. The Toggle Proxies switch works great and turns the proxies on and off. The clips play great but the proxy of EVERY clip freezes at about 5.5 minutes into that clip. EVERY clip freezes at the same point. The clip can be anywhere on the timeline, but about 5.5 minutes after the clip starts, the proxy freezes. If I toggle the proxies off, the Red clip plays fine (well, not SUPER smooth which is why I'm using the proxies). This is killing me as I really want to use the proxies workflow. Any ideas as to what could be causing this?

[Meg The Dog]

Describe where the proxy media is stored and the format of those drives. Are the full resolution clips located on the same drives?

MtD

[LuckyArc]

The camera creates the proxes in the same folder as the full media clips and that's how I store them. The drive they're on is a 12TB RAID drive connected via eSata. It's REALLY fast.

[Horshack]

Do the proxies play correctly outside of Premiere?

[LuckyArc]

Yes, the proxies play just fine outside of Premiere.

[Horshack]

What happens if you try to advance the playhead somewhere past the 5.5 minute mark, say at 7 minutes. Does it play fine from there? Or will it not play from any portion of the proxy beyond 5.5 minutes?

[LuckyArc]

No, it's frozen at the last frame before it freezes. The exact frame is 5min 36sec and 5 frames. It's so bizarre. Each clip (like I said, wherever it is located on the time line) freezes at that exact time after it starts. Please note, the timeline continues to play. The audio plays just fine. But the video is frozen at that last frame.

[Horshack]

If you could share one of the proxy files I can have a look. Preferably the shortest file you have that still freezes.

[LuckyArc]

Okay, I think I've just solved a major piece of the puzzle (though not the whole puzzle just yet). Red cameras split each clip at 4gb. So, any one clip can actually be multiple files. But, since Premiere is smart, when you import footage through the Media Browser it just sees each clip instead of all the individual files. So, if I shoot one 20 minute interview, it will only see one clip instead of all the files that will make up that clip. Smart. Red cameras also, split the proxies at the same time code, regardless of the size of that proxy. So, going back to that interview clip, if the Red camera splits the interview into 5 different files, it will split the proxy into 5 files, cut at the same time code. Does that make sense?  So, the point that the freeze is occurring is point at which the first proxy clip ends. It's as if when I'm attaching the proxies, it's not seeing all the other files that make up that one proxy clip. (Back to my interview analogy) If the interview consists of 5 proxy files that make up my one interview clip, when I attach those proxies, it seems to only attach the one file, and not the remaining 4 as well.

I hope I'm being clear with all of this.

[LuckyArc]

Turns out this is a totally known issue with Red cameras. Premiere just won't recognize the spanned ProRes clips. This seems like a TOTAL oversight to me as it sees the spanned R3D clips just fine. This has been the Red workflow for a LONG time. Why has Premiere not fixed this? Fortunately, the new Red beta firmware changes the Red mag format to UHD so that clips will no longer have to be spanned which fixed the problem.

[Jim_Simon]

since Premiere is smart, when you import footage through the Media Browser it just sees each clip instead of all the individual files.

It does not do that for any QuickTime media, which includes ProRes.  I suspect the QuickTime format simply does not allow for whatever metadata makes this possible.

Another option is to create GoPro Cineform proxies within Premiere Pro, rather than using the camera proxies.

[LuckyArc]

Sure, I could do that, but creating the proxies in camera is a real time saver. Having to transcode them after the fact is a little annoying, but would definitely work. Also, I mean to say "since Premiere is smart, when you import R3D footage through the Media Browser it just sees each clip instead of all the individual files". It clearly won't do that with the ProRes files, though I think it should. They should work with Red on getting that workflow fixed. Either way, I'm testing the Red beta firmware right now that formats the SSDs to UHD which solves the problem as it no longer requires spanning.

[Horshack]

Another option would be to combine the proxies into a single file. That would avoid transcoding since it would only require concatenating the files together. You should be able to accomplish this easily with ffmpeg. Here's a link to their information about combining video files:

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Concatenate

[Jim_Simon]

They should work with Red on getting that workflow fixed.

My suspicion is that this is a limitation of the QuickTime format.  Premiere Pro won't stitch together any QuickTime files, regardless of camera origin.

[LuckyArc]

But it's not  like it LITERALLY has to stitch the files together into a new file. It just has to know to place them together sequentially. This is exactly what it does with R3D files. It's almost definitely not a QuickTime limitation so much as it is an Adobe oversight. Still, like I mentioned, the new Red beta firmware allows me to format the cards as UDF which prevents the proxies from spanning so I guess this is no longer an issue for me.

[Jim_Simon]

What I'm saying is that I suspect the QuickTime format will not carry the necessary metadata for NLEs to read multiple files as a single clip.  I'm not aware of any NLE that does this with any QuickTime media from any camera.

In other words, the "fix" is to stop using QuickTime, or as you found, stop spanning clips.

[LuckyArc]

Possibly. And I definitely don't claim to be an expert here, but it would seem like this would be possible without metadata at all (at least with Red generated proxies). I would think there would be a way to identify that the proxy files live next to R3D footage and then compare the separate ProRes files with the R3D files and place them in the same order or something. I don't know. I'd just be amazed if it came down to some missing metadata that meant a solution was impossible.

[fusionwillz]

I know this is 3 years too late but I've encountered this same problem just recently and hopefully it helps someone in the future looking for the same solution. After interpreting my footage and then proxying them it would freeze after a certain time.I found out it was because I wasn't also interpreting the new proxy footage. To do this right click the file on media encoder when it begins proxying and click interpret footage, then change it to the same frames per second as you did in premiere pro.