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Saving Media Cache to External Hard Drive

Community Beginner ,
Apr 10, 2013 Apr 10, 2013

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I have a very large project for my senior thesis film that I am editing in Premiere Pro CS6. I have all 200GB of video files organized on my external hard drive.

I use my laptop, my co-editor's laptop, and several of the school's Macs to edit. Each time I use one of these computers, the project has to conform the audio and generate a peak file, which is very time consuming. Often, it will also make me locate several of the video files form my project (sometimes all of them), which is also an issue.

I finally figured out the language of this to find in the forums that some people suggested changing the Media Cache files and the Media Cache Database to the external hard drive. When I contacted Adobe Live Chat, the representative cautioned me not to do that because:

Screen Shot 2013-04-10 at 5.45.32 PM.png

So allegedly, that will break the workflow of Premiere Pro...

Instead, they had me go into Project>Project Manager and change the settings for "Resulting Project" from "Create New Trimmed Project" to "Collect Files and Copy to New Location."

This results in all of the video files that I have imported into the project being copied to the same folder that the project file is in. This seems counterintuitive because all of my video files and media are located on the same external hard drive already.

This is what I would like to redirect to my external hard drive:

Preferences.png

My question is this: Are there any risks with saving the Media Cache files and the Media Cache Database to the external hard drive? Was the representative correct in that it can cause the project and Premiere to crash and not open?

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Adobe Employee ,
Apr 10, 2013 Apr 10, 2013

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I think he/she was just saying that that's not really an intended workflow, so if it DOES crash or lead to other problems, ppro can't really be responsible for that.

I dont know of any open issues where the app will crash or badly misbehave if you change the location for Media Cache Files to an external drive or elsewhere. But your media cache directory already different from your project and/or media directory by default, so I don't fully understand your goal... Is it to have all the media cache files off of you c <root. drive to save space?

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 10, 2013 Apr 10, 2013

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JStrawn,

I would like to carry the Media Cache aroudn with me so that I do not need to render, conform, and locate my media every single time that I load the project. I open the project on multiple computers and each time, I have to go through these tasks. I never had this issue every time that I opened a project in CS3, CS4, or CS5. Does that make sense?

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LEGEND ,
Apr 10, 2013 Apr 10, 2013

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I use external HDD's often, to migrate my projects between my PC's (laptop and workstation), BUT set up my Projects with Copies of all Imported Assets, and Media Cache (all Scratch Disks) that way initially. I have never tried to move things around, after a Project has been started (I would explore using Project Manager for such a task). On my PC's, each external HDD is set to the same exact drive letter, in the OS of each computer. With Mac's, that is very similar to "Volumes," but I think that there are some differences. Sorry, but I am a PC-only guy, so maybe a Mac-person can direct you better in that regard. To date (remember, I do this in the initial setup), I have had no lost Renders, CFA's, PEK's, or any crashes, or hangs.

Good luck,

Hunt

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Adobe Employee ,
Apr 10, 2013 Apr 10, 2013

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Yes, that makes sense. If you're talking about media cache files in the sense of previews (cfa, pek, mpeg) that get saved with the proeject by default, then you should have no issues at all. I work off external drives almost exclusively and have had no issues, but then I usally set up my projects that way on the first place. If you're talking about the media cahce database (with a default path like: users\username\library\app support\adobe\common) then I can see why it could prompt some issues if saved externally, but there are none that I know of. I say try it and see how it goes. If it starts crashing all the time then I guess tech support was right and we were wrong.

-Jstrawn

DVA-QA

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 10, 2013 Apr 10, 2013

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JStrawn,

Should I just save the Media Cache Files to my external hard drive in that case, and should I instead leave the Media Cache Databases on the machine? Will the Media Cache Files alone accomplish what I am looking to do?

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Adobe Employee ,
Apr 10, 2013 Apr 10, 2013

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Will the Media Cache Files alone accomplish what I am looking to do?

Yes. But I think you're better off moving the whole project over there, opening it once, then regenerating everything, save it, and delete the old stuff. This is why tech support suggested using the copy & collect feature in the project manager. But as you noticed, it won't respect all your subfolders. So if that's important then just copy everything manually and make new previews for it all as a one time deal.

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 10, 2013 Apr 10, 2013

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But I think you're better off moving the whole project over there
  Does that mean that I need to move the whole project to the local machine? I don't really have enough space on the local machine (the laptop that I primarily use to edit).   Is it too late to save the project on my laptop and then redirect the Media Cache to my hard drive and save it again to move the Media Cache to the hard drive? Should I just copy and paste the Media Cache folder to my hard drive somewhere?

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Adobe Employee ,
Apr 10, 2013 Apr 10, 2013

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I meant move the whole project to your external drive. Isn't it on your local system already and you want to get it off of there? The preview files are stored wherever the project is by default.

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 10, 2013 Apr 10, 2013

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No, all of the video files and the project file are on my external drive.

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 10, 2013 Apr 10, 2013

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I have all of the video files and the project files on my external hard drive, so if I moved everything that was in

C:\Users\Jeff\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Common\Media Cache Files

and

C:\Users\Jeff\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Common\Media Cache

to my hard drive, will I be able to get Premiere to detect that they are present, and it will not have to conform on every computer I go to? Will I have to redirect the Media Cache Files to that location on my external hard drive when I open the project on a new computer?

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Adobe Employee ,
Apr 11, 2013 Apr 11, 2013

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Will I have to redirect the Media Cache Files to that location on my external hard drive when I open the project on a new computer?

Yes if you want to use the same one you had locally. I don't think that's necessary though. Previews files are usually what you need to generate for playback and they're already in a folder next to your project file (unless you pref'd them to be elsewhere).

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Contributor ,
Oct 23, 2020 Oct 23, 2020

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I have the same issue. I'm an AE on a feature doc and the project moves around a lot to different editors, etc. The project is on an external G-RAID.

I was hoping there was a workflow where Premiere didn't create new .pek, .cfa, .mpgindex, and .mxfindex files every time someone opens the project on a new computer (as I said, this project moves around a lot).

Does putting the Media Cache and Media Cache Database on the external hard drive cause performance issues? I think best performance is the highest priority.

I tried opening the project on my MacBook Pro Early 2015 and it's a non-starter; Premiere takes over an hour to reconnect to the 20,000+ files in the project.

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 10, 2021 Apr 10, 2021

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Did you get this figured out? Same kind of issue.

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Participant ,
Apr 12, 2021 Apr 12, 2021

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LATEST

I never did. I just assumed that putting it on the external disk would cause performance issues and kept it on the Mac HD.

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LEGEND ,
Apr 10, 2013 Apr 10, 2013

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I would be surprised if that were true.

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 10, 2013 Apr 10, 2013

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Jim, you would be surprised if moving the Media Cache does crash Premiere Pro? Have you had/heard of any experience where someone tried this?

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Adobe Employee ,
Apr 10, 2013 Apr 10, 2013

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Have you had/heard of any experience where someone tried this?

Yes. I just tried it. = no crash

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People's Champ ,
Apr 10, 2013 Apr 10, 2013

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[post rendered irrelevant and hence removed]

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LEGEND ,
Apr 10, 2013 Apr 10, 2013

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joe bloe premiere wrote:

[post rendered irrelevant and hence removed]

Really?  I refrained from answering because I thought you covered it perfectly.

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 10, 2013 Apr 10, 2013

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Yeah, why delete something that could have helped someone else who comes across this thread down the road? That was very informative, even if it didn't directly apply to my exact situation.

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People's Champ ,
Apr 11, 2013 Apr 11, 2013

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Really?  I refrained from answering because I thought you covered it perfectly.

My measly >140 character post was (as the OP indicated)

not particularly relevant in the avalanche of advice that followed.

I will abstain from future expressions of humility.

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Participant ,
Oct 14, 2018 Oct 14, 2018

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I have a related question - I've got my Media Cache files set to save to a different internal hard drive to my system drive - so they're all getting saved to a spare 250GB internal SATA SSD - that's totally fine, right?

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Community Expert ,
Oct 14, 2018 Oct 14, 2018

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Yes

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