Premiere Pro Proxy Editing

[thecult45]

Hi all,

Kinda new to this but kinda not. We just shot a feature in 4k on the GH5 and I'm cutting the trailer on my late 2013 iMac 27". 16GB RAM 1600GHz DDR3; 3.2GHz Intel Core i5; NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M 1024 MB; 1TB HDD at 25% capacity. All files are stored in a 4TB external HD.

My colour grader lives 1000km away and I don't have the money to upgrade my system so we want to use Adobe's proxy function.

I used Encoder as a standalone to transcode all the files [2.4TB] into H.264 mp4's. I think the correct procedure is to use PP's ingest function though.

Is there a workaround that doesn't involve me transcoding files for another four days?

Cheers

[benwinter]

FedEx it.

There's no solution that will enable your 2013 iMac to encode that much footage without chugging away for days.

If I'm misunderstanding your question and you are worried about editing the raw footage on your system, your best bet is to set your playback resolution at whatever setting allows your system to handle playback. 1/8 or even 1/16 might be necessary.

As a side note, Premiere doesn't really have a "proxy function." Their whole mantra as of late has been a push towards "proxy-free" editing, editing the original footage at reduced playback resolution.

[Jim_Simon]

Premiere doesn't really have a "proxy function."

Huh?

Work offline using proxy media |

[R Neil Haugen · Accepted solution]

For clarity ... PrPro can be worked using the traditional proxy setup, where you transcode to a proxy media .... choosing format/frame-size/rate and quality settings as needed, named exactly as the original media ... and do an offline/online process.

It also has a process for "automatic" work, where you set it up to create a particular proxy media on ingestion ... and can switch instantly between proxy/original media by either keyboard short or clicking an icon in the Program monitor. This newer process is to make it more enjoyable to edit many-4 media on a "medium" computer, or to work with 4k/long-GOP media pretty much at all with many computers.

Which is definitely not from a concept of proxy-free editing. Realistically, with the camera makers tumbling all over themselves to get multi-k 10-bit media at high frame rates recorded to card in-cam, they've applying some intriguing and amazing processes within the codec standards. This is highly detailed yet extremely compressed media, and playback's a ... ditch. Yea, most computers can do simple playback of the media by itself ... but for an NLE, which needs a ton of CPU time for its own needs, doing playback by stringing together selected bits & pieces of that media along with other transitions, audio corrections, and effects is a massive job.

Ergo, having media for playback purposes that is intraframe such as Cineform makes playback and editing within the NLE more ... timely. Enjoyable.

Anyone expecting that any NLE on most any computer "should" be able to do proxy-free editing with the current and coming long-GOP stuff ... might not be expecting reality. Just ... a bit of a caution there.

Neil

[benwinter]

Neil I can't believe I haven't seen this. Something stuck in my mind with someone telling me Adobe was pushing to eliminate proxies and I never looked more into it. Thanks, that was very helpful.

[R Neil Haugen]

For a couple years, that was a major goal. Then ... the drone, DSLR and 360* makers started getting real creative with obscure codec settings while jamming 4k then 4k/10-bit data through.

At that point it became clear there wasn't going to be a hardware/ software combo that could handle it all with ease.

Hence, the new process not built for roundtripping to a colorist but just to edit mange-bit 4k as gracefully as possible on your average editing computer.

Neil

[R Neil Haugen]

Ben's right. My colorist friends would all want the original media delivered on drives to their suites. Period. Even for a trailer, if that's all you're needing now. Cut the trailer, export an XML probably (you're colorist is probably using Resolve?), and put the XML and all the original clips used in it onto a drive. Ship it to the colorist.

Neil