4 Replies Latest reply: Nov 7, 2014 11:29 PM by Herbert2001 RSS

    Critical privacy issue with Premiere Pro that every user must learn about ASAP.

    johndoe95 Community Member
    johndoe95 Nov 6, 2014 6:50 AM

      The other day, I was playing around with ExifTool. It's a program that is able to extract and display all metadata stored in popular image and video file formats. I ran it on one of my countless .mp4 video clips exported/encoded with Adobe Premiere Pro (CC).

       

      To my genuine horror, what I saw before my eyes was extremely devastating personal information being secretly stored in every video file without my knowledge or consent, including:

       

      * The name of every clip that was involved in making the final video, such as "I hate Sally Goodman.avi" that you may have named some file on your hard drive never intending Sally to see it, but now she can.

      * Action history such as in what order it was saved/created.

      * Full file paths to your computer, which usually includes your operating system username, which is often your real name or a variation of it.

       

      I'm not exaggerating as I say this: I was shaking out of fear, frustration and anger last night. I couldn't even bring myself to create an account and type this out. This information is devastating and I now fear for my privacy as countless videos have been sent to people all over the world for years where confidentiality matters. I had never heard of such metadata being saved, and I never could have believed for a second that it would be to this extent. This is not a final video file. It's almost an entire PROJECT FILE stored in the "final" video files!

       

      I have some question:

       

      1. What the hell, Adobe? How do you justify this? Why do you do it in the first place? How do you expect me to trust anything you do from this point on?

      2. Do people in general have any clue about this? Since I'm a geek and I had no idea, I very much doubt so.

      3. Does anyone on this forum even know about this other than the developers?

      4. Can I turn it off in some setting or something?

       

      I really did my best to be cool here and not just start shouting at Adobe. And don't call me "ignorant" or something, please. This is not reasonable to expect to be part of metadata.

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        • 1. Re: Critical privacy issue with Premiere Pro that every user must learn about ASAP.
          Stan Jones CommunityMVP
          Stan Jones Nov 6, 2014 12:16 PM (in response to johndoe95)

          I don't know whether there is a preference that allows you to change the default setting. At the bottom of the export settings window, you will see a Metadata button.  This gives you options for how to handle metadata: none, place it in the file, place it in a sidecar (xmp) file, or both. I do not know whether this leaves none of the information you describe.

          • 2. Re: Critical privacy issue with Premiere Pro that every user must learn about ASAP.
            johndoe95 Community Member
            johndoe95 Nov 7, 2014 10:27 AM (in response to Stan Jones)

            So that's it? No discussion will be had about this? Nobody cares?!

            • 4. Re: Critical privacy issue with Premiere Pro that every user must learn about ASAP.
              Herbert2001 Community Member
              Herbert2001 Nov 7, 2014 11:29 PM (in response to johndoe95)

              Stan is correct: when you select "None" in the Meta export options, all the project data is not written in the exif data of the video file. Of course, the real question is whether the default setting to explicitly write all available data into an exported movie file is actually a good idea or not.

               

              As far as I think: no, not a great idea. I would guess most Premiere users have no idea Premiere saves all your project data in the exported file that generally is shared with your client and other third parties. Why the heck would anyone want that? Even if you do not care about privacy, you probably do not want to share that confidential information with anyone.

               

              However! While tinkering around with ExifTool, I discovered to my dismay that every file you import into Premiere is amended with additional meta data - including a unique id, a file history, and even an application history! I was not aware of this.

               

              I did some backtracking in the Premiere prefs, and there is an option to turn this behaviour off, luckily. You can find it under Media-->Write XMP ID to Files on Import, and Enable Clip and XMP Metadata Linking. Turn those off, and no more messing with the original media files' meta data. I understand the meta data is utilized by Premiere for project handling, but still.

               

              To conclude, I feel it is a very bad idea to include all that extra meta data by default in any exported to be published movie files. It is no-one's business which files you used, and certainly no-one's business to have your file paths included. We can turn it off, though in my opinion it would be a far better idea to turn it off by default. As if Adobe's privacy track record isn't already bad enough ;-) 

               

              I was aware about this meta data option, so I always turned it off in Premiere for my published files in the past (no longer actively use PP, switched to other software after the CC sub only thing).