Resolutions in Premier Proxy workflow

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Hey Ann,

As the editor, and the one I suspect has to deliver the edit, you are the boss, and the assistants are there to help you.

I have just been to hell and back with Premiere Pro v25, because it had issues with mixed resolutions and Long-GOP footage. This was for a 4K project, and I did not go for proxies as my hardware could handle it – except for Adobe, NVidia and Windows 11 not playing nicely together + Adobe not being stable at all.
Only positive is that Adobe gives you a grey box to tell them what went wrong = my language in those many situations, makes the language shouted at an English Football match sound like what the kids would shout in kindergarden…

My advice, if your system can handle it, transcode every video in to be the same full resolution format. Whether HD or 4K, only difference should be size, and consider using ProRes HQ or higher.
Once you have done that, it should be easy from there on.
Keep in mind, that transcoding is what you have assistants for…

Hope that this helps.

Atb
Mads

[Ann Foo]

Mads, you don’t have to tell me that I’m meant to be the boss and the assistants and assembly editors are meant to be helping me. This whole company has been wild.

Trying not to go on a rant, as an Australian living in Canada, things are done differently here. There’s cultural differences which get in the way of communication. The culture is non-confontational and one of agreement. You’re meant to fit into the system, NOT try to improve the system. Trying to make improvements will label you a troublemaker, and that is why I spent almost the whole of 2024 unemployed. Trying not to repeat that experience.

I’m desperately trying to find the compromise between small improvements which will save my sanity, and not being blacklisted for correcting their process. I’m not timid, or a pushover. But North American work culture is bullying and petty, and they don’t care how good you are. They care more that you fit in their system and don’t embarrass them by identifying the things they’re doing wrong. And in this situation, I am the freelancer and all the assists, assembly editors and DIT are full time employees, so whatever goes wrong, I am the easy scapegoat.

Sorry, I’m not understanding what you’re suggesting…

The RAW res is 7680×4320. They are giving me 1920×1080 proxies. But the clips still read as 7680×4320 in my project because they are displaying the RAW clip properties instead of the actual proxy properties.

Are you saying they should make the proxies 7680×4320, same as the RAW? Then the only different will be they are Pro Res LT codec.

And my Offline Edit project should all be in 7680×4320 (despite actually working with 1920×1080 proxies)?

[Devrim Akteke]

Hi,

If the footage has been converted to 1080 proxy, or something close to it, it should show as 1080 or whatever they did.

You say it shows the RAW resolutions, with that information, I suspect the proxies are not linked, or the use of the proxy option is not activated. You can tell them to create the proxies with the watermark option so you can easily identify if you are working with proxies or the raw footage. I hope this helps. And for seq settings, I believe you should work on a seq that is the same as your export settings. If you are going to deliver it in 1080, you should work in 1080, and if it is going to be delivered in UHD/4K, it should be in that sequence setting. As long as you have proxies close to 1080, you can work flawlessly.

Recently, I worked on a 7K project, and the proxies were created as 7K that was hard to work with, even in proxy mode, and I deleted all proxies and created them all again in a quarter size of 7 K.

[Ann Foo]

Thanks for your reply!

My project is definately linking to the proxies, because I don’t have the RAW files and an I never did. I’m working remotely and downloading proxies.

However, I do think there’s some kind of bug going on, where it still thinks its linking to RAW. Which is causing all kinds of issues, like the video in the sequences coming from assistnats sometimes doesn’t display full frame in the sequence. The are sending me sync sequences which are 1080. If I link my 1080 proxies, then their edits should display full frame on my end. But sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. Its maddening.

Maybe there are render or preview files that I need to delete to fix this bug? DSo you know how to do that?

I’m also wondering if I should try to get all the assists to work in 1080 with proxies so we are all working in the same format. It’s baffling to me that they’re working with RAW, but does this have something to do with their methodology of generating proxies from premier?

I’ll deliver in 1080 since that’s the res my proxies are in.

[Devrim Akteke]

Well, for different frame sizes, could it be possible that you could use proxy files as master files? That happened to me on a project. They gave me the proxy files, but when I opened the project, Premiere Pro saw those files as master instead of proxy. And I was having trouble when I opened the project at the office with raw files.

[Mads Nybo jørgensen]

Ann, I have reached out to you via LinkedIn to help you directly, rather than in an open forum.

Keep in mind, that being the “Boss” does not equal being a Bad Boss.
It just means that as you have the responsibility of delivery.
You also need to take charge of the process.
That can be done in a smiley polite way, that does not involve pushing and/or being rude.

Premiere Pro v25 is the worst release for years.
Adobe only cares about you using their “Pay-as-You-Go-A.I.”.
Stability is IMHO ranked as a distant “like to have”.
At some stage I suggested that they might as well get rid of 50% of their development team on PPro, as one developer is likely to be better than the two currently messing it up…

If your proxies are LONG-GOP generated, and you have a lot of edits in your timeline, then be rest assured, you will find PPro crashing at will, or in my recent case – Windows Bluescreen of DEATH, something I’ve never seen before when using Adobe.

To spell it out: back in the day NTSC = Never-the-Same-Colour (twice).
LONG-GOP = Never-The-Same-Time-Code
If you have 1,500 edit TC points in your timeline, and just one of them is an outpoint where the TC runs 1-frame longer, than last time you opened the project, across an in-point on another clip, you and your project is TOAST, sorry BURNED TOAST!
At least if Out-Point is one frame short, you only get a blck flash frame.

I lost several PPro projects that I had to reconstruct from auto-saved files.

It was the most painful experience that I’ve had for over 20 years.

I have many more insights on that part, some which could not invented, even if you tried.

That is my experience, and it might not be yours.

Start with the end in mind, as what are you delivering back to the client, and in what format?
Once you know that, you’ll know what you need to have to make a stable project work for you, and those coming afterwards.

Hope this helps?

Atb
Mads

[Ann Foo]

I wish I could use the proxy files as master files and avoid all these issues! But this is the company’s workflow…. probably because they are working off raw onsite (as they are exporting rushes screeners for the execs while I am cutting) while I am working from home.

Ultimately, you know what I figured out that made the difference? The hard drive they sent me was a 5400rpm speed drive. Did a data dump to one of my faster drives and it made a world of difference! Not crashing anymore.

The resizing problems are mostly fixed by detaching and reattaching proxies so that they’re not still trying to connect to raw. Didn’t bother trying to remake the proxies in 7k since you said you had issues at that res. Thanks for sharing your experience.

[Ann Foo]

We will continue the conversation privately on Linkedin. All I want to say here is that: most people are on this forum for technical advice, so it’s helpful to restrict your advice to that.

I think I already mentioned before: I’ve cut loads of scripted feature films on premiere before and didn’t have problems, so I guess our experience is different and hence your experience is not that relevant to me.

Ultimately, I realized the company had sent me a 5400rpm drive to work off and that was the main issue.

Thanks for stopping by.