Premiere Pro Tip: How To Create And Edit With Proxies

If you’re struggling to play 4k footage, don’t have a very fast computer or you don’t have a very fast hard drive, then you might want to consider using Proxies in Premiere Pro.

Adobe introduced Proxy editing in Premiere Pro a few years ago and I’ve been using it quite a bit to edit 4k video, or even 1080p video from huge projects.

Here is a quick guide showing you how to take advantage of Proxy editing in Premiere Pro.

Premiere Pro Tip | How To Edit With Proxies

Proxy Editing For Professionals

I edit trailers of all types and often find myself dealing with 4k 60p footage, this is getting more and more common especially with game trailers since consols are now spitting out 4k. This is a burden on any system, new or old and even the most high-end machines.  When I’m not dealing with game footage I’m dealing with 10-12 episode tv shows where we’re often given terribly compressed mp4’s or h264s which are also hard on the system to decode. So Proxy editing is a must.

Using Proxies allows for a few things, it makes it so you don’t hog all the bandwidth of your servers if you have multiple editors working on the same project of off the same server, and it also helps alleviate stuttery playback from 4k footage.

Even if you’re using a 1GB Ethernet NAS like a Synology or something, Proxies can make it so you can still easily work with 4k footage.

Proxy Editing For Consumers

Proxies are also great for consumer working with DSLR or Mirrorless 4k footage, like what is shot with the Sony A6300 / A6500, the Sony A7r II and A7s II or even the Canon 5D IV. I especially like to use it with the new GoPro Hero 6 H265 HEVC footage which is a nightmare to work with otherwise.

So how do you make Proxies in Premiere?

It’s super easy but requires a few steps.

Premiere Pro comes Proxy ready, it’s all set up all you need to do is add the toggle buttons to your UI so you can turn them on and off. (You’ll also need to have media encoder installed and working correctly.)

So here’s how you add the toggle button.

On your playback window and clip viewer click the little plus button in the bottom right.

Once that is open you’ll want to drag the Proxy Icon to your bottom bar. I already have it set in the image above so you can see where I like to put it.

This little button toggles the proxy on and off. It’s turned off in the image shown above.

Now you’re free to make your Proxies.

You do that by right clicking any clip or multiple of clips and selecting Proxy -> Create Proxy.

Next you’ll have a proxy dialogue.

I always like to put my proxies next to the clips, but you can put them where ever you like.

I always like to use ProRes 422 (Proxy). Sometimes if it’s important to have high quality playback for client review, so in that case I’ll create my own Ingest Preset with 1080p 422 in Adobe Media Encoder and add that for higher quality proxies.

If you’re on PC you can also use some form of the DNxHD or equivalent. I don’t like using one of the default H264 proxies because it is a fairly resource heavy codec.

That’s it. 

You don’t have to use Premiere to make your proxies if you don’t want. You can also use something like Devinci and then attach your proxies separately. 

You do that by right clicking on your clip, scroll down to Proxies and select Attach Proxy.

To see if you have Proxies attached, you can add the Proxy section to the metadata bar by right clicking the bar and scrolling down to the Proxy Metadata tab.

Now search “Proxy” and you have Metadata options you can add to your window. I usually just add “Proxy.”

If you scroll all the way over to the very right in your Project clip viewing window, it will show if you have a Proxy attached or not.

That’s it. It’s super easy and now you can edit with Proxies in just a few steps. The only hard part about this process is waiting for the Proxies to render.