Hey, my name is Matt Johnson.
And today I'm going to be showing you how you can use proxy files
to take your high quality 4K videos from looking like this.
Super Stuttery.
And hard to play back to this super fast, super smooth.
Like you're cutting through your video clips like Butter in Premiere Pro
and to save you time, I've created a proxy file cheat sheet
that you can download and we'll show you the exact settings to use
very quickly to immediately get started using proxies in Premiere Pro,
as well as how to use proxies with slow motion footage, etc..
So I highly recommend downloading this cheat sheet if you want to save
a ton of time, it's linked down in the description, diving right into it.
Then welcome to Adobe Premiere Pro and here's a project
that I've already imported some footage into and edited and this is very high
quality 4K at 60 frames per second footage that I filmed in ten bit
with my Sony A7 S3 and as you can see, it ain't playing back super smooth.
It takes a little bit it to load start scrubbing through it.
It ain't really playing that well.
Yeah, we need some proxies, so let's speed things up to start.
You're going to
want to go to the project panel down here where your video files are,
and you're going to want to select all of them.
Yes, all of them.
It doesn't matter what resolution or frame rate your video files were filmed
at, you can select everything by clicking on the first video clip
that you've imported
and then holding down the shift key and selecting the last video clip.
You may need to scroll some
to do this, but regardless, just make sure that all your clips are selected.
Then you're going to want to right click on your video clips
and go to proxy create proxies.
This is going to open up the Create Proxies menu.
And here you're going to see that you have a lot of preset options,
including HD two, six four or QuickTime for your format.
And then as far as presets go, you have a ton of options here as well
in my testing, if you want the smoothest playback across the widest
variety of cameras and computers as well as a small file size
for your proxies, your best bet is going to be
to choose QuickTime as your format and then four preset.
You're going to want to select Prores low resolution proxy.
In the past I recommended using QuickTime with cinema form,
but unfortunately in a form it's not supported by some newer computers.
So that's why we're going with Prores.
If you're not seeing these options, that means you're probably on
an earlier version of Premiere Pro and you can actually watch my earlier
premiere pro proxy tutorial, which I willing to up in the corner and down
in the video description with these settings selected.
Make sure that you check this.
Add watermark box because this is going to enable
some really cool features whenever you create your proxies
and you definitely want to have this enabled.
Lastly, for Destination,
I would select next to original media and proxy folder and press.
Okay.
It is now at this point that Adobe is going to begin
sending all of these video clips to Adobe Media Encoder to create proxies.
And I'm going to warn you
now, this can take a while, especially if you have a lot of video clips.
If you're only creating proxies
for a few clips, this could be done in a few seconds.
But if you're creating proxies for, say, a wedding film where you have hundreds
of video clips, Premiere may end up sitting there for five, 10 minutes,
sometimes longer, because it has to send all of these video clips to media encoder
to create the proxies.
Regardless, once all of these video clips are sent to Adobe Media Encoder,
it will automatically begin
rendering your proxies and you can go back to editing in Premiere
because Media Encoder is going to render these proxies in the background
and automatically link them to your native video files in Premiere Pro
once your proxy files are done rendering.
This is where things get awesome because you can go back over here
to Premiere Pro and you're going to notice some things that are new.
As long as you check that add watermark box whenever you are
creating proxies, any video clips that you created proxies for
are going to have this little proxy icon on the clip.
And by default, it's
going to be grayed out in black and white because you're proxies are disabled
and you can definitely tell they are disabled
because I'm clicking around here and things still aren't playing smoothly
now to enable these proxies, you're going to want to go up here in the upper
right and premiere and find this toggle proxies button.
If you do not see this button, go over here on the right to this plus icon
and you will find it here in the button editor
and then drag it down here to where I have it on this strip.
So that way you can access it, then press okay and your button will be saved.
Next, click on this toggle proxies button.
So it is highlighted and you're going to notice
that two things just happened in your video.
First, on the clip
on your timeline, you're going to notice that this little proxy icon is now
lit up blue, which means that the proxy for your video clip is now enabled.
And as you can see here, all of these video clips are lit up blue
because the proxies are enabled for all of them in addition,
if you look up here at your video clip in the bottom left,
you're going to see that there's a very subtle,
faint proxy watermark that is now a part of your proxy video clip.
And this is a great way
for you to be able to tell at a glance whether your proxies are enabled or not.
Because of Premiere Pro is using your proxy file,
you're going to see this watermark.
Now here's where things get really easy for you because with these proxies
now enabled, you can start to click and drag around and look at a smooth.
This is I'm
just clicking a dragon as fast as I want things are playing click around instantly
just like butter. Oh, I love it so much.
Now with that said, we do have
a few more quick things to talk about, starting with slow motion. Yes.
How do you use slow motion footage with proxies?
This is a question that you may be wondering
if you've watched my previous proxy tutorial video that I made in the past,
because in that video I recommended that you interpret
your footage, just slow it down, which worked great at the time.
But Adobe has recently updated media encoder and disabled the ability
to interpret your footage, which makes that workflow basically impossible.
So here's how you can slow down all of your video footage in premiere
pro, super, simply and easily, and still have it work well with proxies.
And for this tip, I want to give a huge shout out to Chris Olsen, who made a video
talking about this on YouTube.
I will link to his channel down below to slow down your video clips.
You're first going to want to select all of your video clips
that are at a higher frame rate than 24 frames per second
because you don't need to slow down 24 frames per second footage
that's already slowed down to the slowest possible speed.
So in this case, you're going to want to go down here
to your project panel and under frame rate.
You're going to see
that I have three clips here that are filmed at 60 frames per second.
And if you only have a few clips, you can just click and select them.
That's easy to do, but if you have a lot of clips, and
especially if you filmed at a lot of different frame rates
that you filmed some at 30 and 60 and 120, etc., and you want to make
sure that everything is playing back at the proper slow motion.
Here's how you batch slow motion everything to start.
You're going to want to find all of your video clips that are a certain frame rate
and to do that,
you're going to want to go up here to this blank spot in the project panel, right
click and select New Search Bin that's going to bring up this create search
bin dialog box.
And then under search
instead of all metadata, you're going to want to go down to frame rate
and then for find you're going to want to enter
the frame rate of your footage that you want to slow down.
So for example, if you filmed at 30 frames per second,
you would want to search for 29.97, which is the frame rate for 30 apps.
Or if you filmed in 60 frames per second, you would want to enter 59.94.
Or if you filmed at 120 frames per second, you would want to enter 119.88.
In this case though, because I filmed it 60 frames per second,
I'm going to want to type in 59.94 and press. Okay.
And that's going to create a new bin
that basically searches through all of your video clips
and puts all of them that are 60 frames per second in one bin.
What's great is that you can then click on the first video
clip, hold shift and select the last one, which you may have to scroll down
some depending on how many 60 frames per second clips do you have.
Then you can right click on these video clips and instead of going to modify
interpret footage
which you would have done in the past, instead
you're going to want to go down here to speed slash duration,
and then for speed you're going to want to enter a certain percentage.
If you want to slow down your 60 frames per second footage to 24
frames per second set this percentage to 40.
Likewise, if you want to slow down your 30 frames per second
footage to 24 frames per second, set your speed to 80%.
And if you filmed at 120 frames per second,
you want to slow that down and set your percentage to 20%.
I realize that's a lot of numbers, but that's why I created my free proxy cheat
sheet, which you can still download at the link down in the video description.
And that cheat sheet is going to include all of these frame rates and numbers
and settings.
So that way you can easily access them and reference them whenever you need to
because these clips are 60 frames per second, I'm in turn 40%
and I'm going to press. Okay.
And with that, you've now slowed down these video clips to 24 frames per second.
And what's great is that if you drag one of these video clips over
to the timeline, you're going to see that it is now significantly slower.
Here's the old clip that is plays back at normal fast speed.
And here's that same clip now playing back dramatically slower
in the proper slow motion.
And what's great is that the proxy file you've made is going to perfectly sync up
with the native video file, and it's going to be in slow motion, too.
So regardless of when you create proxies, whether you create them
at the start of your editing, or if you create them halfway through editing
because you realize that your computer's getting slow, it doesn't matter.
As long as you slow down your footage in this way, you will not need to worry
about your proxy frame rate being out of sync with your native video files.
It's awesome.
Lastly, we have two quick things to talk about in regards to proxies.
And the first is a general rule of thumb, and that is if you are color
grading your video footage,
you're going to want to disable your proxies by hitting this toggle button
because proxies are a much lower quality video file.
And any time you're color grading, you're going to want to be able to see
exactly what your footage looks like as it's being colored.
So I would highly recommend disabling your proxies
and using the native high quality video files when you're color grading.
Likewise, if you apply the warp stabilizer effect to your footage to smooth it out,
this is also going to disable your proxies automatically.
So I would not recommend applying warp stabilizer until you're done
with the rest of your video editing,
which will keep your editing as fast as possible.
Lastly, I've had a lot of people ask me about this in the past,
but if you were wondering whether you need to disable your proxies
whenever you're ready to export your video, the answer is no.
Premiere Pro is smart enough that by default, regardless of
whether your proxies are enabled or not, with this proxy toggle button selected,
whenever you press export on your video premiere is going to automatically
choose your native video files and use those to export.
So you do not need to worry or stress about
whether Premiere is accidentally exporting with your proxies.
You're good to go with that.
I really hope this video
has been helpful to you and helps you edit your videos even faster here.
Don't forget I've created that free proxy cheat sheet that you can download
at the link down below that's going to save you a ton of time
and help you out
with all of those percentages and frame rates and settings that we talked about.
And in addition, I would love to help you out.
Even more so I've created a free guide called edit videos like a Pro,
and this guy is going to show you some of the most important techniques
that took me many years to learn.
As a video editor, you can download this guide for free at the link down below.
Thanks so much for watching and have a great day.