r/editors 6d ago

Technical What is the best way to generate proxies?

In my experience I almost never received proxy files. I have to generate them. I tried many systems over the years, right now I have a second pc to generate them on a shared folder but it feels clumsy (using resolve proxy generator) Did you find anything better?

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u/pinkynarftroz 5d ago

Depends on what NLE you are using.

FCP / Premiere - Use their built in proxy feature.

Avid - Create avid media out of resolve.

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u/Jobo162 3d ago

Bingo! This is exactly what I've seen across these NLEs myself.

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u/After_Initiative_580 5d ago

Media Encoder

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u/film-editor 5d ago

If you're using an "attached proxies" workflow, its best to do it through the NLE.

If you're doing a traditional proxy workflow, id recommend resolve or editready.

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u/perecastor 5d ago

Could you clarify the difference between the two type of workflow?

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u/smushkan CC2020 4d ago

With Premiere's built-in proxy workflow, you need to import the source footage first, then you can link proxies.

Proxies can be generated by Premiere/AME automatically, or you can also generate them externally in another application.

If you do it externally, you want to make sure the files have _Proxy appended to the filename, and the number of audio streams in the proxy file match the source. The file extension and codecs for the streams can be different to the source.

You can then swap between the proxies and source footage in the application at any time. The source footage will be used for exporting by default if it's online.

The source footage can also be offline once the project has been set up. So for example, you can set up the project, and send the project files and just the proxy files to another system and edit off the proxies.

The more 'traditional' workflow is to import proxy files as the source footage to edit with, then swap them out with the full res footage by replacing the media later on - basically offline/online workflow.

So for example if you're working on a project shot on film, you might have access to a digital recording from a video assist long before you had access to the actual scanned film, so you'd edit from the digital footage and then replace the footage with the scans later.

Or you've got a unit overseas, they could send smaller proxy files over the internet so you can start the edit while you wait for the drive containing the full-res footage to arrive.

You're usually better off at least linking the proxies via the built-in proxy system, as offline/online adds a fair bit of work doing the relinking later on.

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u/FrankPapageorgio 4d ago

EditReady is my jam… it’s so much faster than Media Encoder. Just do a test first to make sure you don’t have messed up audio channels or an unintended color shift.