Relink offline clips

For this tutorial, I'm using the 'Relink_Offline_Clips.prproj' file.

You can find that project file with the media associated with this tutorial.

Just double click on the project file to open it in Premiere Pro CC.

Premiere Pro CC uses the file path and file name to connect clips with media files.

That means if you move media files to a new location, the link no longer works, and clips go offline.

I’m going to toggle over to this MEDIA folder where we have our various video and photo files.

Premiere Pro CC is so good at relocating items that just doing something like renaming a folder won't make clips go offline.

I'm going to rename this folder 'Photos old' and toggle back to Premiere Pro CC.

You probably just saw that the Locating Media dialog flash up on screen.

And if I go into this photos bin, you can see those items are still online.

However, I have a physically separate drive connected to this computer.

And I'm going to move all of the video files from its current location onto that drive.

I'll just drag this over.

And I'm holding the Shift key, so that I'm moving rather than copying the files.

Now when I go back to Premiere Pro CC, we get this Link Media dialog.

The default settings are usually fine.

You've got options here for the way that Premiere Pro CC is going to identify the files that are missing.

And again, we're speaking about files here that are linked to by clips in the project file.

And over on the right, we've got some options for the way that we're going to locate the content.

Again, the defaults are usually fine.

Here's the list of items that are missing.

You'll notice that the photos are not on the list because, of course, those are in their original location.

Because I've got this option Use Media Browser to Locate Files enabled, when I click Locate, instead of just getting a regular system browser, I actually get a kind of a version of the media browser with which I can preview files as well as just browse to locate them.

I'll resize a little, so we've got a bit more room.

Down at the bottom of this Locate File dialog box, I'm going to enable Display Only Exact Name Matches.

This is going to hide anything that isn't a folder or the file that I need.

I'm going to go to the drive that contains the media.

And looking at the top, I can see the last path, the last known location of this clip.

The first item on the list is actually a P2 MXF media file.

So, it's tucked away inside multiple sub folders rather than being right there in the Media folder.

We've got the currently selected path just underneath it.

Because I've got quite a lot of other files on this drive, all inside this 'Other Files' folder, I'm not going to search right away.

I'm going to speed up the search just a little by browsing into this media folder.

Now, I'm going to click Search.

And Premiere Pro CC has found exactly the file we need.

If you look at the new Path at the top, we're now looking at the D drive rather than the C drive.

On Mac OS, you get drive names rather than drive letters, but it's the same principle.

Because I've got Display Only Exact Name Matches enabled, I am not seeing the other items in this folder.

I'll just deselect that and you can see the other media files here.

We don't need those.

The file is already highlighted.

I can hover scrub by moving my mouse cursor over this thumbnail to see the contents of it.

But I know it's the right one.

And I'm going to click OK.

When I clicked OK, Premiere Pro CC automatically checked the relative locations for the other missing media files.

That means even if the other media files were not in the same directory, Premiere Pro CC knows that, for example, the original folder was beside this one or even a couple of levels up.

And so, in one step, every one of these media files has come online.

This is not going to work if you've moved your media folders to different relative locations or for that matter to different drives.

But in the main you're going to find that this single step is all you need to do to relink your media.

I'm going to go back to my MEDIA folders.

And I'm going to move again with the Shift key my media back over to the original drive.

Now when I go back into Premiere Pro CC, you'll notice that the clips link automatically.

And that's because Premier Pro CC has remembered the previously known locations for this media.

I can also manually set clips to be offline.

Here, for example, I'm going to right click on one of the items in my Project panel.

And I'm going to choose Make Offline...

You do have this dangerous option to delete media files when you do this.

This is one of the rare occasions that Premiere Pro CC will allow you to do anything to your original media.

You generally do not want this option to delete the file.

I'm going to click OK to keep the media files on disk.

Now if I double click on this item, I get the Edit Offline File dialog box.

You'll notice I have the option to specify a Tape Name that's if this was captured from a tape I can put in the Description, Log Notes, and so on.

Now instead I'm going to right click, and I'm going to choose Link Media...

This is distinct from the Replace Footage... option which replaces the original media file with any media you like whether or not it matches the original file.

So, I'm going to choose Link Media...

And this takes me back into the Link Media dialog box And I just wanted to run over a couple more of these options.

If you are having trouble relinking media, you might want to enable or disable some of these Match File Properties options.

In particular, the File Extension, provided you have unique file names.

If you're changing the media type, you might need to turn this option off.

The Align Timecode option just aligns the clip timecode with the media file.

And, of course, here, we've got the Relink others automatically option which we want if we're relinking multiple clips.

With this turned off, when I had clicked OK previously, we would have just come back to this dialogue to relink each clip individually.

We've already looked at the Use Media Browser to locate files option.

If I deselect this and choose Locate, I go to a regular system dialog box to browse for the file.

And that might be fine.

The Preserve Interpret footage settings option means that any clip interpretation you've applied in the Project panel will also be applied to the newly connected clip.

If you choose Offline All or Offline which selects an individual item, Premiere Pro CC will just skip to the next item on the list.

In this case, take you back to the Project panel.

And it'll allow those clips to remain offline even when you reopen the project.

So, that's how to relink offline clips in Adobe Premiere Pro CC.