Annoying Bug ('feature'), requiring video to have audio (or not) to import!!

Question

There are several occasions where I'm in the middle of a job and I wish to change, say, a video. I have some other video that can directly overlay it. Premiere Pro CS3 (as opposed to older versions) will not let me relink a video in my project to another video unless they both either have audio, or do not.
Why?
Why do you care, Adobe, if both videos have audio?
Why do you care if they both don't?
I think I can make my own decisions based on if they have audio or not. 99% of the time, I don't use the audio in the clip as it it, so please stop failing my re-linking of a video based on if they both have audio or not. That's for ME to decide if it's "ok" to replace.
Just remove audio off the timeline if the video I relink to does not have it. Vice versa, do NOT put the audio on the timeline if it DOES have it and my original video did not. This is not difficult, this is expected behavior, and having to re-create videos so they match audio-wise is insanely counterproductive.

Answer 1

Not true. In fact most of what you describe I was able to achieve. I tested it now and it worked fine. What exactly are you doing to relink a clip?
I already explained this but, no, it's not working for you, you must be doing something different entirely. Once my machine is done rendering in after effects I'll post a screenshot, but I already explained this. To reproduce this problem the steps are simple:
1. Import a video with mono audio
2. Place on timeline in any sequence
3. Right-click on the video in the Project Library, Make-offline
4. Right-click on the video in the Project Library, select link the video, choose
some other video clip with stereo audio, or no audio
You will get an error that the source video has a mono audio channel and cannot be replaced by a stereo (or no audio) clip. It will fail. Every time.
Then hold down ALT and replace the audio/video with a track from your bin.
This is an entirely different thing than what I'm doing. Replace clip is not my solution, and is limited as I posted about earlier.
This is natural of course. You cannot expect Premiere to match and keep internal In & Out points for clips that have different total durations. Also each clip has a different timecode In Point seperate from it's duration.
Ahhh.. The good old "assumption" screwing everything up.
This is not the case, all the time. My
videos are identical. That is, exact resolution, exact time (down to the frame count), etc. The only difference is in the content in the video itself (text and visuals). They are an
identical video as far as the computer is concerned,
only differing in audio. And premiere things this is a good enough reason to refuse relinking.
And honestly, even if the duration differs, there are better ways of dealing with it than just outright failing. So what if the in and out points are out of range for a clip I'm replacing it with? Just use the 'video offline' effect or create a new visual indicator that the timestamps are invalid for the range, but
work for the
valid timestamp ranges. Then I can wholly replace clips easily with other clips to see which I like better, without making me re-create my keyframing effects.
Again, this is not my problem, I don't like or care to use replace clip. I am trying to RELINK files, which as you said, is a completely different thing. I am not confused, I have been using premiere for as long as anyone else here. This is a valid issue that older Premieres did not care about, and rightly so.