How can I "proxy edit:" a high-definition project?

Question

This is an undocumented process, created by the always amazing Robert Johnston, and a good solution if you find that editing HDV and AVCHD video natively puts too much stress on your system's resources.
Proxy editing temporarily substitutes a sort of preview video for the native files, usually one of lower resolution so that you can work with it more easily. Then, when you output your project, the editing and effects applied to the proxy video are applied to the actual footage, creating a high-definition output.<br /><br />Here is Robert's solution:
I have a custom project preset for 1080i that has an editing mode of 360x270. Anything you render as a preview is only 360x270 "MPEG-2 I-Frame Only." You can create your own and see if it helps with editing.
To create your own, you first pick a project preset by clicking "Setup" on the startup screen displayed by Premiere Elements 4. Select the 1080i 30 or the 1080i 25 project preset from the HDV tree inside the NTSC or PAL nodes. Click the "New Preset" button, then click the "Save" button, then give the custom preset a name and description of your choice. Click "Save as Default." Exit out of Premiere Elements.
Now open up your custom preset with WordPad. The custom preset file will be in the following folder:<br /><br />C:\documents and settings\[login id]\application data\adobe\premiere elements\4.0\settings\custom\
Once you've opened it in WordPad, scroll down past the gibberish until you get to the line with ObjectID="6" and change the PixelAspectRatio from 1920,1080 to 480,360 and change the FrameSize from 1440,1080 to 360,270. Then save the file.
<VideoSettings ObjectID="6" ClassID="58474264-30c4-43a2-bba5-dc0812df8a3a" Version="8">
<MaximumBitDepth>false</MaximumBitDepth>
<PixelAspectRatio>480,360</PixelAspectRatio>
<FrameSize>0,0,360,270</FrameSize>
After saving the file, you can start up PE and create a new project based on that custom preset. Clips you drag to the timeline will look normal sized, but if you render a preview of it, it will only be 360x270. It will look best when magnification is set to "Fit" or 50%.
Add titles, effects, transitions. Then render a preview.
You may not think that this would export correctly, but so far it has worked for me. The only thing that I haven't tried is burning a Blu-ray disc
Titles won't come out correctly if you change framesizes in some of the other ObjectIDs of the custom preset file. Just change the one that I specified.
Hopefully that gives you the idea so you can change the frameszie to something else if you don't like 360x270."

Answer 1

Paul_LS
Thanks for the reply.
I am with you about editng preview file (proxy) instead of the original AVCHD HD1080i or HDV HD 1080i. But, I went off course with your comment:
"Using the proxy you can view the video/effect without rendering" since you do not see the preview file until after you have rendered your edit of the Timeline.
Perhaps my understanding of that will answer the question that I asked about the benefits of using the proxy procedure if the workflow is just import, no edit, export.
ATR