Preview Files Question

just wondering - is there a general rule about using Preview Files for output?
I watched Todd's video lesson on PrPro where he says he "never uses preview files for output" and I assume that's good advice to follow. Why is that?
Once in Adobe Media Encoder you can choose "Use Preview Files" and sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, but I have no real basis for choosing.
Assuming the scratch disk(s) is different from the source/project disk is it still just a bad idea to use Preview Files for output?
Thanks you guys!

But as dicussed in the thread quoted below, the only advantage in using Preview files is if you have non-CUDA rendered effects in the sequence. Unlike FCP, PrP doesnt use "Smart rendering" which is the process of stitching all the preview files together. According to Adobe, when exporting (using or not using previews) the entire sequence is rebuilt for output. Heres that quote from Wil..
Wil - "What you're looking for is what we commonly refer to as smart rendering, and it doesn't exist in PPro. That's a Final Cut 'ism, where it splices rendered data from the preview QT files into the final render. Keep in mind that's a QuickTime centric feature, & doesn't translate automatically to all file formats.
The 'Use preview files' option in PPro is exactly that - if there's a preview file, it decodes the frame out of it, & re-encodes it into the final file. So while it'll help in (non-CUDA) effects heavy compositions, it also incurs a generation loss. Generally, we don't recommend using it (hence the default to off) unless you really are sure that's what you want."
So if your preview codec is lossless and you have rendered lots of non-CUDA effects on your timeline you could save some time using this process.

Similar Messages

Question: Exporting 1:1 Preview Files

Ok, here's a question for you all:
Recently I was moving a large quantity of files onto my external hard drive, somehow, the folder structure got messed up ether by my moving files or by some other program I was running or some combination of the above and I lost all the pictures that were currently in that folder on the hard drive (about 5000-6000); I then undid the photo move so all my more recent pictures were still residing on my MacBook Pro's primary hard drive. I went and used undelete to get back as many as I possibly could, and ended up with about 3500 images that I couldn't recover. However because I've been working recently (pre-accidental delete) with all the files, a large number of the better ones still have the 1:1 preview file. The only way I can think to salvage what I can with these images is to somehow export the 1:1 preview files from lightroom.
Yes, I know I'm an idiot and needed a backup... I just got another 500gb external hard drive that arrives tomorrow. Point being, all I want to know is how to export these preview files and not be ragged on for not backing up or using undeleting programs or whatever else I could have/should have done that permeates all the other discussion I've seen with people who've had similar issues.
Thanks in advance,
Paul Rohde
http://www.paulrohde.com

If one were prepared to grunge around in the bytes on these files, you could extract the big JPEGs. They wouldn't have color profiles on them, but that could presumably be fixed afterward. But this is an option only for the technically advanced. It may still be worth while saving off a copy of your preview cache so that you could later go back and try to extract these.
On the Mac what you could probably do is the following assuming you still have a database that references these previews and just views the deleted images as being offline. Go into Print. Crank up the resolution. Select draft mode. Then use the Save As PDF option (the relatively simple-minded built-in one as opposed to anything added by Acrobat). This should build you a PDF containing the high-res JPEG out of the preview cache. You can do multiple images at a time this way, but I probably wouldn't be inclined to do all 3500 of them at once.
Then you can use some other tool (Photoshop, Acrobat?,...) to extract the JPEGs back out of the the PDF.
Mark

LR5 Smart Preview Portability Question : Can files be edited remotely?

I understand how Smart Previews work. What I'm unsure of is...will we be able to edit these files remotely, separate from the host computer? For example, I'm an image editor and I live 500 miles away from the photographer that I work for. Can they (the photographer) download the images after shooting, create Smart Previews then send me the 'Smart Preview' folder of images, I edited them on my own computer then return the Smart Previews back to them fully edited?

You don't actually edit smart preview files. Meaning: you edit the photos in the catalog, it's just if they have a smart preview they don't need to be online. In other words, the smart previews are tied to the catalog, and exist in it's bowels - edits are never stored in them, and you can't detach them from the catalog and do things with them, like send them to somebody. If you edit an offline photo by way of it's smart preview, the edits are stored in the catalog and/or the xmp of the photo, just like if you'd edited the actual photo.
So what your photographer would have to do is send you a catalog which includes smart previews, and you would return an edited catalog to them (without the smart previews), to import .
eh?
R

Question about Preview files

So I understand clearly, when you're working on a RAW image are you actually seeing the "preview" file on screen or the actual RAW file?
I'd hate to judge the adjustments I'm making based on a jpeg.

Previews are optional, but they are used inside Aperture for slideshows and displayed when the master is offline and at other times as well. You can control the size and compression quality, and you can decide which projects have previews. You can even decide on an image by image basis.
You might decide to make previews for older projects and take the masters offline, or you might make previews for newer projects to share them with iLife and iWork (or other applications via drag-and-drop)
The settings for compression and quality are in Preferences. The control over which images and projects have previews is by control-clicking on projects in the project pane and images in the browser.
Oh, and there is control in the little gear menu thing next to the "All Projects" at the top of the projects pane. That keeps the previews updated whenever the image is adjusted.
There is a lot of info in the user manual on this. See page 160.
--SLS

Can I slim down the size of the Aperture Library by moving the Preview files elsewhere?

Hi all,
I have an Aperture library of almost 20,000 photos, dating back to around 2007. Almost all the master images are stored on an external drive (backed up of course), with only my recent and 'in progress' masters being stored in the library itself. Previously I have had my library split up into one library for each year, with the older years libraries being stored on the external drive where the masters are, in order to keep the size of my 'current' library down. So my current library, stored on my internal SSD, contained only photos from this year and last year, and only a few of the masters for these images. Confusing? Sorry!
Now, I recently decided to consolidate the libraries into one huge library, because it was annoying to have to switch between libraries to find older photos when I wanted them. I did this, leaving all but the recent masters on the external drives (referenced). I thought that the size of the main library would remain reasonably sized, since there were no extra masters being moved into it. However, the library has grown massively - up to over 70GB, which is huge when you consider it's on a 128GB SSD which is also my startup drive.
I'm pretty certain the reason for the huge size increase is that the Previews for all the older images are stored in the Library file, rather than anywhere else. This makes sense - they are previews, they're supposed to be able to be viewed with the external drives disconnected. So my question is this. Am I able to change the location of the preview files to be on my OTHER internal hard drive (non-SSD, much larger), so that they're still available without the external drives, but are not cluttering up my startup drive. And, if not, what should I do!?
Thanks a lot

Glad it worked, but permit, if you will, some observations:
-- Bloated Previews are a known Aperture bug, which came and went within a few updates in Aperture 3. Getting them back to the proper size is simply a elegant step to take.
-- A Preview set to your largest screen size and a quality of 6-8 should be all but indistinguishable from the Master at 72-100 dpi screen image. (Not print resolution.) I REALLY doubt you are going to loose any quality.
-- While using a symlink to stick the Previews on a HD is clever, it may also defeat the whole purpose of using your SSD. Previews are read a lot and are, I suspect, used for all adjustments at less than full resolution. (N.B. I could be VERY wrong on this.) Thus, depending on the amount of RAM on your Mac, you could end up reading and rereading your Previews over a slower link and doing this a lot. You own use will quickly determine if this is an issue or not.
I have blathered on, at length, about what I think matters for size and speed here: https://discussions.apple.com/message/17959625#17959625. Some of this may be of use.
I went through a lot of these issues when I tried to fit everything on a 128 GB SSD, so I know some of the issues you are facing. As I noted before, you really only need a Library (minus most Masters) of about 30 GB and that is with large, high quality Previews.
I actually took the SSD out and stuck it in an ancient MacBookPro (in preparation for a trip to Blighty this summer) and have not noticed a huge drop in Aperture speed. (I do miss the speed of applications launch, restart, however.) One thing that I did find that made a small, but nice difference, was keeping all of the Masters on a separate, dedicated drive. Once defragged, etc. that was very fast. Don't know if you could achieve the same results by partitioning a larger drive, but it might well be fun to find out.
DiploStrat

Is there a way to export with the same settings as the preview files?

I really like the quality of the preview files and was wondering what settings premiere uses by default for creating these previews on a HD project. I also played the mpeg files in VLC and they look just so much better than the highest possible quality h.264 (what I usually use). I did notice however that quicktime doesn't take these files, even with the mpeg component installed.

Not sure what your question has to do in respect to Apple networking, but if you're asking can you use your Xbox 360 on a wireless network (regardless of the router's manufacturer) to access different Xbox Live! accounts, then the answer is yes.

CC 2014 -- Preview File Locations

Anyone else find that it's impossible to get changes to video/audio preview files locations in the scratch disk dialogue to hold? Changes appear to take effect, but upon re-loading project, they revert to the original state.
Also, changes to these often precipitate crashes.
[Please choose only a short description for the thread title.]
Message was edited by: Jim Simon

Is there a fix to the problem raised in the original question. I am using 2014 PP on windows 7 and on all of my projects the preview files are always placed with the project irrespective of how many times I change the information in Project Manager. It will not show up immediately, it appears it has to wait till the next auto save.
It very frustrating, I never use previews and I have keep deleting dozens of empty redundant directories that clutter my project folders.
I would just like the program to do as it is told!

Premiere Pro CC not creating preview files?

Hi there,
I'm working on a project in CC 2014 and when I play a timeline, I either get 'media pending', a black screen or some strange lines as if only a few frames of the clip have properly rendered. When I try to render the timeline, I get "Error compiling movie: unknown error". There are also no preview files in the project preview file folder (despite that folder being the allocated folder for preview files).
I've tried importing the sequence into a new project and the same issues carry on.
Any ideas?
Happy to provide any more info to help!
Cheers

As the faq for all the Adobe forums notes, it's handy, useful, and basically polite to start by noting your computer's specs: OS, chip/cores, RAM, video card/s/vRAM, disk setup, and also the specific software build you're using (to the dot-x level) as quite often this data gives a big heads-up to the answer of a question to start with. Next, it's also useful to give your codec/s, frame-size, and a hint of experience level and whether or not this is the first time you've tried something or whether you've done it for only 10 years a million times but THIS time it fritzed for some reason.
I can help with basic things but before anyone else even more helpful than moi can help ... they'll need more info.
Neil

Lose preview files after duplicating sequence

On CS3, if I duplicated a rendered sequence, the rendered timeline remained intact in the duplicated sequence. In CS4, the renders go away, making it necessary to re-render the timeline. What am I missing? The video preview scratch disc is the same.

Well,these results dont seem to help answer the original question. Here are the final export and a rendered file synced up NORMAL BLEND
Here is DIFFERENCE BLEND.
here is Y/C Waveform in the difference mode.
So Colin, it seems no recompression is taking place, which leaves the question ...if the preview files take 10 minutes to render on the timeline, when Exporting the sequence (using those Preview files) why does it take another 10 minutes .
This a bound to be one of the biggest complaint from folks switching from FCP that are used to its more accelerated output.

Horizontal Lines in saved AVI preview file

Hi all,
On another thread I was asking why I was getting an error message when trying to export and save a movie, but now I was able to get a temp AVI file after hitting enter and saving a preview file, but this AVI preview file, which is normally of the same quality of the full saved file I think, has horizontal lines in it that are very obvious compared to the original file... below are the sample still screenshots to compare...
Clean original 720x480 30 fps AVI file
Horizontal lines showing in this Premiere 720x480 30 fps AVI preview file
I have a file imported in to the timeline and it is set to play in reverse via the speed setting being set to -100 and it plays back in the preview window correctly, in reverse, when I click the play button.
But when I do a "File>Export Timeline>Movie" command I get an error message saying "An error occurred while making the movie. Error writing file (disk full?)"... but my hard drive is not nearly full, with over 30 gigs left open on it... and my RAM usage gadget shows over half of my RAM capacity is unused.
But I got a temp preview file that was generated after hitting enter to play the preview after I wasn't able to save, and that's how I got this file... and I think the temp files are normally just as sharp as the final saved files because they take just as long to generate when previewing by hitting enter as they do when doing and export and save.
Also, this process saved an 8.5 gigabyte AVI file from a 1.5 megabyte AVI file using the CamStudio codec.
Another try using the MSU lossless codec produced a 3.5 gigabyte AVI file that looked better, but wouldn't play any faster than about one frame per second after an hour and a half of saving time.
Does anyone have any solutions?... also I see that the new file from Premiere shows a larger screen size, though it was saved at the same 720x480 size as the original was.
Thanks,
numetro

Yes, that's what I started with, but it wouldn't render a working file of reversed video for anything over 2 minutes or so... so that's when I started trying everything else in the world... including these ridiculous attempts and resulting problems with Premiere trying to handle the complex task of saving a video file correctly.
If Apple can make a simple "REVERSE" button in its user friendly iMovie app, why can't anyone else?
Originally there was Xander's Video Time Reversal, that worked for me before and still works for some files, but just won't work on other slightly longer files and produces blank or unusable files 75 percent of the time, and Xander's French forum admin committee was asleep at the wheel while I waited for approval to ask a question.
Then there was "Rehan's" method of using two different apps (VirtualDub and Avisynth) and writing AVS script files in notepad... compared to this, it may be easier to have the desired video clip re-enacted in reverse with professional actors and a special effects team than it would be to use Rehan's method.
Then there is Stupeflix.com, which seems to be all the name implies since they were bragging about a webpage with an upload button to upload a clip to, and then a download button to get the reversed clip from... but the link for this magic page is nowhere to be found in the conversation on the blog site that was talking about it, and Stupeflix.com itself currently shows no feature of the kind.
Then finally at the long awaited end of this of my odyssey, after Premiere and before going back to XVTR, there was "K-5 Video Reversal Tool" and after reading the description about the needed codec pack and deciphering which download button is actually for the Video Reversal Tool and not one of those trick "Download Here" buttons that takes me to a virus laden site in Siberia, I did find a download link for it that is from Cnet.com... but then that app didn't work at all, even for very short, uncompressed AVI files, which it was supposed to handle with no problem... but it would flash a command prompt screen for a quarter second, then give a message stating that it produced the reversed file... which of course, it did not. And the guy that coded this gem has a chat thing on his K-5 website that he keeps responding to my original question about and he just can't admit that the app doesn't work.
I feel like... I've wasted a day and a half... now two days after writing so much.
Thanks,
digi

How can I see the path from the preview file (*.prel) to my video files ?

Because a lack of hard disk space I have moved my video files to another drive and therefore unfortunately destroyed the relative connection to the preview file (*.prel).
Therefore the videos are not to be seen in the preview file any more.
How can I get information about the relative path between the preview file and the place for the original video files so I can get those back in the original position ?
or:
It may be possible to change the path for every clip in my preview file - but how ?
I can read answers in English, German or Danish.

hansk
What version of Premiere Elements on what computer operating system?
Generalizing for now...
If you know where the files are by actually seeing them in their hard drive save location and you are getting "Where is the file ______?" messages, then you use those
messages to reconnect the source media to the project. Are you getting those messages and have you tried for the reconnects that way?
If edits are involved in the files that have become disconnected to the project, you can also consider the program's Replace Footage feature.
ATR Premiere Elements Troubleshooting: PE11: Replace Footage
Typically either of these ways is one at a time reconnects. With the "Where is the file _____?" message way sometimes you get lucky (depends on the circumstances) and more
than one file at a time might reconnect.
Please review and consider. Any questions or need clarification, please ask.
ATR

Using preview files from Pr 5.5

I use the Suite 5.5 and this question is about Encore when using the Dynamic link from Premier Pro (Pr). I have always used the automated way to import from Pr to Encore. It automatically compresses as needed to fill the DVD. And because my video is almost always under 2 hours that works great. Even for videos that are over 2 hours long. Now here is the problem:
Sometime I use several effects in [Pr] and render so I can better see what I am doing without all that skipping.
I would like to use the render files (previews) for making the DVD in Encore when transcoding.
Yes, I understand you go to Edit Quality Presets and at the bottom you checkmark the [Use Previews] box. But now it is nolonger automatically compressing the file to fit the DVD, or I don't it so.
So the question is:
How can I use the preview files (rendered files) from [Pr] to speed up the transcoding in Encore and automatically size fit the Video to fill the DVD.
Thank you,
Tom

I don't think you can get both aspects - automatic or use previews.
The settings for a dynamic link transcode are in Encore. When a preset is selected, "use previews" is not selected by default, but can be selected by customizing the preset. But you have no control over the settings used for the automatic setting, beyond the default transcode setting, which for DVD is basically the max bitrate.
A "bit" of bitrate calculation and you'll still be good to go.

Any solutions for lost render/preview files when opening files?s

Have any solutions been found for the intermittent lost render/preview files when opening a large file? I have Premiere CS6. A large project file that I have been working on lately opened without a hitch with previews intact ...until I bought new faster hard drives and rebuilt the computer (built with the same drive letters). I just installed the latest updates. When I now open this file, a segment of the sequence always opens without previews, unrendered, no matter how many times I rendered the file previously. I don't use 3rd party plugins. I am using the warp stabilizer. I tried all the suggestions that I have found on the forums (using a blank sequence to close and open, unchecking “write XMD…” etc.) but none work. I checked the render/preview drive, and these files are on that drive but they will no longer link to the project. It now takes a good 15 minutes to re-render every time I open.

I may have found a solution. I took out the warp stabilizer, and then added it back in on the clips in question, and then re-analysed and re-rendered. So far, so good. It seems that bringing in the warp stabilizer effect in the file into the re-built computer needed re-analysing (as I do after this 2 day exercise.)

[SOLVED] which mimetype is qbittorrent using for previewing files?

How do I find out which mimetype qbittorent uses to preview a file when I right-click on a downloaded/-ing torrent and select "preview file"? It is definitely not application/x-directory, can someone tell me which it is and how I can figure this out myself in the future?
My problem is previewing opens in Firefox as a "file://" url, but I want this to be handled by vlc or rox...
Thanks!!
Last edited by awayand (2011-06-02 16:15:47)

I am going to answer my own question here:
The mime type somehow is in the file so it is not the app that says "use mime type x on this file" but it's rather "use whatever mime type is associated with this file". To see a mime type of a file called test.mp4 use this command:
$ xdg-mime query filetype test.mp4
In my example I got this:
audio/mp4; charset=binary
Now we set the mime-type, in my example I want to use rox to handle this file, and then configure rox to use vlc:
xdg-mime default rox.desktop audio/mp4
Since I already set the default action for that file in rox with a right-click and then using "vlc" as the command, this now works beautifully.
If you are wondering, setting the default app for a mime type will edit the file
~/.local/share/applications/defaults.list
and add the following for this magic to work:
[Default Applications]
audio/mp4=rox.desktop
On a side note, does anyone else feel that freedesktop.org's documentation really blows? Isn't all of the above supposed to be explained for example here? http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifi … -info-spec
EDIT: I added this into the wiki here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ch … rary_files
as this is the first page that showed up when I searched "mime" in the wiki...
Last edited by awayand (2011-06-02 16:26:12)

In Mountain Lion, how do I find the location of an open Preview File? The file "properties" tab is no longer available.

I typically have several open Preview files at any one time and often forget where, sometimes if, I saved them. In Mountain Lion, how do I find the location of an open Preview File? Tried holding option + command in spotlight but I don't see a path name appear anywhere.

Yes, cmd-option on a file you choose in Spotlight and the path will appear at the bottom of the Preview window.
EDIT: Also, if it is bookmarked the path is in Bookmarks.

Preview Files Question

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