Premiere Pro Proxy Workflows

Create proxies within Premiere Pro

This is Adobe’s built-in approach. You import your camera files, select clips in the Project panel, right-click, and choose “Create Proxies.” Premiere hands the job off to Adobe Media Encoder, which runs in the background. You pick a preset, a destination folder, and optionally add a watermark. Once encoding finishes, Premiere automatically attaches the proxies to the originals, and you toggle between them in the Program Monitor.

Pros

  • Simplest, most basic approach
  • Tight integration — Premiere manages the proxy/original relationship and auto-attaches proxies when encoding finishes
  • Simple toggle between proxy and full-res in the Program Monitor

Cons

  • Media Encoder can be slow and resource-heavy
  • The encoding queue competes with your editing session for system resources
  • Very limited customization — no option to bake a LUT into proxy files, a significant limitation for LOG workflows
  • The Media Encoder handoff can be fragile and prone to failure
  • Locked into Premiere’s naming conventions and folder structure,

Build proxies in Media Encoder before editing

In this pre-edit transcode approach, you open Media Encoder standalone, load your camera originals, configure your output settings, and encode everything before opening a Premiere project. Then you import the proxies into Premiere and manually attach them to the high-res originals.

Pros

  • Separates the heavy transcode work from your editing session
  • More control than the Create Proxies dialog, including the ability to bake in LUTs via Lumetri effects

Cons

  • Media Encoder is a complex application. It is easy to misconfigure settings and generate useless proxies that won’t attach in Premiere
  • Mismatched frame rates, audio channels, or frame dimensions silently break the proxy/original relationship
  • Ties up an Adobe license

Create proxies with pxf

pxf takes a fundamentally different approach. It’s a standalone macOS application purpose-built for proxy generation — not a general-purpose encoder with proxy capabilities bolted on. Drag your camera originals onto pxf, choose your codec (ProRes and DNxHR are both free), pick your resolution, and go. Built on FFmpeg with native Apple Silicon and VideoToolbox hardware acceleration, encoding is fast and efficient without tying up an Adobe process.

Pros

  • Bake any LUT directly into proxy files — essential for LOG workflows
  • Custom watermark (paid feature) with your own logo or text — doubles as a dailies tool NLE-agnostic
  • No dependency on Media Encoder
  • No sprawling settings to misconfigure
  • No Adobe subscription required
  • Clean, predictable output naming makes attaching proxies in Premiere straightforward

Cons

  • Custom watermarks, ProRes, and Avid DnxHR encoding requires a onetime in-app purchase