Premiere Connecting to the Wrong Media
The problem we're running into was brought up by someone else in the forums back in 2017:
In our environment, we edit off of our server, and have done so for a long time now, without issue. All systems used to be Macs, but we've started introducing some PC systems into the mix, and now we're starting to run into complications.
This particular complication is around Premiere relinking to the incorrect media when switching between system OS.
1) Create a project in OS A (could be Mac or Windows), and then edit something.
2) Replace an asset in the timeline.
3) Save the project,
4) Open the same project on OS B (the opposite of whichever you chose in Step 1).
5) Marvel as your clip (replaced in Step 2) is linked to the old media.
This only seems to happen with media which have undergone the "Replace Footage" treatment, and this never used to happen when we were only using the one OS.
System Information:
All systems are running the latest Premiere release (13.1.5)
PC:
Windows 10 (1903)
Intel i9-9900X
64 GB RAM
Nvidia RTX 2070 (431.36)
Mac:
OS 10.14.6
iMac Retina 5k, 27-inch, late 2014
4 GHz i7
32 GB RAM
AMD Radeon R9 4GB

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Joe Hamilton commented
hahaha... Awesome @Darren Manden
It might also be worth noting that our team members are all working remotely using OneDrive to sync the project.
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Darren Manden commented
@Joe Hamilton
There's something comforting in knowing that Premiere really doesn't discriminate who it goes and gets sloppy drunk with. It’ll show up at any front door, day or night, with a couple of warm wine coolers under the arm, low self-esteem glistening in its eyes.After that it’s pretty much just a rollercoaster ride of a cautionary tale as it drinks anything it can get its hands on, accidentally breaking anything that comes into its orbit, ending up stranded like a turtle on its back in the middle of the room, crying in a puddle of its own filth - constantly seeking reassurance that people still love it, but knowing deep down that nobody does.
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Joe Hamilton commented
We are having the same issue but all the computers are PCs running 14.6.0. (No Macs)
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Mads Ehlers commented
Any news on this issue?
Or fixes? -
Darren Manden commented
That's so bizarre! I don't know why they would heavily limit access to older versions. In CC, when I click the "looking for older versions link" I get sent to a page for 2017 versions of Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop...no Premiere, or any other video applications.
Kind of hoping that this is just some weird oversight.
Sorry man. If I come across any way of getting to the older versions of Premiere, I will let you know.
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Jón Kristinsson commented
Thanks for the help. But it seems like since the latest Creative Cloud app update I can't install older minor versions, only the latest major versions.. So we're completely stuck on this Replace Footage.. problem. :(
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Darren Manden commented
Hey Jón Kristinsson,
Sorry to hear that you're running into this as well. So far the only workaround that we've found is to drop back down to 13.1.3, and don't upgrade until whatever was broken with the updates gets fixed. Yeah, I know, that's hardly a workaround at all, but it might save a bit of misery for the time being.
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Jón Kristinsson commented
We're having the same problem at our office and it's driving us nuts.
1) Create a project on OS A, import clip A
2) Open that project on OS B, replace clip A with clip B
3) Open project on OS A, clip name refers to clip B but file path points to clip A -
Darren Manden commented
In the screenshot you can see an example from System B.
This is the audio bin in Premiere, which shows the clip "DX_JAPAN_020.WAV". When the project started, we were using the file JAPAN_020.WAV, but I eventually ran that file through external software for noise reduction, and saved it as a new file, "DX_JAPAN_020.WAV". This was saved in a new folder, as part of my brute force testing to get around this bug. I then used "Replace Footage" to change out the original JAPAN_020.WAV in the project.
This was all performed on System A.
The project was then opened on System B, and this is where the screenshot comes from. I've brought up the Properties for the clip, and although it is showing as being correct in the bin itself, you can see that it is linking to the incorrect file. For what its worth, it's also linking to the incorrect folder as well.
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Darren Manden commented
Just found someone else with what appears to be the same issue:
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Darren Manden commented
Adding some more detail:
Update (19/10/10):
One thing which I haven't previously mentioned is that this wasn't happening before the most recent update.
We've tried testing with Shared Projects as we were advised that this could help, but we had no luck, and ran into the same issues.
We also tried brute forcing our way around the issue, but unfortunately failed again. I'll explain, using the music example again.
When replacing demo music, instead of putting the licensed file into the same folder as the demo track, create a new folder, and put the licensed track in there. Within Premiere, use the replace footage command to link to the licensed track in the new folder. This should make Premiere look for 1) a new filename, and 2) a new folder.
No luck, unfortunately.As it stands, we can't use Replace Footage. Any help is greatly appreciated.
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Darren Manden commented
I just remembered another bizarre bit of behaviour:
When we replace the footage, save, and close, and then open on OS B, the timeline will show the updated filename, but will definitely be using the wrong file.
If we reveal that clip in project, it shows the correct file in the bin, however if we reveal in Finder/Explorer, it takes us directly to the incorrect file.
So, yeah. Weird. Premiere will be showing that it's using the correct file, but heading to the actual file shows that things are not right in Denver.
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Darren Manden commented
Hi Kevin,
Could you elaborate?
I just realised that I didn't mention that we would be reconnecting to files with different names, or different extensions (eg: Replacing watermarked music tracks with final licensed versions) or sometimes both.
I'm not really sure how the file path would come into play here, as shouldn't it be looking for a wholly different file at this point?
So, instead of "watermarked_tunes.mp3", it would be "final_tunes.wav".
Happy to fire through more information if you need it, but something is definitely weird here. Much like what Ryan mentioned back in 2017.
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Kevin Monahan commented
Probably a file path issue.