So it has been a long time since i needed to create proxies for after effects, but today I did and was horrified by the workflow.

You have to literally do it one-by-one for each file in the project list. Alternatively, AE likes to just create a useless composition, per piece of footage instead to render, and then re-links all of those to the proxy.

There is no way to batch link them! I decided just to do it in media encoder and do it one by one.

This could massively be improved by being able to select several pieces of footage in the project panel and right click to re-link to proxies created (potentially externally with media encoder). Or it could be a scriptUI panel with a few user options that looks at the filename with a given variable prefix/append, ie.myfootageproxy and point it to a folder (either where the source footage is or maybe a custom one i.e. proxies) and it just iterates through your selection in the project window and links them up.

So that's for re-linked existing proxies, but the actual proxy creation within after effects could be improved too. Right clicking each piece of footage and selecting create proxy, or dragging a section of footage to the render queue for AE to make a middleman composition is cumbersome. AE should ask the user what re-link behaviour is on creation, i.e. re-link to the preComp or the source footage itself.

Thank you!