Working with offline clips

An offline clip is either a clip that has been unlinked from its source file, or a logged clip that you still have to capture. Offline clips contain information about the source files they represent, and they give you flexibility when actual files are not available. If an offline clip appears in a Timeline panel, “Media Offline” appears in the Program Monitor and in the track.

When you log clips from a tape, Premiere Pro automatically creates offline clips containing the exact information required to capture the clips later. You can also create offline clips manually. Use offline clips in situations such as the following:

• Clips are logged but not yet captured. Because offline clips behave like captured clips, you can organize the logged offline clips in the Project panel. You can even lay out sequences with them in a Timeline panel before the offline clips are captured. When the offline clips are captured (or located, if they are already captured but missing), they replace the corresponding offline clips.

• You want to capture logged clips using device control or batch capturing. In Premiere Pro, a batch-capture list is a set of offline clips; selecting specific offline clips sets them up for batch capturing.

• You want to recapture clips used in the project. Recapturing clips requires making the online clips offline by using the Make Offline command.

• A source file is unavailable when you open a project, so that Premiere Pro can’t locate it automatically and you can’t locate it manually. Premiere Pro provides Offline and Offline All buttons in this case.

You can create an offline clip, that is, a placeholder clip for footage you capture later.

Edit an offline clip

You can edit an offline clip. You can give it new start and end points, tape name and filename, and a new audio format. You can specify whether it contains audio only, video only, or audio and video. When an edited offline clip is placed in sequences, it retains the updated settings. These updated settings also are used for subsequent batch capture.

Relink an offline clip

You can link an offline clip to a source file, even to a source file different from the one from which the offline clip was made. The linked source file appears anywhere the offline clip is used in a project. It is possible, for example, to edit an online clip in a sequence, make its source offline, and link the offline clip to another source file. The new source appears in the sequence wherever the original one did.

You can link offline clips to video files, audio files, and still-image files. However, you cannot link an offline clip to a still-image sequence different from its original source file. Instead, import new still-image sequences, and place them into timelines manually.

You can link an offline clip containing audio to a source file containing no audio. Premiere Pro deletes the audio track in all instances of the relinked clip from the project.

In the Project panel, you can choose Clip>Make Offline for any merged clip. When making any merged clip offline, all component clips will also be become offline. However, you can use the Relink command to link to the desired tracks, while leaving others offline.

Convert an online clip to an offline clip