Set preferences

The Automatch Time preference specifies the time, in the Audio Mixer, for any control that has been adjusted to return to its previous setting. Affected controls are Volume, Pan, Effect, and Send parameter knobs in Audio, Submix, and (except sends) Master track. Automatch Time preference affects properties in Touch mode, and in Read mode for effects with keyframes.

Specifies how Premiere Pro mixes source channels to 5.1 audio tracks.

Enables audio scrubbing. You can create a keyboard shortcut called “Toggle Audio During Scrubbing” to toggle audio scrubbing on or off while scrubbing. Using a keyboard shortcut is preferable to returning to the Preferences dialog box each time you want to turn audio scrubbing on or off.

Lets you maintain the audio pitch during scrubbing and playback while using the J,K,L keys. Selecting this preference helps improve the clarity of speech when playback is at a higher or slower than normal speed.

To prevent monitoring of the audio inputs while recording the timeline, check this box. 

To let Premiere Pro automatically generate waveforms when importing audio, select this preference. To avoid showing audio waveforms, deselect this preference.

To let Premiere Pro automatically renders audio previews whenever it renders video previews, select this preference. For more information, see Render audio when rendering video.

Select this option if you experience audio dropouts during playback. By default, this option is off.

• Off: Faster playback start but there may be audio dropouts when playing huge sequences with lot of audio clip effects.
• On: Premiere Pro does all the preroll computations before playback starts. So, there is a larger delay before playback actually starts. However, there are less audio dropouts during playback.

Defines the linear keyframe thinning and minimum time interval thinning.

Creates keyframes only at points that don’t have a linear relationship to the start and end keyframes. For example, if you are automating a fade from 0 dB to –12 dB. With this option selected, Premiere Pro creates keyframes only at the points that represent an increase in value from the beginning (0 dB) and ending (–12 dB) keyframes. If you don’t select this option, Premiere Pro creates several incremental keyframes of identical values between those two points, depending on the speed at which you change the value. This option is selected by default.

Creates keyframes only at intervals larger than the value you specify. Enter a value from 1 through 2000 milliseconds.

This preference lets you set the number of decibels to increase when using the Increase Clip Volume Many command.

While sending clips to Audition, you can save these files in the scratch disk location, or next to the original media file.

Launches the Audio Plug-in Manager dialog box to let you work with third-party VST3 plug-ins, and Audio Units (AU) plug-ins on Mac.

By default, Premiere Pro automatically saves your project every five minutes and retains the last twenty project file versions on the hard disk. 

You can revert to a previously saved version at any time. Archiving many project iterations consumes relatively little disk space because project files are much smaller than source video files. It’s best to save project files to the same drive as your application. Archived files are saved in the Premiere Pro Auto-Save folder.

Automatically save Projects, and type the number of minutes you would like between saves.

Enter the number of versions of a project file you want to save. For example, if you type 10, Premiere Pro saves the ten most recent versions.

To let Premiere Pro auto-save your projects directly to your Creative Cloud-based storage, select this preference.

When Premiere Pro auto-saves a project, a directory named "auto-save" is created in your Creative Cloud online storage. All the backed-up projects are stored in the "auto-save" directory.

When this setting is enabled, Auto Save creates an archived copy of your current projects, but also saves the current working project. This setting is off by default.

Auto saved versions have a suffix with the date and time it was saved (yy-mm-dd-hh-mm-ss) appended to the project name (for example, ProjectName-2018-08-31_09-53-41.prproj).

When an auto save occurs, Premiere Pro creates a new backup project file and adds it to the auto-save folder as an emergency project backup. This file is always the latest saved version of that project. Here are some of the characteristics of the emergency back project file:

• The backup file has the same name as the project, it does not have any suffix.
• Premiere Pro produces only one emergency backup file per project, and it is overwritten at each Auto Save interval and when you save the current project.

Clips, sequences, and bins in your project have a label color by default that you can change at any time. These preferences allow you to set colors you like and choose what colors are used by default for certain types of project items.

Use label color presets to select, name, and share your project’s unique label colors. Associate colors to label defaults and create a preset you can share with your whole team so you can stay organized together. 

To access label color presets, go to Settings > Labels. Adjust your label colors and defaults, then select Save label color preset. To import someone’s preset, select Import label color preset.

You can click on the folder icon to navigate to where your label color presets are saved on disk. You’ll find those presets in:

• macOS: /Users/<username>/Documents/Adobe/Common/Assets/Label Color Presets 
• Windows at Users\<username>\Documents\Adobe\Common\Assets\Label Color Presets

 Aside from Default,  Classic, and Vibrant presets, you’ll also find an Editorial preset created by TV and film editors with colors named for assets frequently used by post-production teams.

Specifies the frame rate for imported still-image sequences.

Specifies whether Premiere Pro shows the original timecode imported clips, or assigns new timecode to them, starting at 00:00:00.

Specifies whether Premiere Pro assigns a 0, or a 1 to the first frame of an imported clip, or assigns a number by timecode conversion.

To specify whether you want to Scale to frame size or Set to frame size, set this media preference. If you select scale to frame size, then Premiere Pro automatically scales imported assets to the project’s default frame size. 

To write ID information into XMP metadata fields, select this check box.

To specify where you want Premiere Pro to save clip marker, set this option. If you select this option, clip markers are saved with the media file. If you turn off this option, clip markers are saved in the Premiere Pro project file.

To link clip metadata to XMP metadata, so that changing one changes the other, select this check box.

To detect and automatically import embedded closed caption data in an embedded closed caption file, select this check box. Deselect this check box to not import embedded captions, which helps save time while importing.

If you want Premiere Pro to automatically switch to displaying the proxy video in the timeline after a proxy job is complete, select this option.

If you want to allow duplicate media while importing a project, select this option. Deselect this option if you don't want multiple copies while importing.

When you select this option, Premiere Pro hides the master clips when dragging in a sequence from another project.

Premiere Pro supports growing files for OP1A MXF files. The preference allows users to opt whether Premiere automatically refreshes as they grow, and if so, how frequently. This preference allows you to edit with these files in your project immediately.

This preference allows you to enable and disable hardware decoding.

Specify the default duration for audio and video transitions.

To display still images, specify the default duration.

When a sequence is longer than the visible timeline, you can select from different options to auto-scroll the timeline during playback.

• Page Scroll moves the timeline automatically to a new view after the playhead moves offscreen. Selecting this option ensures that playback is continuous and doesn't stop. 
• Smooth Scroll keeps the playhead in the middle of the screen, while the clips and time ruler move by.

You can choose vertical or horizontal scrolling. By default, mouse scrolling is horizontal for Windows and vertical for macOS. For Windows, press the Ctrl key to switch to vertical scrolling.

Defines the type of track in which the clip audio channels are presented when a clip is added to a sequence—Mono, Stereo, 5.1, or Multichannel Mono. Premiere Pro imports and renders each of these track types in the source format (if you select the Use File option) or converted to another track format (if you select one of the track types other than Use File). The following list describes the compatibility between tracks and clip types:

• Mono tracks can hold mono and stereo clips.
• Stereo tracks can hold mono and stereo clips.
• 5.1 tracks can hold only 5.1 clips.
• Adaptive tracks can hold mono, stereo, and adaptive (multichannel) clips (but not 5.1).

The following definitions describe how each track type is interpreted in Premiere Pro and presented when dropped into a sequence:

Lets you specify how mono files must be interpreted inside Premiere Pro. The mapping works as follows:

• Use File imports the file in the same format, mono.
• Mono imports the file as mono, as what happens when you select Use File as the source file and your preference being mono.
• Stereo imports the mono media file as stereo. The mono channel in the file is assigned to one channel in stereo and the other channel is left as silent for the media to be interpreted as stereo.
• 5.1 imports the mono file as a 5.1 surround clip. The mono channel in the file is mapped to one channel in 5.1 format along with five silent channels to interpret the file as 5.1 surround media.
• Adaptive imports the file as an N (Max N is 32) channel clip with the mono channel as the first channel.

Lets you specify how files that are inherently stereo must be interpreted in Premiere Pro. Here are the possibilities:

• Use File imports the file as in the source format, in this case, stereo.
• Mono imports the file as mono. The L-R channels in the stereo are interpreted as two mono channels.
• Stereo imports the file as stereo with the channel mapping exactly as the source format. 
• 5.1 imports the file as 5.1 surround clip. The stereo channels in the file along with the four silent channels are interpreted as 5.1 surround media.
• Adaptive imports the file as an N (Max N is 32) channel clip with the stereo channels as the first 2 channels.

Lets you specify how Premiere Pro must treat 5.1 media files. The options are:

• Use File imports the file in the source format, in this case, as 5.1 channel surround media. 
• Mono imports file as mono, which results in six mono channels.
• Stereo imports file as stereo, mapping the six channels to three stereo pairs.
• 5.1 imports the file as 5.1 media, with the mapping kept exactly as in the source file. In this case, it works the same as the Use File option. 
• Adaptive imports the file as an N (Max N is 32) channel clip with the first six channels and the rest of them as silent. 

Lets you specify how files that have N discrete channels are interpreted inside PPro. The options are:

• Use File Imports the file in the source format, in this case, as multichannel mono media with the same number of channels as in the source.
• Mono Same as Use File, that is, all N channels are kept as N mono tracks.
• Stereo The N mono channels in the source are grouped into (N/2) stereo pairs.
• 5.1 Imports a multichannel mono file as sets of one or more 5.1 tracks by adding extra silent channels (if needed) to complete sets of 5.1 configuration.
• Adaptive Imports the file as an N (Max N is 32) channel clip with the channels mapped to the same number of mono channels in the source media.

Select this preference if you want the timeline to be active, not the Source Monitor, after you make an edit.

To turn on snapping, select this preference.

With snapping turned on, moving the playhead in the timeline, makes the playhead snap or jump to an edit directly. For example, you can align the playhead to a specific marker with snapping enabled.

Toggle snapping on and off by pressing S on the keyboard.

Use this option to control what happens when you are at the end of a sequence and you restart playback. If this option is not selected, Premiere Pro stops. If you select this option, Premiere Pro jumps back to the beginning.

Displays out-of-sync indicators for audio and video when they are unlinked and moved out of sync.

If you want Premiere Pro to play the whole project from the beginning after rendering, select this preference.

When you drag a clip into a sequence, Premiere Pro detects if the attributes of the clip match the sequence settings. If the attributes do not match, the Show Clip Mismatch Warning dialog box appears.

When you enable this option, Premiere Pro opens the master clip in the Source Monitor and adds a point at the current time indicator (playhead) instead of showing the clip in and out points.