Create The Proxy In Premiere Pro
Using the Proxy option is the way to go when you are in such a situation. Proxying means that premiere will convert your footage to a less demanding codec like H.264 or Quicktime with a much lower bitrate. This will not be applied to your actual footage and is just there for your previews. The cool part of this process is that it will all be handled by premiere itself and all you have to do is push a button to switch between Original and Proxy view.
What you need to do is selecting the footage, Right-Clicking on it, Choosing Proxy and then create proxies. Here you can see Format and Preset in the opened panel.
Media Encoder
First, you have to create our own preset in a Media Encoder. Media Encoder is a software that Ingest, Transcode, Create Proxies, and output to almost any format you can imagine. This powerful tool allows you to work with media in a unified way across applications. Tight integration with Adobe Premiere Pro, After Effects, and other applications provides a seamless workflow.
Create Encoding Preset
Video Panel
Do not choose Render at Maximum quality because we are going to use this preset for our previews and the quality is not that important here. Quality will be at 4 which is a good balance between acceptable quality and low file size.
If you want to get more info on exporting and rendering and know all these options in detail, you can click the link here to read our other blog which will talk about rendering and exporting in full detail, and I mean in full detail!
Effects Panel
Overlaying and Watermarking The Proxy
Creating Ingest Preset
You can organize the name of the files you are transcoding in the File Rename section. I personally never use this option because I prefer to keep the name of my original files and the name of the proxy ones the same. This will help find what you are looking for much faster.
Also, if you are looking for the source of the preset files, you can Right-Click the Preset and choose Reveal Preset. You can also share the files with others and things like that.
Back To Premiere Pro
Select your footage, right-click, Proxy, Create Proxies. Then click Add Ingest File and choose the created preset from source files.
This preset you have created will always be here for you to use unless you decide to make any changes to it. You can choose next to original media in the proxy folder as your destination to have your proxies next to your original footage. The other option is the destination you choose in the encoder. You can keep all your proxies and projects in a single folder for better organization.
You can see by keeping on doing this, all the footage will be automatically added to the encoder and then convert to the format you have chosen.
Switching To Proxy Form
After all is done, go back inside premiere and what you will see is that all the footage is still in original form. So, Click on the plus button at the bottom right corner of the Program Panel, the one that is showing the preview of your footage, to see all the hidden tools. Add Toggle Proxy to your main tools and hit OK.