How to use Shade with Adobe Premiere Pro

Follow this video and guide to properly set up Adobe Premiere Pro for Shade

Remote Collaboration with Adobe Premiere Pro

ShadeFS enables seamless remote collaboration in Adobe Premiere Pro by eliminating the need for downloads, syncs, or relinking media. This guide provides step-by-step instructions on how to use ShadeFS efficiently for various Premiere Pro workflows.

Depending on your internet connection, bandwidth, and file types, we recommend adopting a proxy or a reduced playback resolution workflow. For more information on typical internet and bandwidth considerations, see Understanding Internet Speeds and ShadeFS Storage

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Setting Up Your Shade Drive for Premiere Pro

Step 1: Connect to ShadeFS

• Ensure your Shade app is installed and running.

• Mount the Drive that you're looking for and ensure that it shows up properly in finder.

• Navigate to the designated project folder.

Step 2: Organize Your Project Folder

These are only recommendations, if you have a specific project template, feel free to follow suit. We will use this for the rest of the proxy steps

• Create a main project folder within the Drive.

• Inside the main folder, create subfolders:

  • /Projects - Store Premiere project files here.

  • /Media - High-resolution footage storage.

  • /Proxies - Lower-resolution proxy files for remote editing.

  • /Exports - Final rendered outputs.

Step 3: Enable Project Locking (Optional)

• Open Premiere Pro > Preferences > Collaboration.

• Enable Project Locking to prevent overwrites.

• Assign a username so others can identify project owners.

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Working with Premiere Pro Project Types in ShadeFS

ShadeFS enhances the three main ways of working in Premiere Pro:

A. Individual Projects

• Save .prproj files directly into the Projects folder.

• No need to relink media—Premiere recognizes all files instantly.

• If multiple users open a project, only the first editor can modify it, while others get read-only access.

B. Premiere Productions

• Organize large projects with multiple editors using Productions.

• Store Production folders directly in the Filespace.

• Editors work on individual project files within the Production without version conflicts.

C. Team Projects

• Continue using Premiere Team Projects while storing media in ShadeFS.

• Eliminates the need for downloading media locally.

• Ensures real-time collaboration without re-uploading assets.

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Ingest Workflow 1: Reduced Playback Resolution (1/2, 1/4, 1/8)

This method greatly reduces the need to generate proxies, store additional data and offers users quick speed and one timeline to work with! We highly recommend this ingest workflow

To reduce the amount of data and to not require generating proxies, you can opt to adjust your timeline specs to play back at 1/2, 1/4, or 1/8 resolution. This can help when editing larger files and can be found right above the proxy button. This can work well with large files like .MXFs and 4K footage when you're just making the initial cut.

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Ingest Workflow 2: Creating Proxies in Premiere Pro

Using Premiere Pro’s ingest workflow, you can create and store frame-accurate proxies alongside full-resolution files directly on ShadeFS.

We highly recommend creating proxies from the original footage locally before uploading to Shade to maximize speed and time to edit.

However, if you've already copied footage, you can use Shade's built-in edit-ready h.264 proxies

Step 1: Configure Your Folders

1. Open your Shade Drive and navigate to the project folder.

2. Create two subfolders:

   • /Media/HighRes for full-resolution files.

   • /Media/Proxies for proxy media.

Step 2: Configure Premiere’s Ingest Settings

1. Open Premiere Pro and create a new project.

2. Set the Project Save Location inside the /Projects folder on ShadeFS.

3. Go to Project Settings > Ingest Settings.

4. Enable Ingest and select Copy and Create Proxies.

5. Choose the following destinations:

   • Primary Folder: /Media/HighRes

   • Proxy Folder: /Media/Proxies

6. Click OK to apply the settings.

Step 3: Import & Generate Proxies

1. Insert the camera media card into your system.

2. Open Premiere Pro and navigate to Media Browser.

3. Select your clips and click Import.

4. Premiere will automatically copy full-resolution files to /Media/HighRes and create proxies in /Media/Proxies using Adobe Media Encoder.

5. Monitor progress in Premiere Pro’s progress bar or ShadeFS upload status.

6. Begin editing using proxy mode for smoother performance.

Using Shade's Proxies:

If you've already uploaded your media to Shade, you can also use Shade's edit ready 1080p proxies (more information about them can be found at Proxy Generation and Complex Previews). They even support mono and multi-channel audio.

You can easily download proxies for these files once they're all generated by right clicking the folder that you're looking to download and selecting "Download proxies".

Once the proxies are downloaded and placed into the Shade drive, you can attach the proxies to the original resolution media.

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Optimizing Adobe Premiere Pro for ShadeFS

Step 1: Disable Automatic Audio Waveform Generation

• Navigate to Preferences > Audio.

• Disable Automatic Audio Waveform Generation to prevent unnecessary file preloading.

Step 2: Enable Project Locking for Team Collaboration

1. Open Preferences > Collaboration.

2. Enable Project Locking.

3. Enter your username to display for team members.

Step 3: Use Proxy Mode for Faster Editing

• Toggle proxy mode via the button editor in Premiere.

• Switch between full-resolution and proxy files instantly.

Additional Optimizations for the Best Performance

Set your scratch disks to a local drive

For best performance when working on Shade Storage, we recommend setting your scratch disks to a fast local drive. Under Project Settings, navigate to Scratch Disks and change the scratch disk location.

For more information about Premiere Pro Scratch Disks and its use case, see here

You can also save scratch disks alongside the project for quick switching between team members. To ensure smooth performance, we recommend pinning the scratch disk folders in advance as this will automatically sync.

Check out this great video on how to configure this for Premiere team projects

Optimize Rendering for Performance

Allocate as much Random-access memory (RAM) as you can spare

Disable Mercury Transmit

To reduce RAM utilization - you should disable Mercury Transmit.

Disable XMP ID (Extensible Metadata Platform)

When working off shared storage like ShadeFS, Adobe recommends turning off XMP ID to improve performance. To do this, go to Preferences > Media and uncheck:

• Write XMP ID to Files on Import

• Write Clip Markers to XMP

This will help reduce unnecessary metadata writing, ensuring smoother performance in shared environments.

If you do require XMP IDs, we recommend following a process like below:

• Open Preferences > Media and check "Write XMP ID to files on import" is enabled

• Import the media (the ID is written into XMP)

• Share the media files to the other editors

Disable "Automatically Refresh Growing Files"

Unless you are doing live productions, we recommend turning off refresh growing files. To turn it off, go to Preferences > Media, then uncheck Automatically Refresh Growing Files under your Project Settings.

Media Cache Location

To maximize playback performance, go to Preferences > Media Cache and select an internal SSD as your cache file location. This allows for quicker media access and a smoother editing workflow. This is typically set to an internal location on the computer by default.