Adobe Premiere - how do I find a clip using a removed plugin?

Question

Adobe Premiere: 5.5

• I had a plugin, then I removed it
• Now my project complains about not having it
• I think this is from a clip or sequence using the plugin

Questions:

• How do I find the clip or sequence to take out the plugin and remove this error?
• Could this error be caused by something else?

EDIT: more complications:

• it is a feature length project, with 20+ long sequences
• I only see the warning when I open the project, and it takes 5+ minutes to load

Answer 1

I don't have the reputation here to comment, but there's a refinement to CyanideBaby's iterative solution for longer projects. Inspired by the binary search.

For big projects, instead of doing it a minute at a time, select the first half of your project. Then remove all effects. See if you still get the message. If not, Undo (put effects back) and try the second half.

Now you know which half has the clip with the missing plugin. Do the same - try the first half of that half (so a quarter of the project). If not, then the second half of that half. And so on.

6 iterations of this will get you down to a 3 minute section on a 200 minute project.

For me, Jim Hoyle's solution was the fastest. However, it took me a while to track down the clip as the sequence it was in was nested and no longer used in the main timeline.

Answer 2

In premiere Pro CC 2015, you can use the find on timeline command by pressing (Cntrol+F) for windows and for mac (Command+F) the dialog box that opens up will help you find the clip.

Chose from the dropdown "effects" the chose "contains" and type "name_of_plugin".

replace the name_of_plugin with the name of the plugin you used and gave you errors. Mostly it should find it.

I tested this with an inbuilt plugin of premiere called "Calculations" within channel in video effects and it does find the clip. The only difference is that I did not delete the plugin itself while testing as its in built. You should give this method a try and hope that the metadata needed for the same will be there.

P.S.: you could also try starts with instead of contains in the second drop down for better results.

Good luck.

Answer 3

For me, this was the solution (with newer Premiere CC version it's gzip, for older just zip):

• Copy myproject.prproj to myproject.gz
• Use program like 7zip to unzip that
• The result is myproject.xml which you can view on a text editor
• Now you can find whatever you want (such as instances of files, plugins, effects with cryptic codes instead of proper names etc.)

How to find where all "Filter offline ()" instances are located in the .prproj? In the .xml, search for the FilterMatchName which is the code that appears when .prproj is loaded in Premiere (the error message complaining that a filter wasn't found). So search for something like "3:5653545a 6e4f5269 5a6f746f 7065204f". When you find it, go a bit up and there is <DisplayName>. The content of that is the name of the missing filter. You can also directly search for the filter name if it happens to appear in the .xml by its human-readable name. Go even higher and there is <AudioFilterComponent ObjectID="69760" ..> or something like that. This ObjectID is the code for the file which the filter has been attached to. Search for e.g. "69760" (with parenthesis). The other instance of this tells the filename (e.g. myclip.wav), just go a few rows down from the instance you just found and see <Name>.

When you are in Premiere and you want to delete that "Filter offline ()", you may want to delete it from all clips in a sequence at once. To do this, select all clips you want in the sequence (as suggested by Ben Jones here also), right click on one of the clips, Remove Attributes. Make sure you have a tick only on [x] Effects and on the effects you want to delete (empty name = a Filter offline filter).

Answer 4

• Select the first minute of your timeline. Remove all effects. See if you still get the message. If not, Undo (put effects back).
• Select minute 2 of your timeline, do the same thing (remove effects, etc). That way you should be able to narrow down where in your timeline you used the plug-in.
• Once you've found the minute where you initially used the plug-in, go clip after clip until you find the one that has it. Remove it, and you should be home free.

Answer 5

If you have After Effects, you can import the Premiere .prproj into AE via File > Import > Premiere Pro Project

Once imported, After Effects should throw up a warning for the missing effect. The manual has this to say, about isolating the missing effect clips:

If you open a project that uses an effect for which After Effects has not loaded the plug-in, a warning dialog box appears, and instances of the effect have Missing: at the beginning of its name in the Timeline panel and Effect Controls panel. To show all instances of missing effects in the Timeline panel for the active composition, press FF.

Answer 6

select all clips. Right click "remove attributes".

Now be careful for this next bit: uncheck all the effects you want to keep (leave the one you want to delete).

the go ok.

do it again to see if they effect you wanted is still there or gone.

that's about it.