Convert online clips to offline clips

Last updated on Apr 2, 2026

Learn how to unlink clips from source files while preserving editing decisions in Adobe Premiere.

Converting online clips to offline clips creates placeholder clips that retain all editing information while unlinking from source media files.

Use this procedure when you need to recapture clips at different settings, free up disk space while preserving your edit, or prepare clips for batch capture. Offline clips maintain all In and Out points, effects, and timeline placements from the original online clips. When you later recapture or relink the clips, they replace the offline versions with your editing decisions intact.

Converting to offline allows you to work with logged clip metadata without requiring the actual media files on disk. This workflow is particularly useful when preparing for recapture at higher quality settings or when managing storage constraints across multiple projects.

Make clips offline in your project

In the Project panel, select one or more clips you want to convert to offline.

Select Project > Make Offline.

Select Media Files Remain On Disk to keep source files on your computer while making clips offline in the project, or select Media Files Are Deleted to remove source files from disk and make clips offline.

Make Offline dialog with options to keep media files on disk or delete them when clips are made offline.
Choose whether to keep the source files on disk or delete them when making clips offline.

Alert

If you recapture clips using the same filenames as files remaining on disk, Premiere replaces the original files. To preserve original clips, move them to a different folder or specify different filenames during recapture.

After converting clips to offline, they appear in the Project panel with a distinctive offline indicator. Any sequences using these clips display Media Offline in the Program Monitor. To restore the clips, use the Link Media command to reconnect them to source files, or recapture them using batch capture if they originated from tape.