Supported file formats

Some filename extensions—such as MOV, AVI, and MXF denote container file formats rather than denoting specific audio, video, or image data formats. Container files can contain data encoded using various compression and encoding schemes. Premiere Pro can import these container files, but the ability to import the data that they contain depends on the codecs (specifically, decoders) installed.

The maximum frame size to import still images and movies is 256 megapixels, with a maximum dimension of 32,768 pixels in either direction. For example, an image that is 16,000×16,000 pixels is acceptable, as is one that is 32,000×8,000, but an image that is 35,000×10,000 pixels cannot be used.

Whether a frame can be processed by the GPU acceleration part of the Mercury Playback Engine depends on the size of the frame compared to the amount of GPU memory. A frame requires ((width x height) / 16,384) megabytes to be processed by GPU acceleration. If that value exceeds the available memory, Premiere Pro uses the CPU only for rendering of the current segment. This means that some images do not use CUDA acceleration on some cards and use CUDA acceleration on others. For example, one image size from a Canon T2i is 5184 × 3456. This requires 1,094 MB, which just exceeds the 1 GB available on the Quadro FX 3800, but is still within the 1.5 GB of the Quadro FX 4800.

Adobe Premiere Pro supports several audio and video formats, making your post-production workflows compatible with the latest broadcast formats.

Premiere Pro lets you work with a wide range of native media formats from the latest DSLR cameras without transcoding or file rewrapping.

The media formats listed here are supported for directly importing and editing with Premiere Pro. The required codecs are built in to Premiere Pro, and supported on both Mac OS and Windows systems unless stated otherwise.

To learn more about working directly with native camera formats, see this video tutorial.

Premiere Pro supports growing files for those needing this workflow. Growing files are files that are still being written to disk and will grow in duration after they are ingested. These files automatically refresh their duration based on a preference you can set in Premiere Pro.

• AVC-Intra Class 50/100
• IMX 30/40/50 
• XDCAM HD 50/35/25/18 RDD9 (The low latency version of XDCAM HD is not supported)
• OP1B files

Support for growing files to automatically refresh, and how often they must refresh, is available in Media Preferences. The updated duration can be viewed in the Project panel and the Source Monitor. The refreshed duration is also available for editing in the Timeline. See Media Preferences for more details.

Growing files can only be imported if Premiere Pro can read the volume where they are stored. Premiere Pro can read footage from an unc path("//somewhere/something"), but the drive must be mapped("H:\somewhere\something"). The file can then be imported using the File > Import command. You can then edit with these clips as you would normally edit any other clip. 

Variable Frame Rate (VFR) is a video compression term that refers to the format of videos where the frame rate changes actively during video playback. Most videos created using mobile devices (such as iOS and Android), and e-learning applications (such as ScreenFlow, or Twitch) are of VFR format.

Select the footage, and click File > Get Properties for > Selection. Premiere Pro indicates if it detects VFR footage.

Alternatively, you can right click the clip in the Timeline panel and select Properties.

You can incorporate variable frame footage from devices such as mobile phones and the DJI Phantom without having to adjust the audio-video sync manually.

• If you plan to use proxy, consolidate, or transcode workflows, it is better to transcode VFR material to a constant frame rate before editing.
• If you have manually synced VFR footage in previous versions of Premiere Pro, resync that footage when opening the project in Premiere Pro 12.0.1 or later versions.