Replace imported footage in Premiere Pro?

[Colmino]

In a nutshell: I've got several dozen extensively edited projects (cuts only) and I wish to replace their imported videos with alternate videos of the same length. This doesn't seem to be handled in an intuitive way in PPro (unlike AE), so I'm after whatever the solution may be.

In detail: I have recently discovered that most of my footage is YUV but exceeds the luma spec above 235, all the way to 255. Not an uncommon phenomenon, but Premiere Pro handles such things very badly. I have had to go the route of using an Avisynth script which converts the (DV and HDV) videos to RGB without expanding the values, thereby saving the whites rather than crushing them. I've gotten Premiere Pro to import the AVS files just fine. But replacing one imported video with another seems to be something PPro doesn't do with a simple right-click.

What are my options? How do I get this to work? Does Sony Vegas handle this better?

[lordsmurf]

Close project. Move everything. Open project. It tells you clips are missing. Manually show it where the clip is. Show it the new clip.

I did that before, worked great.

[Colmino]

Yeah, I've been discovering the wonders of "make offline" and "link media". Now I've got a new, more complicated problem.

The clip I'm using to replace the original video is an AVS file, containing, in fact, the video it is replacing. The trouble is that I am getting very unpredictable results from this procedure. Most often, PPro shuts itself off like a switch when I try to use the AVS as a replacement. When I simply import the AVS file, sometimes it complains about the write permission being incorrect. Sometimes it imports fine. It almost seems like a ram or drive space issue, but I can't really qualify that suspicion since I have taken steps to ensure that it cannot be.

It's pretty clear that Premiere AVS Plugin is the culprit. But I'd be interested in knowing why, and how to fix. ;p

[Guiboche]

Good luck trying to get Premiere to work properly with AVS. Unless it's 1 or a few files, you'll run into nothing but memory issues.