Plug-ins must have an installer. This simplifies installation by the user, provides more compact distribution, and ensures all the pieces are installed correctly.
Green and pink video in Premiere Pro or Premiere Rush; How do I manage the Media Cache in Premiere Pro? Fix errors when rendering or exporting; Troubleshoot issues related to playback and performance in Premiere Pro; Monitoring Assets and Offline Media. Monitoring assets. VST plug-ins may stop working when the standalone application of the plug-in gets moved, renamed or uninstalled. It's recommended to always install the VST file directly to the correct destination folder, rather than manually moving the DLL file afterwards. To relocate a product, uninstall it, then re-install to the specified location. The Best Premiere Pro Plugins. Quickly & easily enhance your videos with unique transitions and effects that everyone will love. Access to these amazing Premiere Pro plugins.
Create a container folder for your plug-in(s) to minimize user confusion.
Don’t unintentionally overwrite existing plug-ins, or replace newer versions.
The installer should find the default installation directories as described below.
It is also appreciated when an installer allows the user to specify an alternate directory.
Plug-ins should be installed in the common plug-in location.
Supported Premiere and After Effects plug-ins installed here will be loaded by Premiere Pro, After Effects, Audition, and Media Encoder.
Other plug-in types, such as QuickTime and VfW codecs should be installed at the operating system level.
Windows¶
Starting in CC, each version of Premiere Pro will create a unique registry key that provide locations of folders of interest for third-party installations for that version.
For example, here are the registry values for CC 2015.3:
Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Adobe/PremierePro/10.0/
Value name: CommonPluginInstallPath
Value data: C:ProgramFilesAdobeCommonPlug-ins7.0MediaCore (or whatever the proper MediaCore plug-ins folder is; note that this is the same as what the After Effects installer provides for a corresponding registry key)
Starting in CC 2015.3, control surface plug-ins should be installed here:
/Library/ApplicationSupport/Adobe/Common/Plug-ins/ControlSurface/
For sequence presets:
Value name: SequencePresetsPath
Value data: [AdobePremiereProinstallationpath]SettingsSequencePresets
For sequence preview presets:
Value name: SequencePreviewPresetsPath
Value data: [AdobePremiereProinstallationpath]SettingsEncoderPresetsSequencePreview
For exporter presets:
Value name: CommonExporterPresetsPath
Value data: [User folder]AppDataRoamingAdobeCommonAME7.0Presets
Effects presets:
Value name: PluginInstallPath
Value data: [AdobePremiereProinstallationpath]AdobePremiereProCCPlug-insCommon
Third-party installers can start from this path, and then modify the string to build the path to the language-specific effect presets.
Prior to CC, the only path given in the registry was the common plug-in path for the most recently installed version of Premiere Pro:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Adobe/Premiere Pro/CurrentVersion
Value name: Plug-InsDir
Value data: REG_SZ containing the full path of the plug-in folder.
As an example: C:ProgramFilesAdobeCommonPlug-insCS6MediaCore
The best way to locate other preset folders was to start from the root path for Premiere Pro in the registry at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionAppPathsAdobePremierePro.exe.
Then, just add the proper subdirectories as described in the macOS section.
macOS¶
Starting in CC 2015, we now provide installer hints for Mac. You’ll find a new plist file “com. Adobe.Premiere Pro.paths.plist” at “/Library/Preferences”. This contains hints for your Mac installer to know where to install plug-ins, and is similar to the registry entries we have been providing on Win.
The common plug-in location is at:
/Library/ApplicationSupport/Adobe/Common/Plug-ins/[version]/MediaCore/
Starting in CC 2015.3, control surface plug-ins should be installed here:
/Library/ApplicationSupport/Adobe/Common/Plug-ins/ControlSurface/
Following OS X Code Signing guidelines, plug-ins should be installed in this separate shared location rather than in the application bundle.
For sequence presets:
/Settings/SequencePresets/[Yourspecificfolder]/
Sequence preview presets:
/Settings/EncoderPresets/SequencePreview/[YoureditingmodeGUID]/
Encoder presets:
/MediaIO/systempresets/[Yourexporterfolder]/
Effects presets:
/Plug-ins/[languagesubdirectory]/EffectPresets/ (see Localization for the list of language codes)
Editing modes:
No Vst Plugins Folder
/Settings/EditingModes/
Plug-in Naming Conventions¶
On Windows, Premiere Pro plug-ins must have the file extension “.prm”. On macOS, they have the file extension “.bundle”. Other supported plug-in standards use their conventional file extensions: “.aex” for After Effects plug-ins, “.dll” for VST plug-ins.
While it is not required for your plug-in to load, naming your plug-ins using the plug-in type as a prefix (e.g. ImporterSDK, FilterSDK, etc.) will help reduce user confusion.
Plug-in Blacklisting¶
Have a plug-in that works fine in one CS application, but has problems in another CS application? Now, specific plug-ins can be blocked from being loaded by MediaCore in specific applications, using blacklists. Note that this does not work for After Effects plug-ins loaded by AE, although it does work for AE plug-ins loaded in Premiere Pro.
In the plug-ins folder, look for the appropriate blacklist file, and append the the filename of the plug-in to the file (e.g. BadPlugin, not BadPlugin.prm). If the file doesn’t exist, create it first. “Blacklist.txt” contains names of plug-ins blacklisted from all apps. Plug-ins can be blocked from loading in specific apps by including them in “Blacklist Adobe Premiere Pro.txt”, or “Blacklist After Effects.txt”, etc.
Creating Sequence Presets¶
Not to be confused with encoder presets or sequence preview encoder presets, sequence presets are the successor to project presets. They contain the video, audio, timecode, and track layout information used when creating a new sequence.
If you wish to add Sequence Presets for the New Sequence dialog, save the settings with a descriptive name and comment. Emulate our settings files. Install the presets as described in this section.
Application-level Preferences¶
For Windows 7 restricted user accounts, the only place that code has guaranteed write access to a folder is inside the user documents folder and its subfolders.
..Users[user name]AppDataRoamingAdobePremiere Pro[version]
This means that you cannot save data or documents in the application folder. There is currently no plug-in level API for storing preferences in the application prefs folder. Plug-ins can create their own preferences file in the user’s Premiere prefs directory like so:
On MacOS: NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSApplicationSupportDirectory,NSLocalDomainMask,…)
This should get you started getting the Application Support folder which you can add onto to create something like:
/Library/ApplicationSupport/Adobe/PremierePro/[version]/MyPlugin.preferences
Dog Ears¶
Premiere Pro’s built-in player has a mode to display statistics, historically known as “dog ears”, which can be useful in debugging and tuning performance of importers, effects, transitions, and transmitters. The statistics include frames per second, frames dropped during playback, pixel format rendered, render size, and field type being rendered.
You can bring up the debug console in Premiere Pro. You can do this via Ctrl/Cmd-F12. To enable the dog ears, type this:
.gif?auto=compress,format&fit=max&w=1400 "Premiere Pro Vst Plugins Folder")
to disable, use this:
If the enter keystroke seems to go to the wrong panel, this is an intermittent panel focus problem. Click the Tools or Info panel before typing in the Console panel, and the enter key will be processed properly.
Vst Plugins Folder Reaper
Once enabled, the player displays the statistics as black text on a partially transparent background. This allows you to still see the underlying video (to some extent) and yet also read the text. When you turn off dog ears, the setting may not take effect until you switch or reopen your current sequence.
Note if you are developing a transmitter, displaying dog ears will result in duplicate calls to PushVideo for the same frame. This happens because the player routinely updates the dog ears on a timer even when the frame hasn’t changed for updated stats. As of CS6, this triggers a PushVideo to active transmitters as a side effect.
When it comes to audio effects, most modern non-linear video editors allow you to use plug-ins developed by third parties to extend their native audio effects. You might want for example to de-noise audio, process its dynamics or transition between different segments using reverb or delay. Plug-ins, as the name implies, are pieces of software that can run inside other programs but in order to do so they have to be distributed in a specific format that is supported by the host application.
The two most popular plug-in formats are:
- VST (Mac and Windows) - Stands for Virtual Studio Technology and was developed by Steinberg. They are bundled as .vst files and they usually live in C:Program FilesSteinbergVSTPlugins (Windows) or /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST (Mac)
- AU (Mac only) - Apple’s equivalent to VSTs. They are bundled as .component files and their default installation path is /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components
Adobe Premiere Pro
Premiere Pro supports third party VST (and AU on Mac) plug-in effects that are available in both the Audio Mixer and the Effect Controls panel. Initially however they may not be activated so you have to go into Preferences > Audio and click on the Audio Plug-In Manager button. From there, make sure it’s pointed correctly at your plug-in folders and press Scan for Plug-Ins.
The locations where Premiere Pro searches for VST plug-ins are as follows.
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareVSTVSTPluginsPath (Windows)
- C:Program FilesSteinbergVSTPlugins (Windows)
- System HD/Library/Audio/Plug-ins/VST (Mac OS)
- System HD/<user>/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST (Mac OS)
If these paths are not present by default you can press add on the plug-in manager window and add a custom location or point Premiere at the correct location.