When to Use the Media Browser in Adobe Premiere Pro

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The Media Browser is a robust tool for reviewing your media assets and then importing them into Premiere Pro. The Media Browser is designed to properly show you media formats acquired by modern digital video cameras, and can convert the complex camera folder structures into easy to browse icons and metadata. Being able to see this metadata (which contains important information such as duration, date, and file type) makes it far easier to select the correct clip from long lists of files or shots.

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By default, you’ll find the Media Browser in the lower-left corner of your Premiere Pro workspace (if your workspace is set to Editing). It’s docked in the same frame as the Project panel. You can also quickly access the Media Browser by pressing Shift+8. You can position the Media Browser elsewhere on-screen by dragging it, or undock it to a floating panel by clicking the submenu in the corner of the panel and choosing Undock Panel.

You’ll find that working in the Media Browser is not significantly different from browsing using your computer’s Operating System. There are a series of navigation folders on the left side and standard up, down, left, and right arrows in the upper-right corner to change levels of browsing. You can use up and down arrows to select items within a list and the left and right arrows to move further along a file directory path (such as stepping into a folder to examine its contents).

The major benefits of the Media Browser include the following:

  • Narrowing the display to a specific file type, such as JPEG, Photoshop, XML, AAF, and more.
  • Auto sensing of camera data—AVCHD, Canon XF, P2, RED, ARRIRAW, Sony HDV, and XDCAM (EX and HD).
  • Viewing and customizing the display of metadata associated with your clips.
  • Correctly displaying media that has spanned clips across multiple camera media cards. This is very common in professional cameras, and Premiere Pro will import the files as a single clip, even if two cards were used to record the longer file.


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