Premiere Pro proxy workflow without a full SSD

A single 4K or 6K project fills a working SSD faster than most editors expect. Four hours of 6K from a Sony FX6 is around 300 GB, and once you add a second and third shoot the drive hits its limit, Premiere starts dropping frames on playback, and you lose an afternoon deleting old rushes instead of cutting.

Premiere's own proxy tool helps playback but does not solve storage. You right-click a clip in the Project panel, choose Proxy then Create Proxies, pick a preset, and Adobe Media Encoder renders a light copy in the background. Media Encoder has to be installed from the same Creative Cloud account, or Create Proxies stays greyed out. You get smooth scrubbing, but the full resolution originals still have to sit on a local disk for the final export, so the rushes end up stored twice, heavy originals plus proxies on the same SSD, and the disk-full alert comes back.

Sanbila keeps the heavy half of that equation off your disk. The moment you import, your originals upload to cloud storage (in resumable parts for anything over 100 MB), and the proxy is encoded on the Sanbila cloud rather than on your machine, so your CPU and Media Encoder stay free. Only the light proxy lands on your SSD. There are 30 presets, from 540p H.264 up to ProRes and DNxHR, with 720p H.264 as the default.

The Adobe-validated Sanbila panel runs inside Premiere Pro. It attaches the local proxy to each 4K original with Premiere's own native proxy feature, so the Toggle Proxies button in the Program Monitor switches playback between the light proxy and the full file. If you do not see that button, add it from the Button Editor at the bottom right of the Program Monitor. You cut with Toggle Proxies on for smooth playback, and because the attach uses Premiere's native proxy rather than a renamed-file swap, the clip keeps its 4K resolution with no frozen 720p conform.

At export, leave Use Proxies unchecked in the Export settings, which is the default, and Premiere renders from the full resolution original streamed back from the cloud. If you also cut the same footage in DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut or Avid, Smart Relink switches the clips used in your timeline back to the originals for the finish. Your SSD holds proxies only, so it stops filling with rushes you are not actively cutting.