Ingestor - An Importer for Premiere Pro

1. offizieller Beitrag
    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Ingestor — FFmpeg-Powered Media Importer for Premiere Pro

    Platforms: Windows x64, Windows ARM64, macOS Apple Silicon
    Premiere Pro: 26.0+
    FFmpeg: 8.x (user-supplied, any build — GPL, LGPL, or custom)

    What is Ingestor?

    Ingestor is a Premiere Pro importer plug-in that uses your existing FFmpeg installation to bring virtually any media format into your timeline. If FFmpeg can decode it, Ingestor can import it — no transcoding, no intermediate files, no waiting.

    165 container families supported out of the box, covering formats Premiere doesn't natively handle.

    Key Features

    Format coverage that keeps up with FFmpeg
    Ingestor discovers formats at runtime from whatever FFmpeg build you have installed. New codecs land in FFmpeg long before Adobe ships native support — now you get them in Premiere the same day you update FFmpeg.

    HDR done right
    PQ and HLG sources are delivered through Premiere's 32-bit float pipeline with correct BT.2020 primaries, transfer function, and mastering display metadata. No baked-in tone mapping, no wrong colours — your Lumetri scopes show exactly what's in the file.

    10-bit native delivery
    10-bit 4:2:0 sources are delivered as P010 biplanar directly into Premiere's native pipeline. No upsampling to 4:4:4, no unnecessary float conversion. Maximum quality with minimum overhead.

    Hardware decode
    D3D11VA on Windows, VideoToolbox on macOS. Transparent fallback to software when hardware isn't available or fails mid-stream — your timeline never goes offline.

    Async import with keyframe-aware scheduling
    Background render threads get their own decoder instances. Premiere's render pipeline can request frames in parallel without blocking the UI. Seek-index acceleration snaps random access to the nearest keyframe for faster scrubbing.

    Correct colour, every time
    ITU-T H.273 colour codes are read directly from the bitstream. Primaries, transfer characteristics, matrix coefficients, and full/limited range are declared to Premiere — not guessed from resolution or assumed to be BT.709.

    Three architectures, one binary per platform
    Native builds for x64, ARM64 (Windows), and Apple Silicon (macOS). SIMD-accelerated conversion kernels (SSE4.2, AVX2, NEON) with scalar fallback. Golden-frame tests ensure byte-identical output across all architectures.

    What It Doesn't Do

    • No FFmpeg binaries bundled. You supply your own FFmpeg — use whatever build, licence, and version works for your workflow.
    • No transcoding. This is an importer, not an encoder. It reads; it doesn't write.
    • No formats stolen from Adobe. Premiere's native importers get priority. Ingestor only activates for formats the host declines.

    Technical Highlights

    • Zero third-party runtime dependencies beyond FFmpeg
    • Portable scalar conversion kernels as the correctness oracle, SIMD only where benchmarks proved it matters
    • PPix Cache integration — decoded frames are cached host-side, not re-decoded on scrub
    • Seek index built once per clip, persisted as an accelerator file for instant random access on re-open
    • ICC profile and embedded LUT pass-through
    • Closed caption scanning (CEA-608/708)
    • Memory-budget aware: reports per-instance cost through Premiere's Memory Manager suite

    Getting Started

    1. Install FFmpeg 8.x anywhere on your system (or add it to PATH). If you have done it for using it for Voukoder Pro you don't need to do it again.
    2. Drop Ingestor.prm (Windows) or Ingestor.bundle (macOS) into your Premiere plug-ins folder
    3. Open any file — if Premiere's built-in importers decline it, Ingestor picks it up automatically

    Feedback & Issues

    This is an early release. If you hit a format that doesn't import cleanly, the plug-in writes a detailed log file with codec info, pixel format decisions, and conversion paths taken. Include that log when reporting issues and I can usually diagnose without needing your media file.

    I'll keep you updated!