Trace

Pick one clip. See every place it's used across your entire project — then select every instance at once.

Overview

Click a clip in the Project panel and Trace shows every place it is used — which sequences, which timecodes, how long, and how much of the source you have actually touched. Then one button selects every instance in the timeline at once.

The part that matters most: a selection is not a list. Once nine uses are selected they are a real Premiere selection — nudge them, delete them, apply an effect, colour them. Everything else that answers "where is this clip?" hands you a list and makes you visit the entries one at a time.

What Trace is not

Trace answers one question — where is this clip used? — and it is worth being blunt about everything it deliberately isn't, so you know inside a minute whether it is the tool you want.

It is also not a panel most people open every day. It earns its place on the days you inherit someone else's project, hunt a clip you know you used somewhere, or need to know what a forty-minute interview actually gave you.

Requirements

Install

Download the install guide (PDF) Four printable pages — Trace, Trace+, every gesture, and what to do when it goes wrong.

1. Open the download link in your email, then download Trace.ccx and double-click it. Creative Cloud Desktop installs it for you — nothing to unzip. Nothing arrived? Check spam, then email me and I will send it directly.
2. Quit Premiere Pro and open it again. Premiere only looks for new panels at startup.
3. Window > UXP Plugins > Trace.

That is all of it. There is no third step where you paste a key.

Quick start

1. Open a project and dock Trace anywhere you like.
2. Click a clip in the Project panel. Trace scans the project once — a few hundred milliseconds on a normal job — then answers instantly from then on.
3. Click any row to jump the playhead to that use.
4. Press Select all N in this sequence to light up every use at once.

With nothing selected, Trace waits. That is the whole loop; everything below is detail.

One clip at a time

Trace answers about the clip you select, and nothing else. There is no view to switch, no mode, no setting. Click a clip, a subclip, an audio file or a sequence in the Project panel and Trace shows every place it is used. Click away and it waits.

That is the whole shape of it, and it is deliberate: a panel that only ever answers one question needs no explaining. If you want the same answer for many clips at once — what a whole sequence reuses, what media the whole project is not using — that is Trace+.

Finding every use of a clip

Select a clip and Trace answers with a total line — 9 uses · 4 sequences · 3m 12s — and then the detail: every sequence it appears in, and inside each one, every use with its timecode, its duration and which track it sits on.

Audio and video that were shot together and are cut together count as one use, not two. Trace pairs them when they overlap by more than half, so a J-cut stays one use and two back-to-back edits stay two.

The list updates as you edit. Add a clip, delete one, or move something, and Trace re-scans on its own within a few hundred milliseconds. The circular arrow in the title row — next to the ☰ — forces it immediately if you would rather not wait.

Selecting uses in the timeline

This is the thing nothing else does. Press Select all N in this sequence and every use becomes a real Premiere selection at the same moment — ready to nudge, delete, label, or drop an effect onto.

For a subset, tick the box beside any use, or Cmd-click (Ctrl on Windows) the row. Ticked rows fill in so the panel and the timeline always agree.

Stepping through uses

The arrows at the bottom walk the playhead through every use on screen, in order, jumping between sequences as needed. The counter between them tells you where you are — 3 / 9. Clear drops the selection and the picks.

Every gesture

Shift and double-click do the same thing deliberately, so the Source Monitor is reachable whichever one you reach for.

Nested sequences

If a clip lives inside a nest and that nest is cut into a master, Trace reports both — the use inside the nest, and where it lands in the master, labelled via <nest name>. Native reports the first and never mentions the second, which is the sequence you are actually working in.

Subclips and duplicate imports

Selecting a master clip also finds uses of its subclips, matched on the shared media file. Those rows are labelled with the name of the item they came from.

Merged and multicam clips

The component clips inside a merged clip, and the angles inside a multicam clip, are not resolved. When you select one, Trace says so in the line under the totals rather than quietly reporting a number that is too low.

Archived sequences

If you keep old cuts in a _PREVIOUS, _ARCHIVE or _OLD bin — as VersionUp creates — every native usage list is full of them, and there is no way to filter them out.

Trace hides them by default and tells you how many it is hiding. Untick to see them; the tick box stays on screen either way, so it is a switch and not a trapdoor.

Adding markers

The marker button in the title row — the flag shape, left of the ✕ — drops a marker over every use on screen. Unlike a selection, a marker survives you clicking somewhere else: it is the persistent version of "highlight every use".

The Source Monitor

Shift-click or double-click any use to open that clip in the Source Monitor with the used section marked as in and out points, so you are looking at exactly the stretch Trace is describing.

Copying the list

☰ > Copy list puts what is on screen on the clipboard as plain text — sequence names, timecodes and durations — for an email, a note, or a message to whoever asked you where that clip went. There is no CSV and no report file; if you need one of those, see Trace+.

Docking

Trace adapts to the space it is given, with nothing to configure.

Updates and About

Trace checks once a day whether a newer version exists and shows a small notice in the panel if so. ☰ > Check for updates asks immediately.

☰ > About Trace shows the version you are running — the first thing to quote if you report a problem — along with a link back to this site.

Release history

What Trace can't do

Not oversights. Premiere's plugin API genuinely does not offer these, and no plugin can do them.

FAQ

What happens with nested sequences?

Trace follows the clip into the nest and back out again — and the second half is the part nothing else gives you. A clip inside Nest A, where Nest A is cut into your master, is reported twice: once at its position inside the nest, and once at the timecode it lands on in the master, labelled via Nest A. Native reports the first and never mentions the second, which is the sequence you are actually working in. Nests inside nests are followed six levels deep.

The edge cases are answered honestly rather than optimistically, because a confident wrong timecode sends you to the wrong frame:

Selecting the nest itself asks a different question — what is in it — and Trace+ answers that one.

What happens with multicam clips?

Trace finds every place the multicam clip itself is used, and says plainly that it has not looked inside it. The angles within are not resolved: select angle 3's original camera file and Trace will not report the multicam edits that use it.

This is a limit of Premiere, not a shortcut. Adobe, on the record: "There are no ExtendScript APIs around multi-cam, and there never will be." A multicam source does appear in the project as a sequence, which may one day be a route in — that is an untested possibility, not a promise, and even then nothing exposes which angle a clip is currently switched to. Rather than quietly report a number that is too low, Trace flags the clip under the totals.

What happens with subclips?

They work, and the wording is careful on purpose. Select a master clip and Trace also finds the uses of its subclips, matched on the shared media file — which is the case that otherwise reads as a broken plugin, because you know you used that footage.

What it will not do is call them subclips. Premiere exposes no API for the relationship between a subclip and its master, so the same test also matches a second import of the same file. Those rows say same media file and name the item they came from. A slightly vaguer true answer beats a precise wrong one, and either way the thing you wanted to know — you used this footage over there — is on screen.

What happens with audio?

Audio is indexed with video, and a synced clip counts as one use, not two. Video on V1 with its audio on A1 is two track items pointing at one source, so a naive count doubles — and the count is the whole point of the panel. Trace merges them where they overlap by more than half, so a J-cut or an L-cut stays one use and reports the full on-screen range. Two genuinely separate edits of the same clip, back to back, do not overlap enough to merge and stay two.

Audio-only sources — a music cue, a voiceover — never find a video partner and are reported on their own, with the audio track number on each row. If your Premiere build refuses to identify audio clips at all, Trace says so in the scan report and tells you the index is video-only, rather than silently returning a smaller number.

Does Trace change my project?

Only if you ask. Markers and in/out points are the ceiling, both one undo away. It never moves, renames, copies, consolidates or deletes anything.

Is it really free?

Yes — no account, no key, no trial, no expiry. Trace+ is the paid panel, and it is a different question rather than a bigger helping of this one.

Troubleshooting

Trace isn't in the Window menu

Restart Premiere after installing — it only looks for new panels at startup. Then check Window > UXP Plugins, not Window > Extensions. If it is still missing, confirm you are on 25.6 or later under Premiere Pro > About Premiere Pro.

Double-clicking the .ccx did nothing

Creative Cloud Desktop has to be installed and signed in. Open it first, then double-click the file again. If you do not have it, use the free ZXP/UXP installer.

It says 0 uses and I know I used that clip

Three things do this, in order of likelihood:

• The uses are in archived sequences. Untick Hide archived sequences.
• It is a merged or multicam clip. Trace flags this under the totals — see above.
• The sequence has never been opened in this session. Press the circular arrow in the title row.

The numbers look out of date

Trace re-scans on its own as you edit, but the circular arrow in the title row forces it. If a forced re-scan changes the answer, that is worth telling me about.

Clicking a row moved the playhead but selected nothing

Almost always means the clip has been trimmed or moved since the last scan. Re-scan and try again.

The panel is squashed or the buttons overlap

Drag the dock wider or taller. Trace drops columns as it narrows, but below roughly 180px there is nothing left to give up.

Need more control?

Then Trace+ may be just for you.

Both search your whole project. The difference is how many clips they answer for — and what you can do about the answer.

So Trace+ is not "Trace with a bigger search". Trace already searches everything. Trace+ asks a different question — one clip at a time versus all four hundred at once — and then does something about the answer: files the unused media into _UNUSED, tells you what your archive would weigh without it.

Trace+ has everything Trace has, and more. Nothing you learn in Trace is wasted, and nothing you can do here disappears there. The deeper reading of a single clip — the source coverage bar, which draws the whole clip with the used parts filled in and tells you the longest stretch you have never touched — is a Trace+ feature.

Feature by feature

Everything Trace does, Trace+ does too. Nothing you learn here is wasted and no habit disappears — the paid panel is the same engine asked a bigger question.

Privacy

Nothing about your project leaves your machine. Neither panel uploads, logs or phones home about your media, your sequences, your file paths or your project name. There is no analytics, no account and no telemetry.

Both panels make exactly one network request, and only when you ask for it or when the once-a-day update check runs: they fetch a small file from nkcourses.github.io that says whether a newer version exists. Nothing is sent with it.

Trace reads your project — the sequences, the clips on them and where they came from. It never opens a media file.

Trace+ reads the same, plus the size of the media files your project points at, which is where the archive-weight figure comes from. That needs filesystem permission, and it is a bigger ask than the free panel makes, so it is worth saying plainly what it does not do: it never reads a file's contents. Only how many bytes long it is.

The Scan report in the panel menu is the one place your file paths appear, and it goes to your clipboard — nowhere else. Read it before you paste it into an email.

Support

support@nkcourses.co.uk. Quote the version number from ☰ > About Trace and say what you selected and what you expected — that is usually enough to find it. I am one person, so it might take a day, but it will be me answering.