"Missing Proxy" on every kind of Import

Hello,

I'm trying to get a birthday movie together soon and I was trying out proxy files for this project. I have all the movies, photos (jpg and HEIC) on an external SSD drive. My prefs were "Leave in Place" and Create Proxy media and that's when the trouble began. Almost all (not all) of the clips in the Browser showed the RED "Missing Proxy" at some point. I tried Re-linking as I didn't delete anything on that SSD.

No go, still show up as "Missing Proxy".

I then figured let me go back to copy everything in the Library, don't use proxy but the issue remained. I scratched all the work I did this far, started a new Library, tried drag and drop, Import, made copies of various movies over to the macbook pro late 2013 HDD, Still Missing Proxy. Some of the media is frop iPhone 8 and iPhone 12, latest OS (not working with Apple ProRaw). Tried various movie types. Is it a codec issue? It's from Apple devices so why, yeah?

It's like I either shouldn't have upgraded Big Sur, FCP or tried to use 4k media from my new iPhone 12 pro max. I have my gf birthday coming up and wanted to make movie for her, so I appreciate more eyes on this.

Is there a setting I maybe changed in Prefs? Pretty sure it's default (and not efficient as the original intent was to use Proxy media haha)

Also, on every clip I attempt to import I see over by the Inspector "PROXY". Like I said, I thought I turned that off long ago.

thanks

Are you giving it enough time to actually create the proxies? That takes time, it's not instantaneous.
I'm using iPhone 12 Pro Max, XS, and 7. All of this footage and it works fine creating proxies.

Of course after I submit the topic I find the solution LOL.

I was choosing proxies only under the view setting and proxies were probably not completed so I think I’ll read that article a lot closer after I get this birthday project, saved in the library, out.

Thanks for the reply and help.