Something is up with h264 encoding on Final Cut Pro 10.4.1, Compressor 4.7

 h264 encoding using either Compressor 4.7 or FCP 10.4.1 on M1 with Sonoma 14.2.1 are showing blockiness with busy/semi busy imagery.

It wasn't like this with previous versions on FCP/Compressor/Pro Video Formats/macOS that I recall.

 h264 encoding behaves very poorly compared to Adobe Media Encoder. I tested both on the same ProRes master, Apple output is dirty where AME is relatively clean. Same data rate, using the default settings.

I tested previous versions of FCP/Compressor on the same machine: Monterey and Ventura, and results are the same: blocky, sloppy, prone to artifacts on certain images.

It was not like this before: I looked at the same h264 export I did in June 2023 with FCP 10.6.6, Pro Video Formats 2.2.5, and Ventura, it was clean throughout. Same machine.

Something happened since, and now it's screwed. What is going on Apple? Anybody seeing a similar problem on their setup?

Below are 4 frame exports of the same image:

1. ProRes export
2. h264 export from FCP
3. h264 export from Compressor
4. h264 export from Adobe Media Encoder

Superimposed to the original sequence. Opacity switched to Difference, and Midtones Exposure pushed to 100%.

1) ProRes

2) h264 Final Cut Pro

3) h264 Compressor

4) h264 Adobe Media Encoder

5) h264 DaVinci Resolve

ProRes looks the best as expected. Clearly Media Encoder h264 output looks much better than Compressor, Final Cut Pro, and Resolve h264 outputs 😵.

Final Cut and Resolve are close, both doing a sloppy job at encoding h264 compared to Adobe Media Encoder. Compressor is the worst of all 😩.

NOT GOOD APPLE!! Not great Blackmagic Design!!

Adobe Premiere, Why on F#$%^#* Earth Do You Put A Black Frame At The End Of My Video????

 Adobe Premiere is such a piece of garbage.

I export a h264 video selecting an In and an Out points. The Out point is 1sec into a graphic, the same graphic continues for a whole 10seconds after the Out point. On export the resulting h264 file last frame is black.

Why is it not showing my graphic? WHY??????

I mean ADOBE? What do you have to say? It's been documented FOR YEARS! Just Google "Adobe Premiere puts a black frame at the end of my h264 export". It's a BUG!!! 🪲🪳🦟 BUG, BUG, BUG!!! Fix it already.

If I Send To Adobe Media Encoder instead of direct exporting from Premiere, SAME THING!!! By the way, selecting Hardware Accelerated or Software Only doesn't not make an iota of difference, same fuckup. So now I have to export a ProRes version, that works just fine, and then encode a h264 with AME? Nope! Doesn't work either. 🖕

Apple Compressor to the rescue. APPLE COMPRESSOR, works just great with h264, Adobe???

 What a mess. Premiere "Pro" Uh???? It would be laughable if it wasn't disgusting.

!!!UPDATE!!!

Adobe Media Encoder 24.1.1 SEEM TO BE WORKING FINE NOW.

I tested Export on Premiere 24.1, and the bug is FIXED with Premiere as well! No more black frame at the end of h264 exports. Yeah! Finally.

Thanks Adobe!

My Final Cut Pro Vertical Videos Exports Look Blurry! Why?? It Has To Do With Custom Destinations

 I was using a previously created custom settings preset to export a vertical video in FCP and my export was really blurry.

 I just updated to Monterey 12.6.7 and immediately thought the update broke my custom presets/destinations.

It only happened with vertical / portrait videos, in this case 1080x1920. Horizontal / landscape videos were unaffected.

See for yourself:

On the left, blurry export using previously created destination/custom preset. On the right, export using Export File (default) and how it should look: crisp. (Click on the photo to see it properly.)

This shit happened on FCP Share/any previously created custom presets/destinations, and in Compressor as well if I used any of the previously created custom presets.

Creating a new custom preset worked just fine in Compressor and in FCP as well after adding the presets as destination. Exporting to File, using h264 or ProRes was not affected, just custom presets, and only the ones that I created before (or so I thought) 12.6.7 update.

And it was not just the custom h264 presets, previously created custom ProRes presets were blurry as well, less so, but still visibly blurred.

And it was not a case of a corrupted Project. I created a brand new vertical 1080x1920 Project and the same thing happened.

Horizontal / portrait videos, ex. 1920x1080 below, were not affected:

On the left, export using previously created destination/custom preset. On the right, export using Export File (default.) They both look fine. (Click on the photo to see it properly.)

So to me it looked like all custom presets created in Compressor prior to Monterey 12.6.7 were now screwed when exporting vertical videos... 🤬

Or were they?

Not so fast grasshopper!! I was quick to blame Apple on this one, in fact I was the one to blame!

What was the cause of my torments then?

Simple: I created and saved custom presets that LIMITED THE RESOLUTION TO 1920x1080. 

You see the problem? My vertical video that's 1920 pixels tall was resized to 1080 pixels tall, of course it was blurred! On top of this I had modified the Quality settings of my saved presets which COMPOUNDED THE BLUR problem.

And actually, if I had looked at the Inspector within Quicktime Player, I would have seen that the video had a resolution of 608x1080... Way smaller than the Project's 1080x1920 resolution.

And so, that's why horizontal 1920x1080 videos exported just fine with the old presets still. And why creating a new preset, leaving the resolution to the default 4K, exported just fine as well.

That's it, a small thing indeed. So next time your export looks blurry, maybe it's just a setting somewhere in your custom presets.

By the way, last tip on this topic, after it's imported as a destination inside FCP, no matter how you modify the custom preset into Compressor, it will not update as a destination in FCP. You have to go to Add Destination, select the preset you want to update, click Change, and point at/select the updated preset within Compressor's list.

Modifying the preset in Compressor does not update automatically inside FCP. To update a destination, click Change. Select the modified preset and click OK.

That's it. Happy Exports!

Adobe Premiere And Media Encoder Are Totally UNRELIABLE On Apple M1 Silicon macOS Monterey

 Premiere 22.6.2 and Media Encoder 22.6.1 have been pissing me off for the past few weeks. I had to take over this project that was started in Premiere, and I have experienced problems after problems with Sony MP4 and GoPro footage.

Image tearing up randomly, no matter what I try, it happens one way or the other. Premiere or Media Encoder, Silicon or Intel version, GPU, no GPU, Hardware accel, not accel, whatever I try, nothing works and I end up with tears and macro blocking on export.

I finally got fed up and transcoded everything to Apple ProRes. It's just 10 x the media size, whatever.

 Guess what. Freaking AME teared random images in the middle of random clips! I kid you not, this is not even edited, this is a raw MP4 clip from a Sony camera, transcoded to ProRes with AME.

And this is happening, at random:

What on earth is going on Adobe? Look at this macro blocking! Two minutes into a 10 minutes clip. This total crap goes on for a full 30 frames!!! An entire second of media screwed by Adobe.

This is a second attempt at the same transcode. Perfect. Wait, what???

Conclusion: Adobe is not ready for Silicon M1 Macs. Do not use Premiere or AME for reliable operation if you are on a Silicon Mac with Monterey.

Adobe, FIX THIS NOW!  And don't tell me it's Apple's fault. FCP and Resolve work reliably with MP4 footage. There is zero reason why this is happening but your laziness. At this point you should give me money to use your a$$ software, not the other way around.

Premiere Pro, Adobe Media Encoder - h264 Exports Problem, Image Tearing Up

  Mac mini M1, macOS Monterey 12.3.1, Premiere 22.5.

 Footage is h264 1080p 59.94. Editing Multicam 2 angles (same thing happens with non Multicam Clips btw.) Hardware acceleration is enabled (Same thing happens when Hardware Acceleration is turned off.) Exporting h264 VBR 1 pass, (the same thing happens with CBR.)

 Why on earth is Premiere Pro crapping up h264 exports? This is what I get in the exported file:

Last image before a "problem" cut, looks fine

First image after the cut, what the hell is this?

It goes on being total crap for 21 frames

Then for some reason it's back to normal at frame 22

 Why is this happening Adobe? What makes it even more infuriating is that it feels TOTALLY RANDOM. Why does it happens on this cut and not on another one? I'm not cutting at the very first frame or at the very last frame of a Multicam Clip.

 They are hundreds of other cuts exactly like this one in this piece. I'm far from fast cutting. The shots in this Sequence are between 2 and 19 seconds. All cuts are fine but for two that are severely damaged on export, like what you see in these picts.

 Note that nothing is visible on playback in the Program window at 1/2 res, it all looks good.

 Sequence is not rendered, but if I force render, the same thing happens. If I check use Previews for Export, the same thing happens.

 When I try to change the position of the cut, the crap goes away on the next export. But then some OTHER cut gets damaged that wasn't before! Totally at random, totally AGGRAVATING!!

 What a waste of time...

 This is painful!!! This should not be happening! Adobe FIX this abnormal behavior now!!!

--- I tried to Flatten the Multicam Clips on each side of the cut, and lo and behold, now I can SEE the tear in the image, but only if I go frame by frame over the cut. Playback is still just fine and shows absolutely nothing. Bizarrely, the tear appears on the second frame after the cut, not the first one like in the exports. If I stop the cursor over the teared image, it goes back to normal after about a couple of seconds!! What??! 

--- If I add an Adjustment Layer over the "problematic" cut, and play frame by frame, the tear is gone. But it's still in the export... Same thing if I overlap the clips a little.

--- If I do not use GPU, same thing happens.

--- If I use Software Only, same thing.

The only thing that works is to change the position of the cut. But since you cannot predict what will happen, you have to change the cut position, export the section with the cut, QC that, and if the image is still tearing up, adjust some more until it doesn't.

THAT"S NOT A WAY TO WORK !  THIS IS WRONG !  I WANT TO BE ABLE TO CUT ANYWHERE !

MAXIMUM AGGRAVATION ADOBE !

Apple ProVideo Formats 2.2.1 Removes Avid Media Composer ProRes Options in Quicktime Export

It looks like the update of Apple ProVideo Formats version 2.2.1 removes Avid MC ProRes codec options in Quicktime Export.

That's not good. There are only a few options left for Quicktime export codecs in AMC now, and ProRes is nowhere to be seen:

Many more options were available in the previous iteration of ProVideo Formats 2.1.1.

It is still available as a stand alone installer on Apple: https://support.apple.com/kb/DL2020?locale=en_US

But after downloading, when I try to downgrade/install to version 2.1.1, I get this message:

Of course, no way to downgrade... Then I found this thread on the Avid Forums.

It did point to this workaround for pepps who don't have FCP/Motion/Compressor installed, I do though. I went and downloaded Pacifist anyway.

I opened Apple ProVideoFormats.pkg installer (v 2.1.1.) with Pacifist and saw the five Quicktime components that are missing in my computer's Library:

I then selected only these, drag-and-dropped them into my computer's Library/Quicktime folder. Since AMC is accessing the Quicktime components for its own export settings, I thought no need to mess with the rest.

Pacifist installed them. Now I have the missing v2.1.1. Components into the Quicktime folder with the v 2.2.1. ones, and Avid's own:

I flagged them in RED just in case they start causing some problems and I need to remove them at some point. Again all the rest I left untouched, Apple ProVideo Formats v 2.2.1 is complete on my computer, I only manually added the old, missing, v 2.1.1. QT components.

Now when I Export to Quicktime from Avid, I have again all the variety of codecs, including ProRes:

Yay! Hopefully this workaround doesn't cause any conflicts down the line. I will report here if it does. In the meantime, back to exporting!

Final Cut Pro X is optimized for speed

One thing that often get lost in discussions: in addition to some of its uniqueness (trackless, magnetic timeline, roles...) FCPX is optimized for speed. It uses the hardware better than PP during editing (more of a fluid response) and during export (faster exports.) 

From a 90 min. ProRes Timeline, with ProRes clips, with color correction applied, EQ and compressor applied to audio, FCPX exports a ProRes 422 file in less than 30min. without pre-rendering. It uses at least between 580% and 830% of CPU, most of the time around 750% of CPU, and something like 4.65GB of RAM.

Export from FCPX, six cores in action.

In comparison, Premiere Pro/ Adobe Media Encoder takes 94min. for the same task (again without pre-rendering), and it uses the CPU at under 500% at best, and about 9GB RAM.

Export from Premiere/AME (Queued), same six cores.

Again, a 90min. Timeline exports in 30min. with FCPX. It takes 94min. in PP, THREE TIMES LONGER!

These are my numbers on a MacPro 5,1 mid 2012, 3.46Mhz six core with 32GB RAM, macOS Sierra 10.12.6 and a Sapphire Radeon 7950 3GB VRAM.

Do you have a Nvidia card in a similar specced system? Do you have a system that fares better? Would you be nice enough to send real test numbers my way? Make a HD Timeline with Prores 422 clips, add some color correction and EQ+compressor on audio and Export away to ProRes 422 - no rendering allowed. Start your timer and report in the comments. Thanks!

Export paths from Illustrator and convert them to Apple Motion paths with Motionize!

Motionize is great for importing Illustrator paths into Apple Motion paths.
Installation is easy, but the workflow is a bit convoluted, so I will list the steps below.

1. Trace your paths in Illustrator, SAVE AS Illustrator CS. Motionize won't work with newer versions. (Actually it does not work with CC in my experience, and I haven't tried other versions of CS.)

2. Select the paths or groups you want to export (Motionize supports Illustrator groups.)

3. Select File/Script/Motionize and save the ".motn" file to a folder of your choice.

4. MOVE this Motion file INTO: BootHD/Users/your user/Library/Application Support/Motion/Library/Favorites (...Make a shortcut.)

Do not forget step 4!!! If you try to open the ".motn" file directly from Motion (File/Open) it will be EMPTY. And you will think Motionize does not work. IT DOES!

5. Access your file inside Motion (works with 5.3.2 no prob') through the Library / Favorites.

BINGO!

Thank you Scott Ash another human for a great script!