H265 renders are still broken in update 23.2

I've had this issue appear in versions 23.1, 23.2, and the current 23.6. I haven't tested other versions as I stayed on version 23.0 in order to prevent issues with my workflow. I only recently updated my media encoder to 23.6 as the issue appeared regardless after I upgraded premiere to 23.6.

For source material I've been using Prores 422 LT media, usually with 6 audio channels. Prores 422 will usually have 4 audio channels.

I always encode in AME since I will usually send more than sequence to render. But I will always work everything in Premiere, as I have to mix the audio down to stereo before archiving the file. The only audio plugin I use half of the time is the built in Multiband Compressor with the preset set to broadcast. No other changes are made to the media in regards to color or ingest settings.

Hey dz_dapper,

sorry for the delay. Thank you for providing all your materials.

I was not yet able to repro your issue using a regular Metal-accelerated HEVC HD 1080p export of a full feature film in MPEG-2 format. Also using your "Service Archive v2" preset on this source did work well on my machine. I tested playback, scrubbing and quick seeks in Preview, QuickTime Player and VLC.

The hardware used is a MacBook Pro (16", 2021; macOS 13.5.1, Apple M1 Max).

I tested public available build "Adobe Media Encoder (Beta)" 234.0.0.43.

So the main questions here are:

• What were the AME versions you tested your issues in?
• What kind of source material do you use mainly?
• Do you encode in AME or send the media from Premiere Pro or After Effects?
• Do you have additional ingest settings, color workflows, plug-ins or other specifics?

Sure thing! I've included both the custom and the system preset as well. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AsBP9-iQK71Qr5PJfRIS8J900hC_XAiD?usp=sharing

Thank you very much for your additional investigations! Can you share that preset, too?

I remade the preset based off of the system "HD 1080p" preset. I still see the same issue occuring. 

I will file a bug for this. Could you please try and create the preset again using the current AME version and let me know if the issue goes away?

The custom preset is an older one that I had imported though I'm not fully aware of what version I was using at the time of it's creation. Also I had changed to the Main 10 profile in order to preserve the 10 bit color on our recordings.

Just speculation on my part but I wonder if older system presets have been imported when upgrading to new versions, instead of newer ones being installed. That would possibly explain why my system preset also produces the same results as the custom one.

So I did a little testing and I could repro the unresponsiveness using your custom preset file. When I use the system preset "HD1080p" though everything works fine on my M1. I see you have edited to bitrate up to 20 Mbps and used the Main 10 instead of Main profile. I will further investigate using your preset. Did you create this custom preset with the latest AME version 23.6 or is it an older one you have imported?

Thanks a lot for sharing some media files. I will take a look at them and also try to repro the unresponsive behaviour myself. Do you get the same lack of quality with HEVC files when exporting directly from Premiere Pro without using AME? Also prior to 23.1 you didn't experience this with HEVC files, right? And it also doesn't matter if you use system presets or custom presets? 

I will investigate a little and come back to you.

Best,

Chris

Hi Chris, I've uploaded a few test renders and the custom preset that I have been using to a google drive folder.

File Tests and Custom Preset 

What I noticed is the issue seems to increase as the video length gets longer. Short 1-3 minute renders seem to be fine, but once you start reaching file lengths of around 10 minutes, you start noticing more and more lag when trying to scrub through the video. So I have included a file that's almost 10 minutes of a looped clip I had filmed while traveling. I rendered the long file in the "HD 1080p" HEVC system preset.

I will mainly encode in H265 for work, where I'm archiving long recordings of over an hour long. It's at these time lengths that the files become completely unusable. I coworker of mine had the mispleasure of trying to edit from one of those files and what should have been a 30 second render for a 1 minute clip from said file took over 40 minutes. They were also using Premiere Pro on an M1 Macbook Pro.

For reference, both the clip I recorded and used for the test files I sent, and the recorded files I archive at work are Prores 422 files. The source is usually Premiere pro projects, rendering in Media Enocoder for ease of rendering multiple files in various codecs, usually both H264 and H265. Currently Premiere is updated to v23.6 and Media Encoder is at v23.6 as well.