Render times on long videos very high in Media Encoder

Hi John! I am using a Mac Mini M1 with macOS Monterey 12.2.1 installed. The problem started happening when I updated to the latest version of Media Encoder. It seems that even on short projects, like a 5 minute video, when trying to render to H.264, Media Encoder finishes rendering the video but then starts adding an infinite amount of extra time / blank space to the end of the video, making it so the Remaining Time estimated continues to go up, and the rendering can go on forever until you decide to stop it.

A workaround is to export directly in Adobe After Effects using QuickTime / Animation codec and then convert the gigantic video that comes out of it into H.264 afterward. This is a bit more time-consuming and resource-intensive though than it used to be when I could easily export my videos straight into H.264, ready for YouTube, not in a giant file size, and with quick rendering times.

I believe the issue is not in After Effects, the issue is in Media Encoder.

Hi @Teagan5C5E,

Thank you for reporting this issue. Would you be able to provide your full system specs (OS version, RAM, CPU, etc) so that we can better understand the environment you're working in?

Did this behavior start when you updated After Effects to a particular version? If so, in what version did this behavior start?

Thanks for reporting this issue and for any further information you can provide, 

- John, After Effects Engineering Team  

Yes it's definitely a bug 🙂 I hope it will be fixed asap because I prefer to render straight to H.264 and it used to work fine.

This appears to be some issue/ bug. The recommended procedure for the time being is to directly render from AE to an intermediate format like ProRes and encode the file in a separate pass.

Mylenium