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James25817297cgyb
Participating Frequently
December 13, 2024

excessive "processing audio source" when exporting a Premiere Production through Media Encoder

  • December 13, 2024
  • 3 replies
  • 667 views

[Premiere Pro 25.0, Media Encoder 25.0, After Effects 25.1 | Windows 11, i9-12900K, RTX 4080-S, 128 GB RAM]

When using Productions with Premiere Pro on our larger projects with multiple editors, and exporting the final compilation sequence with all scenes through Media Encoder, there's a step before the actual video encoding that says "processing audio source...[filename]", and this seems to take a weirdly long amount of time, and I can't figure out why or what ME is even doing at that time.

 

It'll perform this "processing audio source" task on both compressed and uncompressed tracks, and even rather short clips seem to take way longer for this "processing" to happen than it would normally take to export these as standalone files multiple times. It'll perform this "processing" for clips on muted tracks or submixes, and I've even duplicated a sequence, moved it to a fresh sub-project within productions, deleted all video tracks and half of the audio tracks...and exporting that stripped down sequence through ME will *still* perform "processing" on clips that have been fully deleted from the sequences I'm trying to export.

 

For a 40-minute broadcast, this has ended up taking anywhere between 5-15 minutes of "processing audio source" before it begins the actual export, which then takes around 20 minutes (which seems like a normal amount of time for my project and configuration).

 

I've only run into this issue recently; previous projects 6+ months ago never seemed to see this "processing" step take place, and I'm wondering if that's a Premiere/Encoder bug that's popped up, or if my project structure is causing this (listed below).

For reference, the final broadcast I'm trying to export is made of 12 "Scene1/2/3/etc" sequences, all laid into a "MAIN" sequence end-to-end.

Each Scene sequence contains:

  • a number of dialogue, sfx, and music tracks;
  • a small number of effects applied at the clip level and 1-3 effects applied at the track level through the Audio Track Mixer;
  • a DIALOGUE, SFX, and MUSIC submix that all individual tracks are routed to with a Hard Limiter applied at the Submix level;
  • and another Hard Limiter applied at the overall Mix level.

The "MAIN" contains the 12 sequences, simple MOV files overlaying the transition points, and a Hard Limiter on the Mix track in the Audio Track Mixer. 

    3 replies

    R
    Community Manager
    Rach McIntireCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    December 17, 2024

    Hi @James25817297cgyb, 

     

    Thanks for the message. Welcome to the forums.  It sounds like you've figured out the problem so I'm glad you're able to move forward. 

     

    Thanks as well for your feedback on the processing message.  I agree that would save some time and I'll flag it up the chain.

      J
      James25817297cgybAuthor
      Participating Frequently
      December 16, 2024

      This behavior does appear to be linked to having files with differing sample rates in an Adobe Production.

      I created a new Production with the same files, loaded a number of 48kHz files and four different 44.1kHz files into a sequence, then tried exporting that sequence with a 48kHz sample rate on the audio side. I got the notification that Media Encoder needed to "prepare" 4 audio files before initiating the video encode. Resampling all the audio files to 48kHz, replacing the old versions in the timeline, and then initiating an export from Media Encoder resulted in ME immediately jumping to encode the video, so that feels like strong confirmation that sample-rate mismatch is the cause.
      ------------------------
      If that is indeed the case, my question for Adobe would be whether the language of "Processing audio source..." can refer to alternate issues being solved besides resampling audio, or if that language could be updated to refer explicitly to "Resampling audio source..." rather than the more vague 'processing' verbiage. Had I known that audio resampling was what was actually going on, I could have saved my team significant time by just resampling the audio ahead of time instead of at the time of rendering, every single time.

      Alternately, if the language "Processing audio source..." is superior because it accounts for a number of other potential issues in addition to resampling, I'd love for there to be documentation on Adobe's website for Media Encoder that describes the potential issues that language is referrring to, to assist editors in troubleshooting how to make their exports more efficient. When searching for || "Processing audio source" site:adobe.com || in the Google search engine, I'm unable to find any Adobe documentation referring to this message, and only see this bug report here and a separate discussion with no mention of resampling.

        J
        James25817297cgybAuthor
        Participating Frequently
        December 14, 2024

        I took a look at a couple of the files that Encoder had called out for "processing audio source" and noticed that at least a couple of those files have a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, while my export is 48 kHz. It's possible that sample-rate mismatch is the source of the issue, although I've never run into this degree of export delay on any other project that involved mixed-sample-rate audio. I'll try to test out this theory and reply back to this thread if re-sampling the source audio and replacing it in the project alleviates the export delays.

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