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Sora Nuyagawa
Participant
May 10, 2026
Question

H.264 Blu-ray export on Apple Silicon Macs not working

  • May 10, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 53 views

Hello,

I am seeing what looks like a reproducible issue with H.264 Blu-ray export in Adobe Media Encoder on Apple Silicon Macs.

I tested this on the following machines, and all of them showed the same problem:

  • Mac mini (M4 Pro)
  • Mac mini (M4)
  • MacBook Air (M4)

OS:

  • macOS Sequoia

AME versions tested:

  • AME 2024
  • AME 2026

Using the factory H.264 Blu-ray preset, Media Encoder creates an .m4v file that is not playable even in VLC. Because it already fails there, this seems to be a problem with the exported file itself, not just a Blu-ray authoring issue.

I have not tested older Mac generations yet, but I can confirm that the same version of AME on Windows exports correctly.

My current workaround is to export a high-bitrate AVC file on Mac, move it to Windows, and re-encode it there before authoring. That works, but it is not practical for long-form projects.

I also checked one of the exported files with ffprobe, and it was detected as raw h264 with Duration: N/A and inconsistent timing information, which makes me suspect the exported stream may be malformed.

Has anyone else seen this, or is this a known issue with H.264 Blu-ray export on Apple Silicon Macs?

 

    1 reply

    EckiAME
    Community Manager
    EckiAMECommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    May 11, 2026

    This is very likely “as designed”.

    The .m4v output of AME's H.264 Blu-ray preset is a raw Annex B H.264 elementary stream with no container and no timestamps — designed as input for Adobe Encore, which adds both during muxing. It was never meant for direct playback. (Windows seems to handle these files more gracefully.)
     

    To make it playable, you can remux with ffmpeg (a light re-encode is required to generate timestamps):

    ffmpeg -f h264 -r 25 -i file.m4v -i file.wav \
           -c:v libx264 -crf 0 -preset ultrafast \
           -c:a copy output.mp4

    -crf 0 is lossless — quality is preserved.

    kaderkarakus
    kaderkarakus
    Participant
    June 9, 2026

    Thank you for the clarification.

    However, I believe my issue is different.

    In my case, the export does not complete successfully and no usable .m4v file is generated. Premiere Pro fails immediately at 00:00:00:00 with:

    "Encoder could not be created"
    "H.264 Blu-ray Exporter"
    "Error Code: 3"

    I have tested this with:

    • A completely new project
    • A single unedited source clip
    • No cuts, effects, Lumetri, Warp Stabilizer, or nested sequences
    • A MacBook Pro M4 Max running macOS Tahoe 26.5

    The export fails before the first frame is rendered, which makes me think the issue is related to the H.264 Blu-ray exporter itself rather than the media or timeline.

    Has anyone successfully exported H.264 Blu-ray on Apple Silicon (M4) with the current Premiere Pro / Media Encoder versions?

    Any help would be appreciated.

    EckiAME
    Community Manager
    EckiAMECommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    June 10, 2026

    I was able to export a simple clip in a sequence from Adobe Premiere (Beta) 26.5.0.25 to Adobe Media Encoder (Beta) 26.5.0.26 using the “H.264 BluRay” system preset. This is on macOS 26.4.1 (MacARM M1 Max, 64GB memory). The file does play back.

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