Can't Airdrop premiere Project exported as mp4: "Failed to save item. Save to iCloud Drive Instead?"

MossBermuda

Participant

Okay, I think I've found a solution.

My problem: Same sequence settings across the board for 3 seperate timelines all 4K in H.264 (A [20.7MB], B [20.9MB], C [19.7MB]). After exporting the 3, I successfully airdropped A and C to my iPhone. C however ran into the same error. I attempted multiple different exports, online .mp4 converters, and even exporting through quicktime but nothing worked.

My Solution:

Solution 1 - In quicktime I exported the file as a 1080p .mov file and it airdropped without issue. Obviously I don't think lowering the res is an adequate solution so I attempted further troubleshooting. Thus Solution 2.

Solution 2 (RECOMMENDED) - In the sequence settings of the timeline, change Display Format from 'Drop Frame Timecode' to 'Non-Drop Frame Timecode'. Additonally I enabled 'Maximum Bit Depth' and 'Maximum Render Quality'. Lastly during export I ensured it remained as H.264 and had 'Match Source - High bitrate' selected. Interested if this helps anyone.

Known Participant

Thanks for sharing! When you say "In the sequence settings of the timeline, change Display Format...", are you referring to a setting in Media Encoder, Premiere, or After Effects?

MossBermuda

Participant

I'm referring to sequence settings in Premiere Pro

Gadgetsjon

Participant

I tried with a longer video which had the exact same sequence and export settings and it airdropped and uploaded to IG fine. Seems random as to which files will and won't work.

To solve the issue I also had to open in Quick Time and export as .mov. Then it airdropped and uploaded as normal. It's an annoying extra step, but it works as a fix/workaround.

Michael Grenadier

Legend

thanks for posting your workaround. Not enough people do...

F

Floor5CCC

Participant

read this here from apple support explaining it. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207022

you either need to select the H.265 format, deselect the HEVC checkbox, or : "On some older devices, support for HEVC is affected by the resolution and frame rate (fps) of the video. Resolutions of 1080p or lower and frame rates of 60 fps or lower are more broadly compatible with older devices."

Richard van den Boogaard

Community Expert

Have you tried multiple encoding presets with h.264 from PPro? Does it make any difference?

Known Participant

I have, although there's a caveat — a lot of the time, my workflow is to create and export a movie from Premiere (either using Premiere's export function, or Adobe Media Encoder's), and then bring it into After Effects for finishing touches, and then export that final product using Adobe Media Encoder.
I haven't conclusively been able to determine that exporting from Premiere's export function (instead of Adobe Media Encoder) solves the issue. (And even if it did, I use After Effects so often it wouldn't matter, since I need to use Adobe Media Encoder to export after using After Effects).

jamenr91839438

Participant

All you have to do is lower your file size, anything over 20mb usually has problems AirDropping. Could also be that your phone doesn't have a lot of storage. Reason it works after using a third party converter is because those converters compress the video size.

Known Participant

Sorry, I don't think any of those things are the issue, either. I airdrop large videos frequently, sometimes over 1 GB. That works fine. My phone's storage is also wide open. And to address your last point, when an export from AME fails to Airdrop, and I use another app to re-export it — I'm not making the file size smaller. I'm just re-exporting it as an MP4 again. I've compared the before and after file sizes and they're virtually identical.

jamenr91839438

Participant

You're right. I found another solution today. When you open the video on Quicktime player, just click export in 4K or 1080p, you won't lose any quality and it'll airdrop perfectly fine as an .mov file.

Y

yepexactly

Known Participant

This is absurd. Having to take an MP4 file and re-render it as an MP4 file with a third party converter in order to use AirDrop is ridiculous. Premiere Pro isn't a free program. For it to be incapable of this basic function is nonsense. Free third party apps can accomplish this. It needs to get fixed.

Michael Grenadier

Legend

sounds like this could also be caused by apple... a company that is not known for playing nice with other companies. They make sure everything works nice when you stay in the apple ecosphere.

Known Participant

I understand how it could potentially be something on Apple's end, but I would really appreciate Adobe doing a thorough investigation to confirm it's nothing on their end. A lot of Adobe users are on Apple computers. Airdrop is a great help to workflow, and this used to work perfectly, 100% of the time. There's also the fact that if I take a file exported by an Adobe program with this issue, and then I re-export as an MP4 using a different program like Quicktime, it can then be airdropped. (But then at that point we're facing unncessary file degradation and time wasted exporting twice). That's why I suspect that something Adobe added to updates in the last year is clashing with Apple. I hope it can be made to work again!