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KazuT_G
KazuT_G
Inspiring
July 15, 2026
Answered

export is taking an extremely long time during specific sections of variable frame rate clips

  • July 15, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 7 views

I’m working on a documentary where most of the footage is shot on iPhones (various models, from 13Pro to 17Pro). I believe they shot HEVC variable frame rate. Some of the clips are over 2 hours long. 

We tried running proxies, but some clips would freeze during playback. The freezing stopped happening when we detached the proxies and played back from the raw, so we gave up on the proxy workflow re: the iPhone footage.

We’re now running into exporting issues. Some of the clips are freezing during export (they keeping getting stuck at a particular part of each clip). We’re concerned that, if we cut those sections into an edit sequence and try exporting the edit sequence, the export will freeze.

I saw a post from 6 years ago re: issues with iPhone footage:
 

One reply I found intriguing is that 3rd party transcode software like Handbrake & Shutter Encoder may work better than Media Encoder in this instance because professional products like Media Encoder & Premiere were not designed to work with consumer codecs like iPhone HEVC.

We considered replacing all the iPhone footage with new ProRes LT masters but it would require 27+ TB of space (since the iPhone footage is highly compressed). 

Has anyone run into exporting issues with iPhone footage?

Our experience belies the idea about shooting features on iPhone (it might work if you shoot ProRes on the iPhone). It seems to cause so many headaches in Post.

    Correct answer Kevin-Monahan

    Hi KazuT_G,

    Yes, Long GOP footage has always been a difficult format to edit with. Third party encoders are just shells for FFMPEG, an open source encoding engine found in all these products. FFMPEG codecs are not found in Adobe Products which use proprietary codecs instead. Feel free to create a feature request to include these codecs, if you like. I find that the longer these clips are, the more problematic they tend to be. You may want to transcode the clips giving you trouble to ProRes LT, so you don't have to transcode the entire lot. You may need to increase your budget for drive space, as is the nature of video post. Let us know if there's anything we can do for you. I hope to help you.


    Thanks,
    Kevin

    1 reply

    K
    Community Manager
    Kevin-MonahanCommunity ManagerCorrect answer
    Community Manager
    July 15, 2026

    Hi KazuT_G,

    Yes, Long GOP footage has always been a difficult format to edit with. Third party encoders are just shells for FFMPEG, an open source encoding engine found in all these products. FFMPEG codecs are not found in Adobe Products which use proprietary codecs instead. Feel free to create a feature request to include these codecs, if you like. I find that the longer these clips are, the more problematic they tend to be. You may want to transcode the clips giving you trouble to ProRes LT, so you don't have to transcode the entire lot. You may need to increase your budget for drive space, as is the nature of video post. Let us know if there's anything we can do for you. I hope to help you.


    Thanks,
    Kevin

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