Premiere Pro creates 3 files when exporting an MP4 (.aac, .m4v, and .mp4)

OK thanks I hope they fix it soon!

I do want to add that on two projects I tried several times over and over, flushing cache, re-rendering, etc. and got an .mp4 file, however the other files including the .tmp is stil there. Most of the time however, the .mp4 file is pratically empty at somewhere around 33mb.

I will answer your question in advance. I have a dedicated coputer with 64GB RAM, 12GB VRAM, 16 cores 4 internal SSD and one external 12TB, ample space on the drives, cache on seprate drives, etc etc... Never had this problem until I updated.

Nope, it only happened on one of my projects recently so it was easy to ignore, but I couldn't find a fix. The only workaround is to export in Prores, then take that Prores export and convert it to h.264 using media encoder.

Was there a solution to this? It's obviously the software as I have been using Adobe Premiere since 2003 and in the latest version 2025 I updated I am getting the same issue on exporting especially 4K timelines. I know most of the time support will tell you it's your fault but seeing as I'm using it for over twenty years and someone else is experiencing the exact same issue since the new update, and the fact that I worked in IT for years, please Adobe, admit you have an issue and fix it!

That is kind-of-a show stopper, if you must export to h.264 since the audio is not there. I tried it on a couple of projects and it works OK for me.

Exporting to ProRes is a real good solution, it's visually lossless, and then just make deliverables from that, h.264/5

Well done! 🙂

@MyerPj You're right, it's not a show stopper. I ended up exporting to Prores 422 HQ then converted that to h.264 in ME.

No, the video file is separated from the audio and whatever the 3rd file is. So it's unusable.

I figured it might be a bug with this project file because it's only happening in 2 of 8 of my current projects, so I tried to create a new project, then import the old project into it. But then I ran into another problem where Premiere is not automatically linking all the files after I point it to one of them in the linking menu.

If I ever find a solution I'll post it here, but for now I don't have the time to dwell on it.

Well, at least it's not a show stopper. Does the video file have the linked audio in addition to the separate file?

@MyerPj Yup. Uploaded screenshots in the post's description. 

Strange, so it happens only on some projects, but the projects are similar using the same type of footage, and the same export settings. Is that it? Can you provide a screenshot of the Export screen.

@MyerPj Just standard H.264, CBR 30mbp, UHD, render in maximum render quality/bit depth. 

Files: h.265 10bit422files from Sony FX3. 

This issue is only occuring randomly in one or two of my projects, while in other projects it renders perfectly fine (using the exact same footage format and export settings).