AME Stalls while "Reading XMP" - OLD SOLUTION DOES NOT WORK / APPLY

[RustyWorden]

In previous versions of AME there were reports of a very similar nature. But the previous solutions do not apply to the video I am trying to render.

ISSUE:
Sending a video to Adobe Media Encoder from Adobe Premiere results in AME getting stuck at the "Reading XMP" status notification.

I have no solution that seems to work. Additional odd behavior is that Adobe Premiere Pro also seems to really struggle with making all my hard work available to others. The render times on Adobe Premiere Pro seem exorbitantly SLOW - but it will render directly.
 
My Awesomeness
iMac Pro 64 BG 2666 DDR4
Intel Xeon W 2.5GHz 14 Core
2x Radeon Pro Vega 64 16GB
MacOS 10.15.6
ADOBE software is all current as of this morning.

PREVIOUS "workarounds" were posted - namely to delete your markers... in my case on this particular video, there are no markers.

[jdsproducer]

Same here.

[jeremyp99]

Any updates? I am also having this issue now.

This is now also happeneing to me. I can export PP sequences one at a time from PP but when I add them to the queue for AME it gets stuck on "Reading XMP.

I am running PP and AME 14.3.2 running MAC OS Mojave 10.14.6. I can't upgrade to Catalina but I already tried:

Downgrading to previous version of AME. 

Unchecking "Import sequence natively" in AME.

Unchecking XMP export from PP. 

Unchecking all XMP/Metadata options in AME. 

I have absolutely NO markers in my PP project.

Please help!