Dropout issue at audio edit points Media Encoder 2024

[willl25685367]

Recently upgraded to Premiere Pro 2024 across 3 edit suites at our UK broadcast place.
We have different generation Macs and playout equipment but the results are the same.

We've experienced audio glitches whenever we export through Media Encoder at every audio edit point that doesn't have a cross fade or effect on. This includes cuts that are just 'thru edits' (part of the trouble shooting test)
Where these cuts are on the sequence corresponds with audio dropout of approx half a frame on whatever audio track has the edit. These are audible dropouts despite the tiny size.
This is manifesting across all suites (Studio, iMac, MacMini in Monterey and Ventura) and using a number of output formats: XDCAM MXF, ProRes, Wav, AS11
All create the same result on every (hard) audio edit point.

Our workaround is to export direct from Premiere Pro as that doesn't seem to create the same issues - but that then precludes the use of ME entirely and makes the workflow quite tricky.
There is also another glitch in direct export in PP that sees any single thru edit on one leg of the stereo mix creating a similar audio dropout on the respective stereo leg of the output AND moving the audio of the clip along by that half frame dropout margin until the next audio edit
creating some momentary phasing on the stereo mix.
Obviously the workaround for this random bug is better timeline management - but that's not always guaranteed 🙂

If all that explanation seems bewildering I'm attaching some screengrabs that might make it visually clearer

I've tried a whole bunch of trial and error tests (changing bitrates, exporting 'natively' in ME, changing buffer size) but all yield the same results.

Which is why I find it quite surprising that I can't find a thread on here to attach this query to.
Maybe my search parameters are off...
It seems such a critical problem to be just worked around by everyone

[EckiAME]

What are your specs (OS, CPU, GPU, memory)? Which versions of AME and PPro 2024 exactly do you use? Can this be reproduced with any 6-channel MXF?

[willl25685367]

We only recently updated to 2024 across both apps when we retired the 2014 iMacs that we were using with PP2020
So we are on PP and AME 24.6.5
The same issue is occurring on all the upgraded Macs
Mac Studio M1Max - Monterey 12.5.1
M1 MacMini - Ventura 13.7.4
iMac 2017 - Monterey 12.7.6  (Radeon Pro 580)
We read and write to centralised storage over a mixture of 10 and 1 Gb but the issue also presents when writing to local SSD storage
We work with 'broadcast' standard AS11 MXF source material and ProRes422 files
Outputting to XDCAM for studio play-in, broadcast safe WAV files and AS-11 for broadcaster delivery
all of these output formats are affected by the same audio issue...

[willl25685367]

Here's my reply to my own problem...
You fixed it! Sort of...
It wasn't entirely pilot error but it does seem to be a very specific bug to an individual issue.
All these export errors in the audio timeline seemed to be from the use of audio effects (in this case 'Hard Limiter') on the audio clips. I tested the results across all our Macs with and without the clip effects and they all gave the same results. Audio Effect on clip = export error through Media Encoder.
I tested with the same Audio Effect on a mixdown / submix track and the error didn't appear so I guess this would be the way to go forward.
Experienced users may say this is correct edit practice anyway but I'm not that experienced and it wasn't an issue with previous iterations of the product.
Hope this is of help if anybody else experiences this issue

[EckiAME]

Thank you very much for all your research, and for letting us know.