Hardware decoding causes green flickering in ProRes files

[Rocketbottle]

Yikes!

Mac M1 Ultra

macOS Monterey 12.6

AE V23.0.0

Color settings:

32-bit 

ACES working space

(Title edited by moderator.)

Has anybody noticed a green flickering hue with Prores 4444 material?

Preview and rendering have random flickering frames.

I noticed this in my latest project. Did not happen before with other Prores material. Tested both with the client's original and re-encoded versions. Colour management or anything does not seem to affect it, but...

Turning off the hardware decoding option in Settings seems to help:

Settings - Import - Video Footage - deselect hardware accelerated decoding box.

Just lost two days' worth of hours.

[Rocketbottle]

Hi & thanks for your reply

I send a PM to you.

Regards

[Jessica McMillan]

Is the flickering you see a shift to/from green tint? Or what does it visually look like? flicker to white/black? other?

So far we haven't reprodced it in house, though the QE that has tried on an M1 machine might not have the same plugins that you are using. Not sure if that is related yet or not.

Edited to note: QE was able to reproduce on another M1 machine they had and was resolved by turning off Hardware Accelerated Decoding (Preferences > Import > [uncheck] Enable hardware accelerated decoding (requires restart).

[Rocketbottle]

Hi

Yes. The hardware acceleration has been disabled all the time. This is something different from the green/magenta problem with hardware acceleration.

Flickering may not be immediately visible if you don't know what to watch. It is a slight luminance level drop after every few frames. It happens when I preview the timeline or render output. BUT if I advance the timeline frame by frame, it does not happen.
Original source is OK. Flickering varies in place if I reload the AE project or clear the cache - Can the cache disk have this effect!? [Edit: nope, changing the cache to another SSD did not have any effect.]

The level shift is easily visible if you lower the gamma extremely. Here is a very interesting-looking RGB waveform:

Same material in HDR space without any color management:

Hope this gives some idea of the cause.
Older AE version 23.2.1 works fine without any flickering, so I am positively hoping it cannot be a faulty hardware?

(In case anybody wonders, why not try 23.3? It has a broken Roto Brush tool.)

[Jessica McMillan]

I will add it to the report and check in with our formats team. Thanks!

[JohnColombo]

Hi all,

Thank you for your reports about this issue, and for your patience. We are currently working with Apple to get this issue resolved for M1/M2 machines. In the meantime, you should be able to avoid this issue by disabling hardware encoding/decoding of ProRes files. Those preferences for After Effects are located in:

• Preferences > Import > Video Footage > Enable hardware accelerated decoding (requires restart)
• Preferences > Output > Enable ProRes hardware accelerated encoding, if available

Please let us know if the issue persists with those preferences disabled.

Thanks again for your patience as we work to address this issue,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[SnoopMikey]

Any updates on this? Running the latest AE 23.5.0 on Mac Studio M2 Ultra, macOS Ventura 13.5 -- seeing a slight gamma/luminance flicker on imported ProRes files, despite any toggle on/off of hardware acceleration. Our Windows system on the latest AE version, as well as other video formats, don't exhibit the issue. No flicker with playback in Davinci Resolve.

Happy to help troubleshoot with examples.

[markoconnell]

I have experienced chroma flickering in AEwith the Mac Studio and M2 chip. The same footage playing on an iMac Pro with Intel chip is flicker free.

[markoconnell]

Having flickering with D-Log DJI footage as well as banding. 10 bit footage 32 bit project. M2.

[Rocketbottle]

Mac Studio M1 Ultra

macOS Monterey Version 12.6.8

After Effects 23.6.0

The new update did not fix the flicker problem with Prores 4444 and Prores XQ.

No hardware encoding or decoding in preferences.

Metal GPU acceleration.

OCIO Color management - ACES working space.

Import a Prores file and preview it in the timeline. Increase the contrast and lower the gamma to make the fault more visible. The frame you start previewing from and the first frame in the timeline will have dropped luminance/gamma levels. Advancing frame by frame does not make the level drop.

The rendered Prores file has this fault.

Not good. Trashing 23.6. and reinstalling 23.2.1.

Please Adobe. Fix this.

Where can I claim a refund for my subscription fee?

[JohnColombo]

Hi all,

Thank you for your continued patience on this. Apple has informed us that a fix for this issue was released with macOS Ventura 13.5 on July 14th, 2023.

If you continue to experience flickering with ProRes import after updating macOS to 13.5 or higher, please let us know as soon as possible.

Thank you again for reporting this issue,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[Rocketbottle]

Thank you for the information

Do I understand correctly, we must upgrade to macOS Ventura to get a fix for the green/magenta flickering!? Can you confirm if all Adobe products are fully compatible with Ventura, please?

My previous post (Aug 11) was moved to this thread. However, my problem with Proreas files is not the chroma flickering, but a luminance/gamma drop on the first frame on the timeline (may be related though). Is there any information/solution for this yet?

I can't use AE V26.3.0 for professional work until Prores problems are addressed and fixed. The last functional version (for me) is still V23.2.1.  All later versions have Roto Brush or Prores problems. This really starts to feel your date prediction (2923) is true [apologies for the sarcasm] 😁

[okaplan79]

I am seeing this same exact problem appearing in Adobe Premiere Pro. ProRes 4444 clips, Premiere Pro 23.6.0. Mac Studio M1 Max running macOS Ventura 13.5. When I play files they appear tinted green, when I pause they are tinted magenta, when I scrub through the timeline I go back and forth between green and magenta tints. Makes Premiere completely unusable for color when using ProRes 4444 files.