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.

[Guest]

I came across this weird issue in AE 22.6 when working on post with master rushes. There appears to be a random flicker changing hue from magenta to green every now and then. It's very random though.

Does anyone have the same issue? I heard rumors about some bugs in AE with M1 macs involving ProRes files and some issues with bit depth when rendering ProRes but not sure if this is related?

I attach 2 frames for reference. For the best comparison please download and flick between images as it's very subtle but it's definitely there. 

Opening the projects in the older version works fine and I didn't notice any flicker.

I'm about to test the new beta version and see if the problem persists. 

Any idea how to fix this in latest version of AE?

It would be great to have this addressed by Adobe team please!

My specs:

mac OS Monterey 12.6

MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2021)

Chip AppleM1 Max

Memory 64GB

[JohnColombo]

Hi @Deleted User,

Thank you for reporting this issue. I do see the slight hue shift in the images you shared, but we will need a bit more information about your footage and your color settings in the After Effects project to get a sense of what might be going on.

Please post your Color setting from the Project Setting dialog, as well as any color settings from the Output Module you are using to render.

Is this only happening with ProRes exports? As a possible troubleshooting step, try disabling hardware acceleration of ProRes encoding in the Output section of the preferences and see if the color shift still occurs.

Thanks for reporting this issue and for any further information you can provide, 

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[Bea249197819l9c]

The problem is I get green flickers no matter what I do when I render it.

I have tried to render in AE and ADOBE MEDIA ENCODER and it doesn't work, I have tried purging cache and pressed the smooth motion option but nothing gets fixed.

I don't know how it can be a problem with my CPU or graphic card because my laptop is pretty new (3 months), I am not sure if it might be a render setting that are faulty?

Or could it be the file format? like video format in AVI when I render I never get the green flickers but when I render in MP4 (60fps or 30fps) the green flickers appear (videos given by clients are in MP4)

Versions I use : AE CC 2022 and MEDIA ENCODER 2022

[JohnColombo]

Hi @Bea249197819l9c,

Thanks for making this report, sorry to see you're experiencing this issue.

What are your system's specs (OS version, CPU, GPU, RAM)? .mp4 is usually H.264 video and there is hardware acceleration for decoding and encoding H.264 which might be incompatible with your hardware.

Additionally, do you see these same green flickers in the latest After Effects 2023 that was released this week?

Thanks again for reporting this issue and for any further information you can provide, 

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

[Bea249197819l9c]

Hello,

My system specs are:

OS version: Version 22.4.0

CPU: Intel® Core™ i5 12 Core Processor 12500H (4.5GHz Turbo)

GPU: Nvidia GTX 1650

RAM: 32 GB x 2  Corsair

At the moment I did not update to the latest version, I have been using the AE 2022 version since 3 months and it would give me green flickers since then.

[Bea249197819l9c]

Hi,

I tried to uncheck the mode H.264 in Media Encoder, Nothing happened ,as always I have a green flicker screen, I know it happens because AE cannot read that frame but I don't know why it cannot read the frame as it's a valid footage that has been recorded with an expensive camera SONY.

[Thaumar]

Yes, unfortunately this is a known problem, I have reported it several times since the first (non beta) apple silicone native version of after effects came out. I'm also running after effects on a M1 ultra, same greenish frames (but not all frames!?).  No change in latest 23 update unfortunately. Also I have te regularly check the settings. Hardware acceleration is on by default, and it sometimes reverts back to this default setting, maybe after an update or after a crash, I don't know. 
Could be an M1 ultra specific problem, but other apps like Resolve don't seem to have this problem, and I have to assume they use these M1 hardware decoders. 

[Viktor.mauren]

I think we might have the same problem. My clips also change tint. I have exported the video file from DaVinci and the file itself looks perfectly fine until I put it into AE. I also did not change the speed of the clip in AE. I know this is AE doing and not the video file itself. The file is propres 4444. 

[Bea249197819l9c]

That looks very bad, and I bet it's very frustrating, have you tried to open up a ticket in Adobe or a live chat? let me know what happens and if you fixed the error.

[Viktor.mauren]

Hello, after 10 hours together with adobe customer service, we have found out that the problem is that After Effects will not read the file correctly because I have an M1 Mac. The clips have been sent to the development team so we can hope they can fix the problem by the next update.

[harinder5E8E]

Hello,

My system specs are:

OS version: Windows 10 pro

CPU: Intel® Core™ i9 13th Core Processor 

GPU: Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti

RAM: 32 GB x 2 DDR5

Having a same problem while rendering or import any mp4 file.\

Need a solution ASAP.

Please Help

[Bea249197819l9c]

Did it get fixed? 🙂

[Bea249197819l9c]

Hello, I have been having this problem for a while and still have no fix. But what works for me is rendering in avi lagarith lossless in AE and after compress it using media encoder in mp4, Yes it takes longer but it is worth while instead of going through to find any flickers. I am a fulltime video editor and different clients have green screens and some dont so i wonder what the real fix could be. I heard on some posts it may not be good to update your drivers too as they may not be supported by AE either which is funny.

[jpRay]

Same here on a MacBook Pro M1 Max. Prores files with hardware decoding show random magenta / green tinted frames. It's subtle but clearly an issue that makes hardware decoding unusable.

[Thaumar]

AE 23.2 unfortunately still produces green flickering with hardware decoding on on a M1 Mac.
I know this is a known problem and the Premiere team needs to come up with a fix or something.
 
So what I’m wondering is WHY is this setting still on by default, since it’s clearly not working. 
But even worse, off all the setting that are migrated from 23.1 to 23.2 THIS is the one that is not migrated?
So the ONE setting that is KNOWN to be broken is deliberately (and silently) reset to the faulty default state.
Why? I don’t understand. Feels like sabotage.
 
Please, if something is known to be not working, don't have it on by default and certainly don’t silently switch it back on when it’s already set to off. 
 
Losing a lot of time here checking and re-rendering VFX because it…

[RobShultz]

If you're using an NVIDIA graphics card please make sure that it has the Studio driver installed.

[Thaumar]

Thanks, but this is a M1 (Apple Silicon) Mac related problem. No NVIDIA or AMD cards for M1/M2 macs, but the M1 Pro, Max and Ultra and M2 have inegrated GPU's and onboard hardware accelerated media/Prores decoders. As far as I know the problem lies with the implementation of these accelerators in the Adobe software. 

But maybe other platforms and hardware also has similar import hardware acceleration problems, I don't know. If so, even more reasons to not have this 'feature' on by default.

For now, this setting sould be off for everyone using a M1 or M2 mac.

[AlwaysPrinting]

I have problems with flickering, in Adobe Acrobat Pro, Mac mini M1. Connected via HDMI to a Asus Proart PA248QV. No problems in Illustrator or Indesing. The problem is annoying in Acrobat

[iliest48695797]

I'm having a big issue with ProRes 4444 on Apple M2 Max -- after upgrading my Laptop to Apple M2 Max. Aftereffect is unable to render ProRes 4444 without color shifts/glitches flickring. This issue is happening only with ProRes 4444 and ProRes 4444xq. Every other ProRes file works fine.

I have 10 shorts to finalize  - I'm getting stuck because of that, 

Please help this a desprate situation that is already consting me a lot time. 

exemple below 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8e6z8svnej67w78/EDIT-4%20-%20Mulitchannel_1.mov?dl=0 

thanks 

[Thaumar]

Yes, known issue.

Turn off Hardware Acceleration in the Preference>Import pane.

Be aware, every time you update After Effects, this setting will reset to the default on setting.

[iliest48695797]

Thanks, 

It works with new compositions. However, It doesn't remove the bug on previous comps. Is it some cash or something?

[Thaumar]

That could very well be the case. If you Edit>Purge>All Memory & Disk Cache the problem should be solved. If not, there might be someting else going on.

[iliest48695797]

Yes indeed - this was the cash. Problem solved ! 

thanks 

[Rocketbottle]

Help!

Hardware acceleration is turned off in settings. Prores import is still flickering on AE 23.4 with M1 Mac!

Is it just me... or?

Mac Studio M1 Ultra

macOS Monterey V12.6.5

After Effects V23.4

Just got a client's comment for flickering renders. Nasty surprise.

Nothing helps - Clearing caches. Color management on or off (Adobe and OCIO tested both). Hardware acceleration on or off. Restarting Mac. 

Had to downgrade back to version 23.2.1 which I know works.

Anybody else experiencing this?

[Jessica McMillan]

Hello,

Thank you for reporting this issue as well as supplying the details of your AE installation and system. 

Would you be able to supply us with a version of this project to try to reproduce the problem internally? I know that sometimes isn't an option depending on the project/client. If you can, posting them on dropbox or your creative cloud shared space and send a link would be helpful.

All the best,
Jessica, After Effects Engineering Team