Media Encoder Issue

[KripTed]

For only two projects I'm trying to render through Media Encoder, it's giving me problems. Every other project worked fine, it's just these two. I can't seem to figure out why. Anyways, the project renders in Media encoder and it finishes, but when I go to the output folder, the file won't play. It leaves me with a 0kb mp4 file and a .mp4.xmp file. It takes 20 minutes to render like every other project as well.

[Rick Gerard]

No details = no idea what might be wrong. Try looking at the comp and all of the modified properties of each layer. If the comp uses the C4D rendering engine or the RayTraced rendering engine and you have 3D layers you can expect the Media Encoder to fail. 0 KB and no video indicates that the AME just gave up and did not do the final step of compressing the MPEG file. I have no idea why it did, but there must be something different in the comps that failed.

If I have something that is going to take about a half hour to render I always use the Render Cue/Output module to render a visually lossless frame based production master that is dropped into the AME for compressing. For almost all long renders I render image sequences because if something fouls up at frame 300 and the comp is only 302 frames long all you have to do is fix the problem at frame 300 and render 2 frames and you are done. I can't afford to re-render the entire project when fixing a couple of frames will fix the problem.

[KripTed]

It's basically just an audio visualizer. I literally queued up several videos, there was only two that failed. Watching the encoding output it literally goes to 0 minutes left and finishes. I'm using the encoder because it compresses the file easier in MP4 format, specifically for YouTube. The other way doesn't offer that and renders basically in .AVI. If you browse my profile you can see the type of composition it is on YouTube. It doesn't make sense why out of 9 of them, 2 failed. I tried several times changing the photos and now even changing the mp3 files. I also switched to software only for the encoding instead of CUDA. When the file apparently "finishes" it just leaves a .mp4 video file but with 0kb. Then leaves another file which is a .mp4.xmp. file which I can't open.

This is literally the composition and the the way the final product is suppose to look. Just with different photo's in the background. I'm basically just using my own template that I created and changing the photos and songs.

[KripTed]

I also tried restarting my PC several times and uninstalling the software as well. I also edited the post and showed some files. There's literally no error. Unless that .mp4.xmp file has something inside it.

[KripTed]

It literally only does it with the two songs I've created. So the only thing I can think of it being is an mp3 issue. But I don't see what the difference is, they're all 320kpbs at 48Khz. I'll try rendering it the other way and see if it works.

[KripTed · Accepted solution]

Changing the audio's bitrate from 320 to 192 solved the problem.

[Rick Gerard]

Until you are an expert in video formats and compression it is a really bad idea to customize composition and render settings. The presets in the Adobe Media Encoder, Output Module, and Composition Settings are there to keep you out of trouble. Source footage, including audio files, should also be industry standard. Video from many screen capture programs is NOT standard, video and audio prepared for streaming is not industry standard. MP3 and MP4 video files are known to cause problems in all kinds of production software and should be avoided. If all you have is an MP3 file for audio or some kind of MPEG file for video and you are having problems the audio should be converted to 16 bit 48 kHz WAV and the video should be converted to a frame based visually lossless production format before you go any further.

[KripTed]

The issue has been resolved by changing the audio’s bitrate. This only happened with these two audio files out of all my musical/video compositions. I don’t have 10 hours to sit and render 10 videos per hour. The lossless formats are great if you’re a videophile/audiophile. My musical compositions are done in lossless WAV and compressed to MP3 for easy uploading and streaming, for sale it’s lossless WAV’s. As for the audio visualizer it doesn’t really matter since it’s time sensitive. I understand if I was making an industry standard movie, but not for a simple audio visualizer to just play a song to grab people’s attention. I’ve done music and editing for 15 years off and on, I’ve never had a problem with MP4 formats. I’ve had more issues with AVI’s being terrible after being rendered and eating up too much RAM, causing playback to stutter. Anyways, thanks for trying to help and for the information and feedback, the problem is solved.