Footage Glitch in both After Effects and Premiere

[mvallier]

I work for a video game developer and I am always having problems with footage glitching in both After Effects and Premiere. The source footage does not glitch at all.

In After Effects, some clips will glitch when I export or just pre-render.

In Premiere, it can sometimes glitches in the preview window and on the timeline.

In both cases, the workaround has been to replace footage with a different clip temporarily and the replace it again with the proper footage. This either fixes the issue or glitches then happen again in DIFFERENT spots. This is annoying but it works... BUT, now I have a project which has 12 clips on the same screen. 2-3 of them will glitch, so I do my workaround, but then others will then glitch and this keeps happening.

I uploaded a video on YouTube as an example. The following monsters glitch:

- Top Left (Towards the end of the video)
- Bottom Left (Shortly after appearing)

- 2nd row, 3rd monster in (Shortly after appearing)

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

[dj.summitt]

My first expectation is that it's a cache issue.
Choose Edit > Purge > All Memory & Disk Cache to purge the contents of all RAM caches (like the existing All Memory command) and the contents of the disk cache (like the existing Empty Disk Cache button in the Media & Disk Cache preferences).

[mvallier]

Thank you dj.summitt, I've done the "Media & Disk Cashe in the preferences before but never the Purge. This worked for now, but I have the feeling this may not be the core issue. I could of course be wrong and I hope I am. In Premiere there is a "Media Cashe" in the preferences, but I cannot find an equivalent to the Edit > Purge option like in AE.

[mvallier]

dj.summitt
As expected, it still happens a bit (but not as much and as drastic for now). Purging and clearing the Cashe every 15 minutes helps, but that's not something I should have to do all the time. With the details I posted earlier, any other suggestions?

Thanks!

[Szalam]

Where did these clips come from? What format/codec/etc.?
What exact version number of AE/Premiere Pro are you using?

[mvallier]

Szalam
Here are the following details:

AE Version 16.0.1
Premiere Version 13.0

I use Bandicam to record our game footage. AVI format with Xvid, 30fps at either full HD or sometimes 4k (issue happens in both HD and 4k)

[Szalam]

I wonder if it's having an issue with the codec. Have you tried seeing if other options in Bandicam work better?

You also might try transcoding the videos with Adobe Media Encoder into something like ProRes, Cineform, or DNxHR.

[mvallier]

I have not tried any others yet. What are the best codecs to use with AE and Premiere? These are my options codec options with Bandicam:
H264 (NVIDIA NVENC)
H264 (CPU)
Xvid
MPEG-1
Motion JPEG
YV12
RGB24

Or if these options are not ideal, is there a recommended recording software?

[Szalam]

You might try Motion JPEG.

[Dave_LaRonde]

I'm with Szalam.  Motion JPEG.  I can't speak to all of those codecs, but I KNOW MJPEG doesn't use inter frame compression, which can still give AE fits.

[mvallier]

Thanks Szalam​ and Dave LaRonde​

I am too far ahead into this current project right now so I will try this out in the next one. I'll then update this thread then.

[mvallier]

I had to record a few retakes, and thought I would try exporting to an AVI with Motion JPEG in both HD and 4k but it is just as bad, if not worse. I am at a loss. Here are my PC specs in case this helps:

CPU: i7-7800x

Ram: 32GB

GPU: GeForce GTX 1080
Record Drive: Recording and working off of an external 1TB SSD via USB 3

3 Monitors: 2x Full HD and 1x 4k

[Emilio Javier · Accepted solution]

This exact problem has haunted me literally for YEARS. I finally found the problem. It's not an Encoding problem, but a Decoding one.
It seems that Adobe After Effects (and also Premiere and Adobe Media Encoder) don't decode H264 videos properly when using Hardware Accelerated decoder, with certain computers (mine is an Acer gamer laptop with a 1050Ti Geforce card)
So this is a decoder problem that reflects in playback AND render/export.
The only solution I found so far is going into Preferences -> Media in Premiere (or Preferences -> Import in After Effects) and unchecking "Enable hardware accelerated [Encoding and] Decoding". (This only affects H264/HVEC codec playback and export, not effects rendering or other GPU processing)
After that, restart the application and CLEAN THE CACHE.
H264 clips will take a little more time to be decoded while playback and render, but the glitches should be gone.

If you need speed in a project that has many footage clips (like yours) and this solution makes everything too slow, an alternative workaround is to previously reencode the h264 clips in Adobe Media Encoder and choose a non H264 codec, such as Quicktime with Apple Prores 422. The files will be larger but the edition work will be snappy.

[AW0121]

It works!!!!

[Tanja Valentin5C6E]

OMG! It works!
Thank you so, so much! you just saved me hours and hours of agony.

[Paula5CFB]

THIS IS IT. Thank you so so so much!!!!!!!!

[Liu En-Yu · Accepted solution]

!!!"this is a decoder problem"!!!

Oh my god, you really save me.

I got a lot of short clips (H.264 .mp4) using AE effect. The glicthes often start at the same point of the sequence and beyond the point, but considered unrelated to how you editing. And the glitches will jump around when tying out different encoding setting or tweaking.

Working around diffrent methods that is all really about encoding/export, there was no result. Finally, this is really the solution with proper reason.

In Premiere Pro v14.5:

Preference>Media>uncheck hardware acceleration.

After turn off Pr and clean up Cache file in manual restart Pr for program to run new cache file

In AE v16.13:

File>Project Settings>use Mecury Software Only

Edit>Purge>All Memory and Disk Cache

AE automatically run new Cache files

problem solved

Thank you again!!!

[AlvaroDeCastro]

It works like a charm, thanks! ❤️

[Bebanks]

Thank you so MUCH!

[Geoff5E0C]

This solution worked. Thank you for sharing! 

[Emilio Javier]

I'm glad I was able to help

[sophied98353339]

Worked for me too! Thank you 🙂

[Yuwei Liu]

Thank you so much! Problem solved! 

[fuat22331122xnmv]

thank you!!!

[AshIsHere]

You're a godsend after an hour of frantic searching, thank you