P: Morph cut - Analyzing in Background never completes

[mbpm]

I have a simple headshot cutting to the same head, same everything a few seconds later.

All other transitions work find. I try morph cut and see 'Analyzing in background.' Never see sign of progress - should I see it chewing through frames somehow?

I have gone to project settings. Tried both rendering settings. One thing - When I do GPU acceleration my still frames look like garbage - example:

http://www.screencast.com/t/rPiWL6yL

Software acceleration looks fine. No idea if these items are related.

Have run through all preferences. Don't see anything that might be turned off. BTW - working with MBP 15" late 2013. Latest OS.

[Simon24441138undf]

When I use morph cut in premiere it works fine during the preview, when the timeline is red, but when I render, either a preview or exporting a file, I get a simple fade transition instead. I click "analyze background" on the morph cut, that section of the timeline goes from green to red, and the cut works properly again.

I have tried rendering different formats, exporting using previews, and disabling "render at maximum quality" which seem to be the go-to's for troubleshooting morph cut problems but none of these have worked.

I'm using premiere pro 2024 version 24.0.0 on a macbook m1 max running sonoma 14.2.1. I've attched a file I've made that exemplifies this problem (the png's are the media sources for the file, what I'm trying to morph between).

[Ann Bens]

Morph cut is designed for fixed shots that have a single talking head and a static background (for best results)

So I am not surprised its not working.

Best is to use After Effects for morphing.

[Simon24441138undf]

Thank you for your response. I understand what you're saying and I'm okay with a glitchy-looking morph. If you look at this very short screencapture I did doesn't it seem strange though? these two clips are exactly the same except the first one I clicked "analyze background" on the morph cut after rendering the entire sequence in to out (first clip is what I want the second is the simple fade transition I get when rendering) . I just find it weird that it's displaying the desired morph effect before I render it.

[Ann Bens]

Which preview codec is used?

[Simon24441138undf]

Apple ProRes 422 LT. I just tried rendering previews with all available codecs (everything except DV25NTSC thru DVCPRO HD 720p60 which was greyed out) and the results were the same. Changing "maximum bit depth", " maximum render quality" and "composite in linear color" doesn't have any effect either. Here are my sequence settings if that helps:

[Ann Bens]

Well i will stick with my first comment: morph cut is not suited for what you are trying to achieve.

[wisaq]

Thank you for this snippet of info. About to move to Resolve right after this current morph cut Adobe nightmare is over

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi @wisaq,

I read that you are having trouble with the morph cut effect. Please provide the community with more information so we can help. I'm sorry for the frustration. You can take steps to ensure the effect works much better, such as using a simple background, short clips, and avoiding scaling with clips vs. sequence settings (choose to nest). I hope the ideas help.

See:

• Morph Cut – Tips & Tricks for Best Results
• Applying the Morph Cut transition in Premiere Pro
• Troubleshooting the Morph Cut transition

Cheers,
Kevin

[FPS_Fish]

Y'know...I've been a part of this thread for years now - constantly getting emails about other user's frustrations. 

From my own experience, morph cuts sometimes work. Sometimes they don't.

They often work most reliably when frame rate of the timeline matches the source footage exactly.

It's not a guarantee.

The complaints, confusion and frustration continue.

For years.

I think Adobe treats it like doctors treat patients with back problems. They suggest the patient do something, then they don't hear from the patient again so they assume "ahhh, it's fixed." When really, it didn't work. The result: the patient doesn't trust the doctor anymore.

This Morph issue is clearly demonstrates:

a) continued, unresolved problems with this effect

b) a genuine need for the effect to work; to be useful - by many, many users

c) a lack of a software update from the programmers at Adobe to fix the issue. Perhaps, it's just not a high priority.

So when there are responses from Adobe in the user forum that appear to be 'surprised' by a user's experience (like this last one), even though there are 4 PAGES OF RESPONSES going back years without an effective solution or a new version of PP to finally resolve the issue, you can't help but roll your eyes. It really undermines the morale of the community user base.

I'm going to suggest two things for Adobe to so to help themselves and everyone else:

First: when you apply the effect, an orange progress striped bar appears in the program monitor indicating the effect is being processed. But it lies. If the morph effect is stalled and will not actually work, you end up staring at it for an extra long time before you give up. It never tells you "This will not work. This can't happen". It will keep that orange bar there until the next power failure. This leads to user frustration. It leads to people just giving up on the effect. Trust is eroded. And in the world of interface design, that's just wrong. I humbly suggest Adobe adds a progress status in the effect panel; something that denotes that the effect is actually being processed - in the same way Morph Stabilizer does. Y'know, percentage, threes dots blinking, etc. Pick something. That will at least tell that users they are not wasting their time or that they are.

Second: after you have done the above, read the responses in this post and figure out why sometimes the effect works and sometimes they don't. Again, much like adding Warp Stabilizers to clips that have speed effects, flash up a warning that indicates it won't work and WHY so the user can find an alternate route. 

I think these are reasonable requests for this long-lasting, annoying issue.

We're not asking for the moon here. Please help.

Thank you for listening.

><((º>

[Michael Grenadier]

what are your source properties and sequence settings? Have you tried
"render and replace" before exporting?

--
Michael Grenadier

[Michael Grenadier]

gotta say I find morph cuts dependable. fwiw, I use it with mezzanine (all
iframe) formats. and I'm working on an entry level 2022 macstudio with 32
gigs of ram... but never had any serious problems on earlier hardware and
versions of premiere... Yes, there can be issues, but at least in my
experience, they are a result of excessive movement in the clips... With
locked down interview shots with limited subject movement, it has been very
dependable. Never seen the message bar in an export...

but what's not dependable is the way this thread works... it's a very long
thread and usually I can't find the post I'm trying to reply to... so
I'm replying using "reply to this message".

--
Michael Grenadier

[Putchfilms]

My solution after trying to copy and paste entire timeline into a new sequence, which failed, was to copy the 3 clips I needed the morph cut on.  I then pasted those three clips into a new timeline without any of the audio included.  

Applied new morph cuts transitions, and the 'analyzing in BG' completed its task and went away.

I think copied and pasted those 3 shots back into my original timeline and the morph cuts held.

[hellopaul4]

Nearly 10 years on, and the morph cut effect is still really unreliable. How come Resolve's Smooth Cut has worked almost instantly, reliably, for years now, and Adobe does not have a clue how to replicate this? One of the most annoying "features" of Morph Cut is that there is no indication whether or not PPro IS actually "analyzing in background" or has totally given up. The only way (as far as I can ascertain) to tell is to open the Task Manager and see if PPro is using any of my CPU (or GPU - not that PPro knows how to use that!) - which it currently isn't, even though the "Analyzing in Background" moronbanner is there across my shot. And has been, for a good 20 minutes now. By the way, the shot is a locked-off camera, shooting one person doing a talking-head interview, and he hardly moves, and I've cut out about 2 seconds. It's 4K, 3840x2160, H.264 25fps 422YUV 10-bit, so nothing at all out of the ordinary. But apparently doing a 6 frame morph cut (I've tried all kinds of durations to see if they help, but no) it's beyond PPro's capabilities. When Morph Cut was introduced, I was genuinely excited to use it - and when it works, it's great. But "when it works" is a rare treat.

So - could Adobe please either:

License Blackmagic's Smooth Cut

or

Fix Morph Cut so it just works (this could actually be a good use of AI!)

or

Have Morph Cut give us some decent feedback on whether or not it's actually working, or a progress bar or something, so we know whether we should just wait for it to SLOOOOWLY do its thing, or give up entirely.

UPDATE:

Just for fun, I added a morph cut to another shot in the same sequence - this one had a large head move between shots, and the morph cut actually worked*!

*By "worked", I mean PPro actually processed it. The result looked absolutely terrible and I won't be using it in the edit, but it's weird that PPro can do a morph cut between two drastically different shots, but not subtly different ones - which is exactly why it was invented.

I'm on PPro Beta 25.6.0x68

Windows 10

128GB RAM 24GB VRAM, oodles of disk space available

[Corniger]

Utterly primitive single track talking heads sequence - Morph Cut just decides to stop working in the middle of the project. "can't access clips", after reboot not even that. I tried adding cuts before and after the desired morph, restarting PP, rebooting, shutting down & rebooting. Latest recommended NVidia driver, Win 10

[Michael Grenadier]

What codec is your source material? If its an mpeg format, I’d suggest you
try converting to an all frame format And see if that helps

Michael Grenadier
917-362-3396
*www.michaelgrenadier.com <>*
mgrenadier@gmail.com

[davidp158]

I gave up on Morph Cut a long time ago, but always read these announcements when they come up. There doesn't seem to be a consisten formual for when it does or doesn't work. Now that jump cuts are "fashionable" I just live with that if covering the edit with B-roll isn't an option. Much like AE's Roto Brush, Morph Cut was so appealing yet consistently disappointing.

[hellopaul4]

After many, many failed (and some successful) PPro morph cuts, I was planning to take my current project to Resolve and use its excellent Smooth Cut (which just works - usually in real-time, like this example here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyFOH9HZGkw), but the free version doesn't recognise 10-bit H.264 footage, which is what my source material is. I should have just stumped up the relatively small amount to buy the full version, but I thought I'd just cover the cuts with B-roll instead in PPro.

The next time I get a job like this, I will absolutely jump to Resolve - I will try to set aside some time to learn it thoroughly, and begin the transition away from PPro - and I'm saying that as someone who is very keen on PPro and AE - when they work, they're great bits of software - as they should be for the price. I started using Premiere (certainly wasn't "Pro" back then!) in the early 90s - obviously it was absolutely hopeless for any serious work, so graduated (skyrocketed?) to Quantel Editbox & Henry. Then FCP and hardware that could actually handle video came along...and then Apple destroyed FCP with iMovie Pro or whatever, so back to PPro. The time has probably come to move on again.

[Path 88 Productions]

started using Premiere (certainly wasn't "Pro" back then!) in the early 90s - obviously it was absolutely hopeless for any serious work, so graduated (skyrocketed?) to Quantel Editbox & Henry. Then FCP and hardware that could actually handle video came along...and then Apple destroyed FCP with iMovie Pro or whatever, so back to PPro. The time has probably come to move on again.

Same journey here.  I originally liked what Premiere was doing because if you were deliberate with those early versions you could actually kick out stuff on par with super expensive gear.  Remember, most video production was hardware/tape based.

Anyway, Adobe just has a business model that would rather exploit than assist it's customers.  So, moving on...  As before as again.

[Corniger]

@Michael Grenadier  The Material is ProRes 422HQ.

In later clips, Morph Cut worked again - so it just decided to not work with some of those clips. All clips came from the same camera, same recorder, same settings, same day. "Record" and "Stop"

[Corniger]

I'll try out Resolve as well - PP is working really well in most cases, but like with Photoshop, Adobe seems to care more about implementing AI, which is a 50:50 shot at wasting lots of time, instead of giving a real time preview for Radial Blur, for example. AI is by no means production ready, it's a nice toy.
Just a shame because of all the plugins, assets etc. I purchased for PP.

[hellopaul4]

Yes, I feel that those who are suggesting re-encoding with a different codec are just getting lucky. Like many here, I have the same footage, from the same camera, same day, same setup on the same tripod, and it's entirely random whether or not PPro decides if the morph cut will work. Sometimes changing its duration from maybe 6 frames to perhaps 4 frames works (and it still takes AGES to calculate just those 4 frames on my reasonably high-spec PC! Although, if I look at the activity monitor, it shows only 1 of my 16 cores being used for the morph cut to possibly process).

And also yes - ditch the AI stuff and focus on fixing the broken stuff, please!

[Michael Grenadier]

Actually there's a logic here.  We're trying to reduce the workload on the computer.  in an mpeg format like mp4, each frame does not exist completely in the original file ((except for the occasional i-frames)  , but rather a relationship between the previous frames and the next frames.  So Premiere needs to decode each frame, calculate the morph cut and reincode (unless you've chosen a all i-frame format like prores as your preview format).  I'm sorry if I'm not making this clear, but understanding how different codecs work is useful knowledge.  Post back with any questions, and perhaps I can attempt to explain or someone can point you towards a better explanation.  The fact is that I rarely if ever have an issue with applying a morphcut.  It may because I'm working on the mac (not a particularly high powered one - a 2022 macstudio with 32 gigs of RAM).  and on certain pieces I use a lot of morph cuts.   And yeah, we maybe just lucky.  

Maybe other people who are NOT having problems with applying a morphcut can describe their system specs and perhaps we'll see a pattern.

[Corniger]

@Michael Grenadier 

I'm on

1. a Wndows 10 machine, or several of those,
2. both 128 GB RAM,
3. all M2 key disks,
4. one with an i7 9850 and a Quadro RTX 3000,
5. one with 2 Xeon e5-2667 v5 with a Quadro M5000.
6. Footage is ProRes 4:2:2, FHD.

Happens on both computers, also with h.264 footage, also with transcoded h264 footage. It is mostly from a DSLR HDMI output to an external Atomos recorder. Maybe we can narrow this down after all!

[Path 88 Productions]

Fool's errand, man.  Ask yourself if it's worth the opportunity costs.  At the end of the effort chances are you're not going to have a consistant answer to the bug.

This is a calculus that needs to be considered when using Premiere.

Good luck, but my best advice is to throw in the towel and just not use the "feature"