Corrupt HVEC .265 export

[Storying]

Since January I've had increasing problems exporting video with corrupt plabyack at one or more spots.

My export settings are HVEC .265 at Full HD (1920x1080), VBR, 1 pass with a target bitrate of 16 Mbps. 

First the video will go blocky and then totally smears of confusion followed by the audio cutting out.

After 10 to 30 seconds playback returns to normal. I try to scrub back and forth to check quickly in quick play mode. If it seems good, I upload to Vimeo where the client reviews (this is where we started having clients complaign about the glitches). Before I send Vimeo review links now, I try to watch every episode in the 20 part series in 2x time to scan the entire series and catch problems so they can be re-exported if needed.

I export animation projects which will feature Apple ProRes 422 .mov source video plus some graphics, an adjustment layer & PNG watermark. Episodes are usually five minutes or less.

We've been releasing animation series like this for seven years. I don't know if I would have problems if the project was a new one. My work is primarily new languge versions of existing series so I working from templates copied to create each new language recording.

Version 25.2.3 (Build 4)

Mac OS Sequoia 15.5

This has been going on for about five months so this involves some previous versions of Premiere and Mac OS. Every time an update is released I'm hopeful the problem will go away but it hasn't yet.

Some coworkers (there are seven on our team) have had similar issues so I go to the person with the newest computer who has the fewest issues with rendering glitches. My machine is a MacBook Pro M2 Max only two years old.

[Rach McIntire · Accepted solution]

HI @Storying,

Thanks for submitting your bug report. I'm very sorry to see your exports not turning out correctly. 

Is it only the H.265 codec causing the glitches, or does exporting in another format work smoothly?

Have you tried making a new project and copying the old one into the new one to see if that makes a difference?  Was this happening in 24.6, do you know, or has it mostly started since the 2025 update?

If you have time, please give the team a few more details. See: How do I write a bug report?

Sorry for the frustration and thanks for reaching out.

[Storying]

Trying to mark this pinned reply as the "correct answer" but it doesn't seem to want to let me.

[Storying · Accepted solution]

Hi Rach. I made an export via H.264 and it looks good. (I'd rather use the more advanced 265 codec but I'd also like when things work.)

I don't install updates automatically and when I was having issues in January I think I was behind a few months so since February I check for updates pretty frequently.

I also followed your suggestion about copying everything from the old project into a brand new one. That worked and I was able to export H.265 (HVEC) without a problem. Maybe we've just been using these projects for so many years that, even though they're updated when it says "This project was aaved from a previous version ...and must be converted" when I have this kind of issue, I need to go the extra mile and manually shake the Etch-A-Sketch. 🙂

[Rach McIntire]

Hi @Storying, 
Glad to hear that worked, and you're exports are looking correct - and in the desired codec.  Thanks for reaching out, and happy editing.