Skip to main content
F
Fairak17
Participant
October 15, 2019
Question

h.264 Mpeg 4 needs rendered for playback?

  • October 15, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 364 views

Hey,

     I recently got an iMac from a friend, its a late 2012 model, 16gb ram,  2.9 GHz Intel Core i5 processor, and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M 512 MB graphics card.  He wiped it before giving it to me, but as far as I can tell it seems to be in pretty good shape?

 

The problem, so if I transcode video to ProRes, any flavor, I can playback in premiere pretty much in real time, even in 4k.  However if I have a 1080p, .mp4 wrapper, h.264 my mac shows it as red, and can barely play it back in premiere.

 

Am I missing a basic codec, is this graphics card just awful?  This seems silly

 

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    jasontcox
    jasontcox
    Inspiring
    October 15, 2019

    In my humble opinion, Ann is both right and wrong lol. The Mac absolutely has the power to playback H.264 (even 4K H.264) in real time). Ive been doing it nearly every day for years since my 2016 MBP. However, she is right that your system is pretty underpowered and dated. A 2012 i5 processor and 512 MB graphics card is unfortunately pretty weak for  today's media.

    Ann Bens
    Community Expert
    Ann BensCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 15, 2019

    The mac does not have the power to play H.264 in realtime.

    H.264 are heavily compressed files and need horsepower.

    Also the graphics card is way underpowered; for MPE hardware it needs at least 2 gig of vram. Yours is 512 mb.

    Stick to Prores

     

    Adobe Premiere Pro CC System Requirements

     

     

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices