Premiere choppy playback w/ iPhone 1080p mov files

[Miked18]

I have been experiencing a lot of issues as of late playing back 1080p mov files (generated by iPhone XS Max) with Premiere. Specifically, the mov videos would play back in all players in Premiere for the first 5-10 seconds or even play all the way through until the last 5-10 seconds. The problem worsens if more mov files are added. I wasn't able to find much info and solutions to Premiere users experiencing choppiness with 1080p movs - I read about users experiencing choppy playback with 4k and use proxies to get around this. I haven't tried this yet but don't recall having these issues before until the last couple months.

Anyone else experiencing these issues and can provide some direction?

[John T Smith]

Is your video in the new hevc format? (I think it is hevc... I don't have an iphone but I do remember recent messages about a new format that does not do will)

[Miked18]

It is. I'm reading more into why hevc would have these problems.

[R Neil Haugen]

Although the VFR media is supposedly supported in Pr now, not all VFR media works that well, including many of the iPhone files from the posts here.

There are two things you can try ... first, go into the bins of your phone media, select all the ones at a particular originally set frame-rate, and right-click/Modify/assume X frame-rate, using the 'set' framerate from the phone. This won't fix clips already in sequences, so you need to then use the modified clips to replace their copies already in use. This works with many clips to improve playback in Pr.

The other option is to use typically Handbrake to convert to CFR then import those into Pr and use them.

Neil

[Miked18]

I actually didn't know enough about variable frame rate videos and MOVs being considered this type of video and that Premiere had ongoing issues with such files. It make sense as I see more posts related to this issue and what users have had to do to get around it (I actually have been converting them to CFR without even realizing it - been converting HEVC MOV to H264 MP4 using other software).

[jeremy stewart]

I just encountered this as well. Converting it in Media encoder to h.264 fixed my issue.