Premiere is playing glitches that aren't there

[mmorache]

I'm seeing occasional glitches in videos playing in Premiere that I don't see anywhere else. 

Specifically they are mxf clips encoded with the xdcam hd 35 codec. These are pre-edited clips that look perfectly clean in quicktime, and also in fcpx, however when brought into Premiere, it's showing a glitch that's not there anywhere else.

I had someone who has actually created encoding software take a look at it, and he said using the tools he has that he doesn't see anything wrong with the clip, but he was able to duplicate the glitch on his version of Premiere. I'm on a Mac (2018 mbp, the os and adobe CC all up to date) and my co-workers have seen the same glitch on my clip in Premiere which they run on a PC.

My guy says that Adobe uses it's own mxf decoder, rather than the one that's built into my mac. Could this be where my problems are stemming from? Currently I'm forced to review everything I edit by bringing it into Premiere and watching it carefully for glitches. This isn't a fun workflow.

Any one with similar problems? or a viable work around?

Thanks in advance!

[Michael Grenadier]

can you explain where the clips came from.  Doesn't seem to make sense to me with the codec your clip uses, but this kind of problem is often seen when the source clip has a variable frame rate which is usually from a smart phone or screen recording program.  You can use media info to check that the frame rate is constant

https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download

drop one of your source clips in the media info window and hover your cursor over the video area and you'll see all the specs of the source appear and it should tell whether the frame rate is constant or variable.  If it's variable, you can use handbrake to convert to a constant frame rate

https://handbrake.fr

[mmorache]

Thanks for the reply. That's good information, but I don't think it applies to this situation.

The clip has a constant frame rate. We are a daily local broadcast show, and we've never had problems with these edited clips that actually come out of fcp x, until we stopped posting at the tv station on the Sony Xpri software, and started posting from home on Premiere. I have a sample I can send you a link to.

It just seems strange to me that this clip looks fine in so many different platforms but shows a glitch when played in Premiere.

The information I get on the clip is:

Type: MXF File

Size: 31.15 MB Image Size: 1440 x 1080

Frame Rate: 29.97

Source Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 16-bit - 4 Channels

Project Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 32 bit floating point - 4 Channels

Total Duration: 00:00:08:19

Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.3333

Alpha: None

MXF File details: Wrapper type: MXF OP1a (type: SingleItem SinglePackage MultiTrack Stream Internal)

File generated by: Apple Inc., Final Cut Pro X (10.4.8 (358560)) MPEG-2 420 MPHL

[katcroft]

Did you ever get this resolved? Facing the exact same issue.

[Michael Grenadier]

Please tell us your system specs: OS version, Premiere version, amount of RAM, Hardware specs including graphics card and your source properties and sequence settings.

[mmorache]

Please see my reply to Joost. The glitches play back on the source side, regardless of the sequence settings.

The source properties are

Type: MXF

File Size: 650.08 MB

Image Size: 1920 x 1080

Frame Rate: 29.97

Source Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 16-bit - 8 Channels

Project Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 32 bit floating point - 8 Channels

Total Duration: 00:02:39:01

Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0

Alpha: None

MXF File details: Wrapper type: MXF OP1a (type: SingleItem SinglePackage MultiTrack Stream Internal)

File generated by: Apple Inc., Final Cut Pro (10.5.3 (400092)) MPEG-2 420 MPHL

I've attached a jpg showing 6 glitch frames. The frame at 1:31:21 should be very close to the frame at 1:31:20 right above it. There's no edit there, but the portions of the frame that have crept in are from a clip of a woman holding a photo album that's about 6 seconds further into the clip from where the glitch occurs. It's very strange.

Thanks for your help.

-Mark

[Michael Grenadier]

Hey Mark, sorry for your pain... my request for info was directed to katcroft.   People often post to threads from what can be years ago with what they think is a similar problem without giving us basic info...  

[mmorache]

What are you experiencing? Are you bringing final cut pro edits into PP? 

[Joost van der Hoeven]

Can you please share your system info? Like OS and version, CPU, RAM, GPU vRAM, Pr version? Thanks. Also a screen grab of your issue will be helpful.

[mmorache]

Thanks for the follow up. I actually haven't been having trouble with this for a long time, over a year, but strangely I just had this same problem the other day.

I have a clip that was edited in Final Cut Pro. It plays fine in Quicktime, and in VLC but when I play it in Premiere or Media Encoder, it has glitches.

I'm using PP 15.2.0 on a 2018 MBP with a 2.6Ghz 6-core Intel i7 processor, 32gb 2400 MHZ DDR4 memory, and a Radeon Pro Vega 20 GPU with 4GB of memory. I'm working with our post editor who is using the latest verson of PP on a windows PC. We both see the same glitches, so I don't expect it's the computer.

The guy who makes the Edit Ready software took a look at a previous fail, and told me he sees nothing wrong with my clip, but he saw the glitches in Premiere as well. This was a year ago. He assured me that this isn't a Final Cut Pro problem, but one with Premiere. Probably the Xdcam decoder.

My workaround is to export my edits in prores, then use Media Encoder to transcode to Xdcam. This is a pain, since the problem occurs so infrequently.

I have more details, and I can share the exported clip with you. It's about 900mb.

I'd greatly appreciate your help. 

hi

[Kevin-Monahan]

M,

Is it looking like this in the Beta too? Let me know.

Kevin

[mmorache]

Hi Kevin,

I just downloaded PP Beta 22.0.0 build 7, and my clip has the same broken up frames in the exact same places.

I'm curious, did you change your decoder for Xdcam footage? A software developer I trust took a look at one of my clips and told me:

Hey Mark - I took a look at your clips and reproduced the issue in Premiere. Premiere ships with its own MPEG decoders - it doesn't use the ones built into MacOS, which is why you don't see the issue in QuickTime. I suspect you're hitting some bug in their decoder. The problem looks like corrupt data, but I scanned the file with a few tools and everything looks fine. So, I'm guessing it's some data that they're not interpreting right.

If it's a bug inside your decoder, are you interested in examining one of my clips? Again, every media player I try play my clips back perfectly, except Adobe.

It's strange to get attention again when this message has been quiet for so long. I'd still like to get to the bottom of it.

Thanks so much.

-Mark

[katcroft]

@Joost van der Hoeven , Thank you for your help here.

@mmorache Mark interesting that you had the issue again recently. I hope we solve this!

Thanks for everyone's sleuth work here. 

Issue: MXF playback in Premiere, VLC Player, Handbrake and Quicktime with glitches/artifacts – location and frequency varies by player or program.

Troubleshooting: Playback in-camera has no glitch which led me to think that it's an issue with the Adobe MXF decoder. Same glitches when encoding in Adobe Media Encoder 2021 but the location of the glitches changes depending on the format. ProRes 422 showed best results with only one glitch occuring in the file. All programs up to date.

File specs:

Shooting on the Canon XF205 (playback in camera is clean)

Specs: @35Mbps MXF 4:2:0: 1920x1080 (30p)

Programs:

Glitches appear on all of my MXF files on import into the latest verisons of all programs below:

Premiere (2021), Handbrake, Quicktime and VLC player

Computer:

Mac OSX 11.3.1 / MacBook Pro 2019

Processor: 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9

Memory: 16 GB

Graphics: AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 4 GB

[dane67761039]

I have just had this same issue - mxf files getting glitches on them - never had happened before. 

I got onto a chat with Adobe, and the only way we fixed it was to transcode them into H264 mp4's using handbrake, one at a time.

I tried to use encoder so i could do a batch - but that glitched too

I have seen above that pro-res may be an answer - this is a real nightmare - and only happened after the recent update for me.. 

I'm hoping it will blow over - but that's not a very technical way of looking at it!

[Michael Grenadier]

if it wasn't happening in an earlier version of premiere, revert to that version...    Adobe is always working on these kinds of issues so testing the beta version or a newer update is always worthwhile...

[Michael Grenadier]

I was having issues with mxf files that were using a different color space.  When I modified/interpret the clips to color management:  color space overrirde:   rec709 the problems disappeared...    worth a shot