Premiere Pro crashing with high bitrate

[Antonio Veraldi]

Hi, hope someone can help me with Premiere Pro vers 24.6.1 (build 2). I dunno the reason it always crashes (halts without giving any messages) if I go to export a MP4 video choosing the format H.264 with bitrate CBR 1600 (see the attachment). Oddly, if I instead choose VBR 1 or 2, Premiere does nor crash but makes a video with a bitrate of 160 Mb/s even if I chose 1600 Mbps. FYI, the video I am working is MP4 1920x1080, 25 fps, Pal, 1623 Mb/s. (The reason I want to export the new video with a similar bitrate). Please take into account that Premiere has never crashed so far working with lower bitrate. Thank you.

[Averdahl]

Do you really want 1600 Mbps? I have never heard anybody require a H.264 with a bitrate of 1600 Mbps. If you watch a Blu-Ray the encoding is averaging at about 30-35 Mbps. I think that the chrashes you get is because the encoder simply is not built to output 1600 Mbps.

I have never seen a camera record H.264 at 1600 Mbps either.

[Antonio Veraldi]

You forget that this Is the bitrate of the video I am working with Premiere and that Premiere allows to export until 2000 Mb/s.

[Averdahl]

What are you going to do with the file you export? Upload to YouTube/social media or to have a file for archiving, or?

I did a test with 1 minute long timeline. If i export it to H.264 @1600 mbps it ends up being 11.2 GB. If i export to ProRes 422HQ the file is only 1.26 GB. Thats why i wonder why you aim to use a H.264 at those bitrates that create really huge files when there are other codecs that dont degrade the footage as much as H.264 does. H.264 is a lossy codec while ProRes is a visually losseless codec so if you want the ultimate quality H.264 is not as good as ProRes despite that the H.264 is ten times larger than the H.264 file. In short, bitrate alone is does not define highest quality.

For example:

Back in the day when DVD´s were a thing many people often wanted to export a H.264 file for the DVD since they considered H.264 to be best. But all DVD´s are always MPEG2 and if you bring in a H.264 file to author the DVD the H.264 file will always be re-encoded from H.264 to MPEG2. This means that you will loose quality, always. So sometimes one have to choose the best codec for the thing/s one need/want to do. There is no codec that does it all. It´s a workflow thing.

Btw, i got a crash here as well with Pr 25.0 with H.264 at 1600 Mbps, but the file was usable.

[Antonio Veraldi]

I posted my question to receive a clear technical answer from competent people with the possible possibility of solving the problem and not useless questions to satisfy the curiosity of some.

[Averdahl]

O.k, thats fair enough.