Tearing And Pixelating During Flashing Lights?

Report · Nov 06, 2023

So... I've had a project I've been working on for over a year off and on. There are scenes that take place in a night club, with strobe lighting.

From the beginning I've had TERRIBLE issues with Premiere seemingly not being able to handle this footage 98% of the time. It takes those scenes and it ruins the image. The image becomes massively pixelated, with massive and extreme tearing. It's unusable and looks severely glitched out. I have a very powerful computer with a very powerful dedicated video card (nvidia).

I've waited over a year for Adobe to fix this but with the latest update, it is still as bad as ever in this area, with the added benefit of more overall lagginess and more crashing.

The source footage plays fine, it just can't play in the Premiere timeline 98% of the time. Every now and then, it won't do it and I think it's fixed, only to resume doing it again shortly after.

And YES... IT DOES EXPORT all messed up and ruined. So, it's not just in the timeline. The rest of the clips in the project are fine, it's just any clips with the strobelight in it. It almost feels like Adobe cant cope with the brightness or something. Like some visual version of "clipping".

I've tried EVERYTHING, I've spent HUNDREDS updating my CPU to 16 core, I've installed a $700 video card, I've updated card drivers, removed certain fx, changed video computer settings, and NOTHING works. I've done ALL THIS for this ONE PROJECT and nothing seems to fix this issue. All the expensive upgrades to my rig made zero difference.

I really wan't to finish this project soon and I'm at my wits end. My next step is I guess buying an Apple set up and switching to Final Cut, but I really HATE to do that for one project! But if Adobe makes me do that, I'll migrate over fully and uninstall Premier.

Does anyone know anything about this issue and how to fix it?

Report · Nov 06, 2023

Of course 'very powerful computer' is a generic phrase, it would help everybody if you put down a short list of your hardware. I take it you're on Windows, 10 or 11, is that a secret?

You didn't mention much about what steps you've take except the new powerful computer. My guess is it's your footage. h.264? You didn't mention it. Proxy's are the way to go with that type of footage. It's lousy to edit with, no apple computer will help you with that.

There's plenty of tutorials out there on the proxy workflow. My preference is ProRes proxy for the ... proxies! check it out.

Report · Nov 06, 2023

It's a desktop AMD Ryzen 12 Core 24 thread CPU. Asus ROG Strix RTX 3060 with 12GB of DDR6. 64GB system RAM.

Do I need a 24 or 32 core machine to run Premiere?

The footage is MP4/MOV H.264 4:2:0 (Full Range)

I have no idea how to do proxy's so I'll have to look on YouTube. I think I checked it out a long time ago, but it was going to take like seven days to make proxies of my footage or something, so I gave up on it.

I'll check into again.

Report · Nov 06, 2023

You can use the free MediaInfo program to get info on your clips. Get the program from the link below and using the 'Tree' view post a screenshot of your clip info: https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download

Report · Nov 06, 2023

Your machine seems good. It's almost for certain your footage. H.264 is just miserable to edit with. Either transcode footage to something like ProRes LT or even Proxy would do a lot for your editing experience. Otherwise Proxies in ProRes proxy would be great. The proxy workflow works really well in Premiere. Make sure you have backups of your project before setting out on proxies and/or transcodes.

Report · Nov 06, 2023

You're footage might even be variable frame rate, which for Premiere is difficult. It's not really an editing format, and it typically causes probleml. Use Shutter Encoder to convert the files (before editing) to constant frame rate. Maybe try ProRes LT or even PROXY format within Shutter Encoder for easy to edit formats with 'better' files size.

https://www.shutterencoder.com/en/

Report · Nov 06, 2023

Why would it be variable frame rate when I set the frame rate before shooting? Is this common?

Anyway, I made proxies and tried that and still no difference.

Oddly, it doesn't always do it if the clip is unrendered, but after I render the section with that clip it does it. I don't have any idea why rendering would actually make things worse.

Report · Nov 07, 2023

Now it won't let me move clips from the media browser to the timline!