‘Use Previews’ no longer working for encoding in Premiere Pro / Media Encoder

[mickwalkerboxset]

I recently upgraded to Premiere Pro / Media Encoder 2021. However, Media Encoder will no longer recognise the 'Use Previews' function when encoding timelines from Premiere Pro.

Now, each time I send a project to Media Encoder (or Export it from Premiere Pro), it ignores the Previews completely and re-encodes each sequence, taking much longer to encode a file. 

I’m encoding a DNxHD 1080p timeline into h264. Same as I’ve done for years and it’s always used the previews when asked, no problem!

Troubleshooting steps so far:

• I have updated my GPU card driver with a clean install
• I have fully uninstalled all 2020 versions of Premiere / AE / Media Encoder
• I have cleared my Media Cache
• I have deleted Previews within the project and re-rendered
• I have started a new project and build a sequence within that
• I have updated to 15.1 on Premiere / Media Encoder

Despite all of this, the problem remains.

Using Task Manager in Windows, I can see that the hard drive that hosts the preview files (E:/) isn't being accessed during encoding at all and that the GPU is doing lots of work. Usually, when using Previews to encode, the GPU does practically nothing as it has nothing to render.

Also, the readout on Media Encoder shows 'Hardware Encoding' when usually with a fully rendered project it will show 'Software Encoding' by default. When I try forcing Software Encoding, it stills ignores preview files.

If anyone has any other ideas that would be highly appreciated!

CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2640 v4 @ 2.40GHz   2.40 GHz

RAM: 64.0 GB

GPU: NVIDIA Quadro P4000

[MyerPj]

I just tried it with PP 2021 v15.0 and it work as expected.

I use 720p cineform proxies with a mixture of 4k and 1080p source, so I created 720p Cineform export and it worked. I'll update to 15.1 soon, and will try it with that.

[MyerPj]

I just did 3 more tests and all worked.

To 1080p Cineform using prox

to 1080p h264 using prox

to 1080p h264 using footage

[mickwalkerboxset · Accepted solution]

It seems that by unchecking 'Import sequences naively' have fixed this problem.

A 30 minute, 1080p fully prendered Premiere Pro sequence now takes approx 5 minutes to encode into a H.264 (as opposed to 2 hours+ before)

I previously had the  'Import sequences naively' checked to ensure captions were sent to Media Encoder, so will see if that is still the case now....

[jmshrrsn]

This didn't work for me sadly ... exporting from PP to AME and out to Apple Pro Res MXF.  Deselecting the option suggested made no difference.  There are clearly other factors at play here and its not that simple.  I'm using AME 23.6 on an Mac Studio M1 Ultra running Ventura 13.4.1

[MyerPj]

I wonder if the mxf is the problem? Try with plain ProRes.