Why drop support for .mkv and disrupt business?

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
July 15, 2019
6 replies
1981 views

Why in the name of all that's good and holy would Adobe suddenly decide to drop native support for a widely used codec in release (v13.1.3), without notice, causing major business disruption for clients who rely on it for their core business?

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C

CatRin

Participant

Damn … Same Problem here. In the middle of a huge Project and now everything is "offline".

Bruce Bullis

Community Manager

Here is why.

https://theblog.adobe.com/changes-to-mkv-format-support-in-premiere-pro-and-adobe-media-encoder/

Kevin-Monahan

Community Manager

Hi table30,

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Why in the name of all that's good and holy would Adobe suddenly decide to drop native support for a widely used codec in release (v13.1.3), without notice, causing major business disruption for clients who rely on it for their core business?

.MKV format was never "officially supported" in any release, and is still not included in the supported formats documentation, but has "worked" for import over the past couple of versions—unofficially.

With the current implementation, that support needed to be removed, so we did mention it in the release notes for those that relied on that support.

Please add your upvote for the following feature request: Restore MKV Format Support – Adobe video & audio apps

Thanks,
Kevin

Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community and Engagement Strategist – Adobe Pro Video and Audio

T

table30Author

Participating Frequently

Thanks Kevin,

But neither your response nor Mr. Philpott's blog post explains WHY Adobe needed to drop playback support for this codec. When you include a functionality in your software (even unofficially), it has the tendency to generate confidence and expectation that you will continue to support it (otherwise, why include it in the first place)?

Is .mkv playback such a burden on Premiere's code base that it just NEEDED to go? As basically a footnote in a minor version release? Is it worth pissing clients off and causing possibly catastrophic business consequences for them, when they are suddenly unable to edit or process any of their video footage in a proven useful codec?

I guess you have no clue what this 'inconvenience' as you termed it entails. We are now faced with an entire season's worth of content that will require a software rollback to edit, along with all the .pprog version conflict nightmares that is already presenting. My apologies but I've been up for the last 18 hours dealing with this 'inconvenience' that will just keep on giving into the future.

Thanks for that.

P.S. the only reason we have to use .mkv is because Premiere cannot edit .mp4 files recorded in OBS without audio sync issues. So what you've done is basically created a technological impasse for clients who are using a workaround necessitated by the deficiencies of your own software. Well worth the subscription price.

Bruce Bullis

Community Manager

As Eric mentioned in the blog post, .mkv support was dropped because usage was very low.

The PPro team is focused on improving stability and performance; removing support for formats we've never officially supported simplifies our code base, and diminishes our testing load.

I've emailed you directly about getting access to previous versions.

Have you tried the OBS-generated .mp4 files in a current release of PPro? I believe we've made improvements to .mp4 audio sync, in 13.0 and 13.1. It may still go out-of-sync, but it seems worth confirming, before attempting to roll back to previous PPro versions.

FelixARN

Participant

table30 I found this when looking further into it; looks like we missed this memo, and won't be in luck any time soon. MKV support has only been around since early version 12, so it's a shame to lose it so soon, but at least remuxing is quick. I hope basil1891's solution works for you!

FelixARN

Participant

basil1891 thanks for the suggestion, I used to Remux to mp4 using OBS, which I found super quick and easy. It's a shame I have to go back to using that extra step in my workflow because .mkv was a very convenient format to work in on my end. I would also like to know why it was removed and if there is intention to support it again down the line. I know I infrequently, but regularly, had crashes when importing .mkv files, so I can only hope that it is a temporary change while that is stabilised, but I'm not sure.

T

table30Author

Participating Frequently

We use .mkv in OBS because the .mp4's that OBS generates have audio sync issues in Premiere. Now Premiere has dropped support for our workaround, with no explanation or warning.

Nice.