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Question

x264 Plug-in For Premiere Pro

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
June 19, 2012
13 replies
96838 views

A new plug-in for Premiere Pro has been released that uses the x264 encoder to export to H.264 and H.264 Blu-ray. I've had a chance to use it a fair bit, and the quality is excellent compared to Premiere Pro's built-in MainConcept H.264 encoder. It's also fast -- as fast as the Premiere Pro plug-in architecture will allow.

Details here:

x264 PRO | Adobe Creative Suite H.264 Encoder

Disclaimer: As a beta tester for this plug-in, I received a license for x264 PRO as a gift. But I wouldn't announce the plug-in here if it didn't deliver it's promised quality.

Jeff

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E

erikvliet

Participant

One observation as a long time journaist/reviewer who has copies of Episode Engine 6.3.x with the x264 codec plug-in, of Squeeze 8.5 Pro which has the x264 codec built-in and of Media Encoder and Compressor (both without x264 support): the plug-in offered by 3am Digital Studios costs 599 USD normal price and 299 USD promo price.

That's quite a steep price, especially if you consider Telestream selling an x264 plug-in for any Episode version at 80.65 USD.

If you have to buy this plug-in at its normal price, it's actually more expensive than the normal version of Episode with the x264 plug-in added to it (575 USD)!

Jon Geddes

Participating Frequently

I suppose it really comes down to convenience and speed. Exporting directly from Premiere or in AME with x264 Pro has been a huge time saver for us. With the use of AME's presets and the fact that x264 Pro is optimized with the best quality/speed settings, we don't have to mess around with intermediate files, finding decoders for the various video codecs we receive, etc... it just works. Import any clip into AME, and if AME can decode it, x264 Pro will encode it. We deal with a massive amount of different codecs from our clients, and this has really helped our efficiency as AME acts like a frameserver for x264 with the x264 Pro plugin.

If you only do h264 encoding once in a blue moon, and you are already happy with a x264 workflow using an intermediate file, then I can see how it may not be worth it. But when you encode as much material as we do (every day), you really see the benefits and time savers of having the plugin built directly into the Adobe software.

Jon Geddes

Participating Frequently

Jon Geddes wrote:
I suppose it really comes down to convenience and speed. Exporting directly from Premiere or in AME with x264 Pro has been a huge time saver for us. With the use of AME's presets and the fact that x264 Pro is optimized with the best quality/speed settings, we don't have to mess around with intermediate files, finding decoders for the various video codecs we receive, etc... it just works. Import any clip into AME, and if AME can decode it, x264 Pro will encode it. We deal with a massive amount of different codecs from our clients, and this has really helped our efficiency as AME acts like a frameserver for x264 with the x264 Pro plugin.
If you only do h264 encoding once in a blue moon, and you are already happy with a x264 workflow using an intermediate file, then I can see how it may not be worth it. But when you encode as much material as we do (every day), you really see the benefits and time savers of having the plugin built directly into the Adobe software.

I agree with you Jon. I am in a position, where I think, well is it worth it for me or not? No doubt the quality and speed is fine, but you have to consider how much you use it, and for what kind of projects (paying clients or not) - I am stil considering

/Ulf

I forgot to mention...

The x264 Pro plugin is MPEG-LA licensed, so it can legally be used on commerical releases. x264 by itself is not. If you are creating any Blu-ray discs for replication, you should be using an MPEG-LA licensed encoder or else you could face legal trouble if it is discovered that you didn't.

Averdahl

Community Expert

I downloaded it and will test it. I have not yet compared the quality, ie MainConcept vs x264 Pro.

One thing i did notice is that encore chapter markers are not exported so files i import into En has no chapter markers and imo that is a big drawback. Placing markers in Pr and then having to redo it in En is not good when one has many/long assets. Do you know why it don't work with x264, SDK limitation?

/Roger

Averdahl

Community Expert

I bought the plug-in and asked if Encore Chapter Markers will be supported when exporting from the timeline, and today an update with this support was posted. Brilliant service!

It's great to give input when the developer listen to the input and then fix it directly.

/Roger

S

Sherex

Inspiring

How I'm gonna pay 300 dollars for this? Can I get it for free?

Thanks guys...

Jon Geddes

Participating Frequently

Our company has also started using x264 PRO for all of our H.264 encoding. Extremely high quality (studio quality), MPEG-LA compliant, integrates with Adobe Media Encoder (no more exporting intermediate files to our previous studio quality encoder), perfect customization options... I highly recommend it.

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