Adobe Premiere Pro support
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#9 Adobe Premiere Pro support
Hey guys
I was just wondering if it is possible to add support in the codec so that it can be used in Adobe Premiere Pro? Currently you can go to export, AVI and pick the codec but it seems no matter what set of options I use (Virtualdub mode on/off, enabling/disabling various settings), I always seem to get slightly garbled output.
This would be an immense help if it could be added as the x264 encoder is orders of magnitude more efficient than the built in Mainconcept one. For example exporting one video with MC at 25mbps took around 10 minutes (and I have to export around 30 similar length files regularly). x264 was around half that time, maybe even faster!
I'm using Premiere Pro CS5 for reference. Output to file seems to work perfectly, but muxing files after can be a bit of a pain (maybe I can find a CLI util and batch it) and would probably negate any speed gains due to the time it would take to mux large files on a laptop HDD.
Thanks!
Discussion
Anonymous
Hi. Not sure about what type of support are you asking? This is VFW codec so the only way it can be used is through VFW-interface which in Adobe Premiere is export to AVI with picking codec there. Am not going to make Adobe Premiere specific plugin because this outside of the scope of this project. Not sure what you mean by "garbled output"? Do you mean visual artifacts? Than with what decoder (iirc adobe's is not good one with x264 streams)? General playback in DirectShow players with LAVFilters should be OK. If you mean missed frames and audio desync than you should use either "Zero Latency" tuning or direct File output mode. You should NOT use VirtualDub Hack with Adobe Premiere because it doesn't support it.
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Hi thanks for the quick reply. I did a bit more testing. With the default settings Premiere will freeze. I guess this is due to the one in, one out VFW limitation, and x264 trying to do more advanced stuff. That is why I tried the Virtualdub mod first time around, because I thought framepacking would get around that (and it did work if I remember right).
However, taking your advice I just reset the defaults and did not use that option. Instead I found enabling zero latency would make the codec work in Premiere.
Now here comes the weird part. The visual glitching is kind of random and sometimes hard to replicate. It seems to happen when using CQP mode, but I don't think I've seen it happen in CRF mode. I have no idea what is going on. Maybe the VFW output from Premiere is very strict and sometimes x264 is encoding frames out of order (as I believe is normal function of the encoder), but VFW (or Premiere) can't deal with it.
It seems to occur less if you use the lower encoding settings like ultra fast.
I can encode the same file with the same settings but sometimes there will be visual errors and sometimes there won't be.
Here is a sample anyway. If there is anything you would like me to test please say so.
I understand that you don't want to make a Premiere specific plugin, but I thought maybe if you discovered there was some other VFW restriction it could be added in as an option/workaround to the current codec.
I use CoreAVC as my decoder but VLC also has problems displaying the video without error. In fact the errors seem more obvious in VLC (I even get a green image for a while).
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ef4e9c0uaxgk7kl/sample.avi?dl=0
Looks like it is Premiere bug. It sometimes write output frames out of order into the file. I am sure that is not the order in which x264vfw returned them to Premiere. I was able manually fix order of the frames in your sample: sample_fixed.avi. As it is Premiere bug so I can't really fix it (I don't have it sources). So all I can suggest for you are 3 options: 1) ask Premiere support to fix bug in their app; 2) stop using Premiere's muxer and use direct file output from x264vfw; 3) drop Premiere and use another app without this bug for your task.
Thank you for taking the time to check the file and even fix it! It is a strange bug, as I expected it was something to do with frame order. I guess one other fix for it would be to force I frames only? That would make stupidly large files though. I think the easiest thing now is to use output to file and mux after.
Premiere has always been a terribly buggy software. I even remember it having bad bugs in CS2. There is even a bug in it that if you disable the audio track on the timeline and try to export that the program will crash, instead of outputting a video with blank audio.
Really expected more from Adobe.
Thanks again for your help
Forcing I-frames probably will fix corruption (they don't depend from each other so order is not so important) but if they still will be written out of order than it video probably would be shaky (not smooth) sometimes.
Hello,
In Adobes wisdom the latest versions of their software no longer seem to support this codec when exporting. It works fine to edit with, but refuses to export using x264 past the v23.3 iterations of their software.
I've spoken to their customer support and they always come back with the same '3rd party codecs' line, and say any issues need to be resolved by the original author.
Is there any chance this could be investigated?
Many thanks
What do you mean no longer supported? I tested Adobe Premiere Pro 2023 (23.6) and Adobe Media Encoder 2023 (23.6), both still support x264vfw codec selection when using the AVI output format. Have you installed the full version of the codec, both 32-bit and 64-bit?
Last edit: BugMaster 2023-10-12
Thanks for the reply.
Selection is absolutely fine and shows up no problem, but did you try exporting in any of PP, Ae or Media Encoder?
I'm forever greeted with this error on anything past v23.3 of their builds. Likewise with their latest big yearly update of software to V24.
Hi. I tried to export using Adobe Media Encoder and it failed. This is Adobe's bug: they send a broken memory pointer (icf) in the ICM_COMPRESS_FRAMES_INFO message and therefore the codec crashes due to memory access violation. Ignoring this message is a bad idea because it signals the frame rate and therefore if you ignore it, all bitrates will be incorrect (as if it is always 25 fps). I also tried exporting to Xvid but it fails for the same reason.
ps. installed both versions of the codec (32 & 64) and tested across multiple PC builds.
Thanks for the info, if there's anything more you can share by way of info I can share with Adobe, i'll re-open the dialogue and try and get them to change.
Thanks for the time.
No. The previous information should be enough if they really want to fix a bug in their product. I doubt that the place in the x264vfw code (codec.c:1881) where the memory access violation occurs will be useful to them.