Adobe Media Encoder CS4 Freeze

[Tim Morten]

I participated in the 4K Challenge this past weekend, and the Premiere CS4 workflow was surprisingly smooth (good work!). Media Encoder, however, was a different story. For reference, I shot 4k 2:1 / 24fps, edited at 1k 2:1 / 23.98fps (there was no option for 24), and output to 720p (at 29.97, if I remember correctly).

It was this last piece that almost sunk my ship - outputting to 720p required using Adobe Media Encoder. Encoding individual clips, titles, or JPG still sequences? No problem. Encoding the whole piece when it was finally edited? Freezes every time. After staying up all night editing, and with a looming submission deadline, I was fit to be tied.

After 5 straight hours of trial and error, I finally got it to work by overlaying the titles on video, instead of over black. Then it froze when it got to a JPG still at the end (the sponsor logos, which needed to be there for my submission to qualify). I overlayed that JPG on video instead of over black, and voila, it worked.

When I went back to re-render after doing a color pass (with Magic Bullet Looks), it froze on me AGAIN, even with the overlays at start and end that I just described above. After another hour of trial and error, I tried starting on a frame of normal video, then went to the title overlay, and Encoder started working again. I just barely made the original submission deadline (it wound up getting extended, but that's another story).

With my inconsistent results, I'm not convinced I figured out the root cause. That said, there is definitely a bug there which should get worked out. I'd be happy to zip up my project file and footage if anyone at Adobe or Red has time to look at the problem.

I'm getting ready to do a 1080p output, and I'm fearful of running into the same issue... I'm running on Win XP (32-bit), on a Core2 (quad extreme), 4GB RAM, with an nVidia 8800GTX, and I have the latest updates for the Red codec, Premiere and Media Encoder. If this hitch gets worked out, I'd say Premiere CS4 is a pretty darned usable workflow!

Thanks,
Tim

 

[Vincent S]

I had the same thing happen, I edited a short cut in PP and when I had to export Media Encoder froze every time. I'm on a Mac and when I searched to forums seems other have this problem also. Most recommended a re-install. I didn't have the time and didn't want to take the chance of it just happening again so I redid the edit in FCP.

 

[Stefan Scherperel]

I just exported a half hour of 4K 16:9 23.98 footage to 1080P jpeg 2000 without a single problem in Premiere CS4. What codec are you outputting to? How long was your final project?
One thing that i have always found helpful when exporting a problemed timeline is to do so in uncompressed chunks. Try 1 minute sections exporting to a lossless codec such as jpeg 2000 or uncompressed. Then if you need to render to H264 or wmv, place those one minute clips all together on a new timeline and render from there. The benefit to rendering to an uncomrpessed codec first is if it quits half way through your render, you can just pick it up from there, no need to start all over. Plus this way you can easily track down problem areas. Sucks that you had such a bad experience, but thus is the nature of the beast. If you're on a deadline, no matter how much you do to get done early, something is always going to happen to ensure that you stress as much as possible.

 

[Tim Morten]

I was going to Quicktime H.264. That's good advice on giong uncompressed; I had a similar thought partway through, and was looking for a way to render one long R3D before encoding, but it didn't occur to me that I should go to a different (but lossless) format. Very true about deadlines - Murphy always finds a way to interfere somehow.

Anyway, here's hoping that Red or Adobe fixes this one... it'd be great not to have to double-render, or play tricks like the ones I played to get it to render. Personally, I suspect the Red plug-in... I noticed three copies of it running in Task Manager when I experienced the freeze.

That one problem aside, Red and Adobe really did a wonderful job with their integration!

Best,
Tim

 

[Cameron Preyde]

Any word on a resolution or work around for this problem?

 

[Stefan Scherperel]

Just posted a work around. However, I just rendered a 10 minute wmv without a hitch, so honestly don't know what to say.

 

[mkanfer]

Important notes regarding the Adobe Media Encoder (AME)

Important notes regarding the Adobe Media Encoder (AME)

Folks,

We’re aware that there are some issues with AME export when working with 4K content in AME. In our testing we found that the most stable workflow is to export using Dynamic Link through After Effects. This allows you to take advantage of some of the additional formats available through AE’s render queue (for example, DPX), and in general is simply more stable. Please look at the workflow guide that comes with the plug-in for details on the recommended workflow.

The stability of AME export depends on a number of factors:
- The export format – some codecs require higher processing power, and this is exacerbated by 4K content. For example, H.264 is particularly taxing.
- The amount of memory in your system – 4K exports require a lot of memory on a 64-bit OS as a baseline. The minimum you should be looking at is 8GB, and you should make sure that you import the sequence manually into AME rather than send it from Premiere Pro. This keeps memory requirements lower.

In future releases we expect to be able to support the full 4K workflow through AME. For now, you may be able to get good results by increasing memory and being careful about the number of applications that are running. Until then, using After Effects for output is the best way, particularly in mission-critical situations.

NOTE: For the existing bug wherein export to AME Quicktime H264 fails with hang if work area includes any non-video, the current work around is to export black slug in the sequence format and to place this black background on Video 1 underneath all other video content.


Best,

Mike Kanfer
Digital Production Evangelist
Adobe Systems, LA
mkanfer@adobe.com

 

[Obin Olson]

Have to agree here with Mike, after working with many formats on a timeline including RED footage, titles, color work etc etc the AE workflow is solid. It works and the exports look great with no render quality issues or broken exports. Go with AE till they get AME fixed.

Avoid pulling hair, render in AE!

 

[Stefan Scherperel]

It's weird, I'm constantly getting the exact opposite in results. I havn't been able to export anything in AE. I constantly get strange errors about file names and not being able to retrieve frames. In adobe media encoder, I have had few problems exporting Red footage (granted I have not exported anything at full 4K resolution, just 2K).