Caution! Latest PrP 2018 Update Will Ruin Your Workflow (if you use QT7 Media)

[WMK]

A word of caution!

I ran into an issue with my Mac last week that, in the end, necessitated upgrading to the latest version of Premiere Pro [long story].

The app is stable, but there is a MASSIVE change that they announced, but I don't think most

people are aware of the implications:

https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/quicktime7-support-dropped.html

Since they have dropped the QT7 support, it means that any video file that is not in any of the 'professional'

codecs listed above, Premiere Pro  will no longer recognize or play.

They will show up in your project as missing, and won't show up in the Link Media window.

Those clips will need to be transcoded [!!], and then reconnected and added to the project.

I'm working on an edit now with a bunch of older clips in QT7 format, and I'm having to transcode them one by one, and have already lost a ton of time.

#nightmare!!!!!!!!!

This is a plea to Adobe to undo this change immediately.

This could be literally KILLING the workflow for millions of people around the world!

I know that it is mine.

If anyone knows of a plugin or workaround I'd appreciate it.

The next project I'm working on has hundreds of files that would need to be transcoded and relinked.

[megacinn]

During a horrible weekend , I experienced exactly the same problems and many more.

Finaly..this 2018-springupdate is at least on the OSX version, the worst horrible update I've ever experienced (either avid and adobe).

This seems to be more an alphaversion which was released on behalf of the shareholders and the ongoing NAB.

nearly nothing works as before.

AVI-files (as described in the posting above) are not accepted anymore (havn't seen any warnings before ... and if..why shall I pay 700.-€/year for a softwaredevelopment with less functionality).

The next horrible issue is, the totaly overhauled mediaencoder. Now there's only a "target bitrate" but not a "maximum" anymore. That caused repeatedly that ME (encoding a HEVC-file 30min / 13MBit/s) created a m4v-file with 25GB..then tried to multiplex that into an MP4 , and consumed at this stage every availabel diskspace until OSX warned about "running out of diskspace.

It totaly consumed at least 60GB (for an estimated 3GB file, which then was 11GB and not playable from 12min on.

ME constantly crashes at random timecodes.

Absolutely no difference between "software only" an "hardware OPEN CL / Metal"

Selecting CBR instead of VBR gave me an error saying ..."your computer does not support Hardware acceleration ........."....

WHAT ?  Adobe , this is a brandnew IMACPro with ATI-Graphicsadaptor and............. !

..and many more...

I heard many complaints that the software itself could'nt be started (until mysteriously deleting hidden files/folders.

Luckily there is/was a way to downgrade the software to 12.0.1 which, after a wasted weekend was the only solution , and immediatly worked.

ADOBE...this update is a shame ! I'm sure that no one really tested it before (the OSX version).

If these showstoppers are not fixed within 2 weeks , I'm thinking about a plan B and will not renew my contract at the end in a few month.

We pay involuntarily a subscription for improvements (and would prefer a one-time buy) ... If I have to make my living with it, it has to be PRO-Software with PRO-Development (not consumergrade ) !

My specs are:

IMacPro 8core / 32GB RAM / ATI Graphics / 1B SSD

OSX 10.13.4

Adobe 12.0.1 (perfectly working) - Update to 12.1 (horrible , useless) . downgrade to 12.0.1 (perfectly working).

Adobe, please give us an explanation.

Everyone else working on OSX-Hardware .... be extremely warned !

[WMK]

Megacinn,

Thank you for your input -- the situation is even worse than I thought!

I am right there with you - this is unacceptable on behalf of Adobe.

Their primary responsibility should be to ensure the smooth and uninterrupted workflow of their

customers, ahem, subscribers.

To throw the wrench in the works is unacceptable, and the update should have come

with a MASSIVE WARNING sign about these issues. [Not they way they did it which was more like, "Look,

Automatch color and other shiny things. And oh, by the way, listen, we kinda killed QT7 support, so good luck.

We'll bill ya."]

[SAArnoldi]

Suffering the exact same problems as above, my new mac and older macbook pro both saying we dont have the right hardware for hardware encoding?! What the hell?

This is a joke and has been a huge waste of my time.

[RjL190365 · Accepted solution]

Actually, that was not Adobe's decision to make. It's Apple that's dictating that. It told every single NLE maker that QT7 codec support is ending.

[WMK]

Wait, what?!?!

[RjL190365]

You heard me correctly. Not all NLEs have been updated yet. But I am sure that the next update to FCPX (or Avid, for that matter) will completely remove support for QT7 codecs.

You see, QuickTime is NOT free to use to begin with. Apple owns all of the intellectual property related to QuickTime, and licenses it out to NLE makers for a fee.

[SAArnoldi]

So whats the solution?

How do we change our workflow moving forward? - h264 is still one of the best codecs to upload, how do we get our videos in to that format in the best way possible (ideally while using our hardware we spent tons of money on!)

[RjL190365]

Actually, your problem has absolutely nothing to do with the QT7 EOL status. Both of your systems have CPUs that are (hardware-wise) too old for hardware H.264 acceleration. The currently available Mac Pro still uses 2013-era (Ivy Bridge-E) components. And your older MacBook Pro dates back to the Haswell/Broadwell era.

[SAArnoldi]

I'm running the latest Macbook Pro, it's insane that our studio's 2015 Macbook Pro is looking like it can't run the latest version but are you telling me, I can't run the latest Premiere.... ON A 2017 MACBOOK PRO?

If so, THIS IS INSANE

[RjL190365]

Does your MacBook Pro have a discrete AMD Radeon Pro GPU? If so, the system might have automatically switched over to the discrete GPU when you launched Premiere, which effectively prevents the integrated Intel HD Graphics from being used. And Premiere does not currently support any discrete GPU for hardware H.264 acceleration.

Older versions of Premiere Pro, up to and including the 2018.0.1 version, did not natively support H.264 hardware acceleration for encoding.

[megacinn]

..as mentioned before , I'm running a brand new top notch IMacPro with discreet AMD Graphics.

So if not my hardware, which of them should be able to work with hardwareacceleration instead??

The problem lies in the new MediaEncoder...... if set to VBR , hardwareencoding can be switched on but does not make any difference to software only (speed , behaviour a.s.o). Set to CBR ... your hardware does not.......

BUT..it totaly is out of controll and creates huge useless files (25GB instead of 3GB), maybe because of the not anymore existing "max-bandwidth" setting.

It seems that the ME is now working on a new "automatic" but totally unpredictable behaviour.

So, this cannot be excused by the QT absence. This is plain new untested alpha software, nothing else.

The prove :

My system runs on OSX 10.13.4 since 2 weeks . In this time I worked on many big projects with 12.0.1 . No complaints.

Only the update last friday braught my production completely to crash.

Since downgrading , there's no problem at all.

So, in this case , apple had nothing changed ...it was exclusively Adobe.  And the developers always have the latest upcoming new releases of the OS in advance. So they knew exactly about the situation and did not warn us about the issues , or , as above, about not upgrading to 10.13.4 (that upgrade was specifically  marked by Apple as..... to resolve issues with nle-software ).

and by the way, I'm also working with SONY A7S2 , DJI, Samsung and more material.

[tobinv9215225]

After a long online chat with Adobe, there are definitely some sketchy things going on behind the scenes between Apple and Adobe. I have run into two very specific errors when editing 4k Sony A7s2 footage and 4k Mavic Pro footage recently. ALL of my projects ran smoothly on 12.0 BEFORE I updated to 12.1. After installing 12.1 I immediately received the same prompt:

"The selected file does not contain video media used by clip references in one or more sequences. These video clip references will be deleted, and cannot be undone. Do you want to continue?"

This is a new error message. I eventually closed the project, reinstalled 12.0 and opened the same project. All of the files synced up perfectly, but now the 4k footage (on a 1080p timeline) was covered with ugly glitch artifacts.

Today I chatted with Adobe directly, and they filled me in with some behind-the-scenes information:

"we are aware of similar issues & have been sending multiple samples to NVIDIA/Open CL/AMD"

"Please continue with the older projects on the older version with the METAL as the renderer, and don't update to MAC OS 10.13.4 for now"

"plugins may have compatibility issues, but can also affect the playback glitches, which may not actually exist on the video"

"If you wish to transcode, transcoding footage would be best, but avoid Pro Res as it is QT component, use any H.264 options"

"There is no safest codec as such as display issues can appear on any type of footage, but I suggest to avoid QT as QT has it's own limitations & is going through a lot of changes itself"

"It is scary indeed, but Apple decided to declare QT end of life & is only developing & supporting some of the native QT components only, so things are unsure as of now for us, Apple would know better. The QT change & the DOLBY Change is irrespective of Adobe I'm afraid"

"I suggest you to stay calm for now, as the problems & possibilities I told you, may not be true to your situation, so let's wait & don't do a lot on your own, things could become worse, so do not touch the project or the media yet"

https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/quicktime7-support-dropped.html

WTF.