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Anyone else using Premiere Pro with a M1 MAX

T

TylerYYC

macrumors member
Original poster
May 5, 2020
32
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I got a 16 inch M1 MAX with 64GB of RAM. Been doing some editing in Premier Pro and notice that when I pause and play the playback, often times there will be a delay in playback or when pausing, the video will stop but the audio will continue playing for a few seconds advancing the playhead further than where I wanted it to be. Don't recall this happening on my Intel Mac, but it had been a while since I edited video as I've been busy at my day job.

Wondering if Premier Pro is truly optimized for the M1 Max. Everything runs great but the delay in pausing and starting is super annoying when trying to make precision cuts.
 
Just for more details, the clips I'm playing with are H.264 1080P with no added effects, but layered on B-Roll.
 
Found a solution. I transcoded the media to ProRes and it operates flawlessly with no delay in playback. I got 4TB of hard drive space so I'll keep the transcode to match source unless things start to slow down or I run out of hard drive space; then I'll use low res proxies. Would love to see 8K Prores..... I already edit 4K footage to do zooming/panning in editing, 8K would give me much more flexibility.
 
Have you experienced poor quality exports from Premiere Pro to H264 with hardware encoding? I've been trying to find somebody else experiencing the same issue as me with these new M1 Pro/Max chips. If I export a timeline to a H264 format (like the Youtube 1080p preset for example) and use hardware encoding the file is significantly smaller than what Premiere estimated it to be and this results in a really poor quality export with a lot of pixelation and blurriness. If I export the same project with software encoding it doesn't do this and the file size matches whatever Premiere estimated it to be and the quality is good. Been trying to find someone else with the same issue or has run the same sort of test export. Could you try exporting like this and see what you find as well just out of interest? Example was 60 second export to YouTube 1080p preset with hardware encoding was estimated to be 125mb but it turned out at 68mb and the quality was awful. It's even worse if you export in 4K. Ive been in touch with Adobe and they just told me to use software encoding which is a bit of a poor solution really. :-/
 
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birmexer said:
Have you experienced poor quality exports from Premiere Pro to H264 with hardware encoding? I've been trying to find somebody else experiencing the same issue as me with these new M1 Pro/Max chips. If I export a timeline to a H264 format (like the Youtube 1080p preset for example) and use hardware encoding the file is significantly smaller than what Premiere estimated it to be and this results in a really poor quality export with a lot of pixelation and blurriness. If I export the same project with software encoding it doesn't do this and the file size matches whatever Premiere estimated it to be and the quality is good. Been trying to find someone else with the same issue or has run the same sort of test export. Could you try exporting like this and see what you find as well just out of interest? Example was 60 second export to YouTube 1080p preset with hardware encoding was estimated to be 125mb but it turned out at 68mb and the quality was awful. It's even worse if you export in 4K. Ive been in touch with Adobe and they just told me to use software encoding which is a bit of a poor solution really. :-/
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I'm having the same issue! I did some tests and the files exporting using the YouTube 1080p preset, and the file was about half the size exported from the M1 Max laptop, versus the file from my intel iMac. I dug around in the info on the files and while Premiere sets a "target bitrate" of 16Mbps, on the M1 export it only hit about 10 in the final form. The Intel iMac export did hit 16Mbps.

I also did a test with the M1 exporting with the same preset but with a Constant Bit Rate of 16, and that file matched the good one from the iMac.

I can't figure out why the M1 machine would be missing the target bitrate by so much.
 
Oh wow that’s concerning the hardware export isn’t working properly… I might consider using FinalCut until Adobe has a M1 optimized version.
 
I use Premiere. The M1 Max is very fast on both hardware and software encoding.

I didn't experience the pausing you describe.

Want to add, the new Premiere update's Lumetri colour panel isn't completely compatibly with the old version so if you import an old project you have to colour grade everything again.
 
metapunk2077fail said:
I use Premiere. The M1 Max is very fast on both hardware and software encoding.

I didn't experience the pausing you describe.

Want to add, the new Premiere update's Lumetri colour panel isn't completely compatibly with the old version so if you import an old project you have to colour grade everything again.
Click to expand...
The speed of exporting is fine and not a problem, it's the export file size and the quality of the export once you've exported the file using hardware encoding. It's really pixelated, blurred and has a lot of compression artefacts.
 
Marshall_LR said:
I'm having the same issue! I did some tests and the files exporting using the YouTube 1080p preset, and the file was about half the size exported from the M1 Max laptop, versus the file from my intel iMac. I dug around in the info on the files and while Premiere sets a "target bitrate" of 16Mbps, on the M1 export it only hit about 10 in the final form. The Intel iMac export did hit 16Mbps.

I also did a test with the M1 exporting with the same preset but with a Constant Bit Rate of 16, and that file matched the good one from the iMac.

I can't figure out why the M1 machine would be missing the target bitrate by so much.
Click to expand...
I've done some similar digging around and found the same. It's weird that no one seems to be talking about it on any of the reviews on YouTube or anything. It's like they've just exported the file and tested how fast the export is but not actually played it back to see how bad it looks!

I've tried reporting this to Apple and Adobe but they don't seem to care/want to listen.

My Premiere Pro is up to date and so is Mac OS X. I wonder if this will be resolved or not in the future.
 
birmexer said:
The speed of exporting is fine and not a problem, it's the export file size and the quality of the export once you've exported the file using hardware encoding. It's really pixelated, blurred and has a lot of compression artefacts.
Click to expand...

That won't be a hardware issue. Exports look the same to me. Adjust your export settings and bit rate because the new versions of CC apps have changed bits and pieces.
 
metapunk2077fail said:
That won't be a hardware issue. Exports look the same to me. Adjust your export settings and bit rate because the new versions of CC apps have changed bits and pieces.
Click to expand...
It doesn't matter what settings you put it on, if you export to H264/H265 using hardware encoding the file size is significantly smaller than what Premiere estimates it and the quality is awful. I exported the exact same project, with the exact same export settings on my Windows desktop machine and the file size matched what Premiere estimated it to be and the quality was perfect. This is related to the M1/M1 Pro/M1 Max chip. It doesn't happen on my Intel MacBook or iMac either. It's only an issue on the M1 Pro/Max MacBook.
 
birmexer said:
It doesn't matter what settings you put it on, if you export to H264/H265 using hardware encoding the file size is significantly smaller than what Premiere estimates it and the quality is awful. I exported the exact same project, with the exact same export settings on my Windows desktop machine and the file size matched what Premiere estimated it to be and the quality was perfect. This is related to the M1/M1 Pro/M1 Max chip. It doesn't happen on my Intel MacBook or iMac either. It's only an issue on the M1 Pro/Max MacBook.
Click to expand...

Not seeing it. After I got the M1 Max 16 and updated Premiere to 2022 I tested by opening projects from the last month and compared output.

My main problem with Premiere 2022 was that they changed Lumetri's engine so all the videos were blown out with incorrect colour matching, so I had to regrade my projects. After I finished the regrade I exported them and they all looked the same as ever with high detail and no artefacts.

I also downloading some 4K and 8K log footage from the link below to benchmark the machine and test the quality of the output, which was all excellent.

gafpagear.com

Download Kinefinity MAVO Edge 8K Log Footage | Gafpa Gear

On this page you will find downloadable Kinefinity MAVO Edge 8k Log footage, a few in 8K but most of them in 4K oversampled from the full frame 8K image, recorded in ProRes 444.
gafpagear.com gafpagear.com
 
metapunk2077fail said:
That's not my observations otherwise I would be the first to complain. I would go mad about it.
Click to expand...
Have you tried exporting using the YouTube 1080p preset and made sure hardware encoding is on? What is the estimated file size compared to the actual file size?
 
birmexer said:
Have you tried exporting using the YouTube 1080p preset and made sure hardware encoding is on? What is the estimated file size compared to the actual file size?
Click to expand...
Doing the test for you now. I will take the first 3 4K clips from the Kinefinity link above and do a straight export to YouTube 1080p preset. I won't change any default project or export settings. I will only apply a 709 LUT with no other colour grading.
 
metapunk2077fail said:
Doing the test for you now. I will take the first 3 4K clips from the Kinefinity link above and do a straight export to YouTube 1080p preset. I won't change any default project or export settings. I will only apply a 709 LUT with no other colour grading.
Click to expand...

@birmexer

Result so you can try the same thing and verify.

Latest Premiere 2022.

Taking the first three 4K cllps from the link above. Putting them on a timeline.

Three videos together are 22 seconds long.

Added the ALEXA Default LogC2Rec709 LUT.

Exported using h.264, YouTube1080p HD Preset.

Estimated file size was 44MB.

Export render time was 2 and a half seconds on M1 Max 32 core.

Exported video was 29.7MB, less than the estimated size.

Quality is perfect. Not a single pixel wrong, no artefacts.
 
metapunk2077fail said:
@birmexer

Result so you can try the same thing and verify.

Latest Premiere 2022.

Taking the first three 4K cllps from the link above. Putting them on a timeline.

Three videos together are 22 seconds long.

Added the ALEXA Default LogC2Rec709 LUT.

Exported using h.264, YouTube1080p HD Preset.

Estimated file size was 44MB.

Export render time was 2 and a half seconds on M1 Max 32 core.

Exported video was 29.7MB, less than the estimated size.

Quality is perfect. Not a single pixel wrong, no artefacts.
Click to expand...
What happens if you export with software encoder? Is it now 44MB?
 
I remember when Adobe (finally!) added hardware accelerated CUDA exports with NVidia cards on Windows.

Export times were fast! Hooray for the GPU! But people complained about video quality, compression artifacts, etc.

So maybe hardware acceleration isn't all it's cracked up to be?

Should we export using only the CPU?

?
 
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birmexer said:
H264 shot on Canon EOS R
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h264 is already a very compressed format. It's the video equivalent of a jpeg.

So you already know that if your source material is a web distribution format then there is a chance that after editing an exporting the quality will be reduced. Have to be careful that the material has a flatter less colourful look before editing and grading. It's tricky.
 
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