H.264 Codec Premiere Pro Download
Hennie Jaffe
I am trying to use premiere, but I wouldn't mind switching computer programs to accomplish my goal. h.264 is an amazing codec for exporting videos, it is the fastest I've seen yet. Same exact videos but in a different codec take 5-10 times as long to export. So I'd like to make videos with the h.264 codec.
If I can't do this with premiere, can someone point me to a program that does it? I would be able to take a 4k video, with 8k esque bitrate, convert it to a 8k video, and it would look some what decent.
Are you sure the 8k videos on your computer are actually h.264, and not h.265? The max resolution of h.264 level 5.2 is still 4096x2305. To convert beyond that in Premiere, you need to chose HEVC (h.265) as the format in the export settings dialog. The HEVC stands for High Efficiency Video Coding, and you might have that confused with "advanced video encoding." H.265 supports up to 81924320. Upscaling your 4k in Premiere shouldn't be a problem, either. I'd do it by changing the project settings to my desired resolution, then scaling the timeline video to fit, but you could probably also do it in the export settings dialog.
Are you a user of Adobe Premiere Pro? As a timeline-based video editing software, Adobe Premiere Pro (CC, CS6, CS5, CS4) have massive fans. Normally, it is easy to import video to Premiere Pro (CC, CS6, CS5, CS4) for editing. But there is still trouble that happens when you importing H.264 video to Adobe Premiere Pro (CC, CS6, CS5, CS4). User' reports said that it's sometimes laggy and slow when eding H.264 video in Premiere Pro. Moreover, some can't import H.264 video to Premiere Pro.
In Premiere Pro supported media page, Premiere Pro supports various media that use H.264 encoding. So why can't people edit H.264 video in Premiere Pro smoothly? Reasons are various to cause the issues. Now, read on and find the best solution to solve the issues for you.
Solution 1: When you imported H.264 video to Premiere Pro for editing, Adobe Premiere Pro CC is very slow, lagging preview. You can try disabling "Enable accelerated Intel h.264 decoding" option in Media tab (preferences).
Solution 2: Premiere Pro does not support H.264 in an AVI container. So if your H.264 video is AVI format, you can't import and edit your H.264 video in Premiere Pro. You can try changing the filename extension from AVI to MOV.
Solution 3: H.264 is a delivery codec and it isn't an ideal codec for editing. That's why you cannot edit H.264 in Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro smoothly sometimes. Luckily, there is an easy solution to fix the problem. The easy workaround is transcoding H.264 to MPEG-2 or ProRes for Premiere Pro (CC, CS6, CS5, CS4).
To convert H.264 to Premiere Pro, you need a H.264 video converter. Searched online, you can find that Pavtube Video Converter for Mac is a decent H.264 video decoder and encoder. It simply changes your H.264 encoded MP4, MKV, AVI, etc video to Premiere Pro most compatible MPEG-2 and ProRes codec video within 3 cliks. On the other hand, it also can encode other video files to H.264/AVC encoded video files, with this small but powerful tool, you can create creating an H.264 movie by yourself.
When it comes to setting up the video parameters, you can select the video codec, pick the video size, and adjust the framerate, while the audio ones can be tweaked in terms of bitrate, codec, and sample rate. You even can trim, crop, merge, split, flip, rorate, add subtitles/watermarks before you start to convert H.264 AVC video to Premiere Pro.
Thankfully I have found a temporary workaround - where I can open up the Intel version of Premiere and HAP works. So it appears as if the issue is the M1. But long term - id like to use the native version of M1 in Premiere instead of the Intel version.
Is there a better codec now to use for VDMX than HAP? Cause id really like to keep editing with my VDMX exports instead of having to export a ProRes version of my visuals for Editing, and a HAP version for VDMX
All that being said, when I switched from my 2015 Macbook Pro to a new M1 Max MBP I converted 8TB of video (HAP, Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC), ProRes, PhotoJPEG, etc) down to 3TB of H.264 and put it on a fast external SSD. There are pros and cons to this, but for the most part, this machine has no issues with H.264, and most of these clips are all sorts of video resolutions, most 1080p or under.
Amazing! thanks so much again for taking the time to write such a response. Ive been using VDMX since 2009 too! lol - i def remember them Photo JPG and AIC days, hahaha. I also just switched a few months ago from a 2012 MBP to the fully loaded M1 Max MBP - words can not describe how refreshing and amazing the experience has been!
In the end, after years of VJing on a slow ass computer - i want ZERO issues when it comes to playback, scrolling through a video, adding effects (like rutt etra, kaleidescope, etc) on at least 4 to 5 layers at a time - in general the M1 Max should have no problem with this - but Im thinking i should probably stick to HAP for now as its still the best for live video no? I have not tried ProRes LT before - but that would probably be bigger than HAP clips.
Compression: Depending on how you export your H.264 files, going from something like a an HD or UHD edited video to a compressed H.264 can add a lot a noise. This mainly depends on your encoding setttings, but it can take a lot of tweaking to get this right for perfect picture quality.
Indeed, AfterCodecs is an exporter plugin. If you need to import HAP audiovideo files into Adobe software, there is the Influx Importer plugin for that purpose and it also supports others codecs. Both AfterCodecs and Influx Importer supports native Apple Silicon (M1, M2 etc.)
thanks for the info. only seeing your post now. Are you saying if I get Influx - i could theoretically import HAP clips into the native M1 version of premiere? Ive been running Premiere in Rosetta the whole year now.
To show you the difference more definitively, take a look at these screen grabs which have been blown up to 400% so you can see how different the compression actually is. The top is FCP X and the bottom is Premiere Pro:
Noam Kroll is an award-winning Los Angeles based filmmaker, and the founder of the boutique production house, Creative Rebellion. His work can be seen at international film festivals, on network television, and in various publications across the globe. Follow Noam on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for more content like this!
I typically output everything to ProRes HQ (my main mastering format) and then create any sub masters or web deliverables (such as H264 from there). Occasionally on really high end jobs I will master to ProRes 444 or even a DPX image sequence. But 99% of the time ProRes HQ will do the trick.
In Premiere go to File>Export>AAF, choose a name, and click Save.
You can now import the .aaf file into Resolve Lite.
Once inside Resolve go to Session>Export. In the drop down menu Select Final Cut Pro XML Round Trip.
Now select all the clips you want to send to Final Cut Pro and hit Start Render.
Now jump back into FCPX and go to File>Import>XML
Last week (2/6/15) I did a test encode using the exact same settings in both Compressor (v3.5.3) and AME CC 2014.2 (8.2.0.54) and find the AME encodes to be unacceptable in comparison to the Compressor output. Whether or not I used the Maximum Depth or Render Quality made no difference. AME still produced very poor compressions with loss of detail, blocking, and aliasing. This was an apples to apples comparison in which AME failed.
This is not accurate, on a PC at least. I did the test twice and output pics and analyzed them in Photoshop.
I think you should reconsider your tests especially if only done on only Mac. I can send my test tiffs if you wish.
Thanks Noam, for this great article.
I always export Prores HQ from FCPX and then Mpeg streamclip to h264 1000, cause is a fast tool, but do you think FCPX compression is better than Mpeg?
Thanks again
Hey Noam, thanks for the article! As someone who did my own tests before settling on which way of doing h.264 outputs looked best and were fastest, I settled on Premiere/Adobe Media Encoder. To be fair, I was comparing against the previous version of Compressor at the time.
Choosing to edit in one NLE just because of the output compression is not the best reason to choose one over the other. This is kind of a poor comparison when you consider that your options to outputting from Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder are almost endless. We have about 12 presets we use at my offices and from those we adjust depending on the output of the file.
In FCP7, I always exported with the sequence settings, for fast export, then used MPEG Streamclip, because in one window I could control the frame rate, frame size, and audio rate, and I could keep working on the timeline.
Hi Noam,
This site is always helpful, thanks.
Then, what is the best workflow to compress a video if I edit with Premiere? Export from Premiere to ProRes and then compress to H264 with Compressor? It would slow down the process. Any tips?
Best,
Albert.
I am not so much a videographer, at least not yet, I am more into developing gimbals and making videos demonstrating their cababilities and learning a lot also of videography and post processing and tools like the FCP X.
Especially on the least one there is plenty of panning and tilting starting at 0:40, and YouTube is simply playing it back very bad, it looks like dropping frames. I am using the best available settings and downloading directly from FCPX, but have also tried different methods, without any success. The videos play back nicely and smoothly on FCPX. For this type presentation videos a smooth playback is important.
I went back and critically looked the original files and I think you are right, there is some very minor jitter, but not really that visible before loaded to YouTube. The last file linked above is on Vimeo, and I think that is much better.
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