Q: Why does Adobe Media Encoder fail to export Quicktime Files?

While exporting the Quicktime variant of H.264 for ATSC television broadcast files, Adobe Media Encoder fails.  Non-Quicktime H.264's render correctly, but some television stations require quicktime.

What does "Quicktime variant of H.264" mean here? Are you referring to the MPEG-4 AVC compressed data or the file container? Data compressed using the JVT H.264/MPEG-4 AVC specification should should play the same in MOV, MP4, or M4V file containers whether compressed using the H.264, X.264, FFmpegX, or other third party, non-proprietary software/hardware packages. The only thing special about Apple's H.264 encoder is its context adaptive nature that auto-adjusts the various Profile, Level, data rate, feature, etc. setting combinations to optimize output even when the user would prefer to make such choices manually and end up creating a file that is incompatible with QT-based media apps.

Troubleshooting reveals the problem only occurs when attempting to make a 1920x1080 H.264 QuickTime file.

 

Using the same original file (1920x1080), Adobe Media Encoder WILL export a 720x480/486 H.264 MOV file.

More interesting still, it will ALSO export at 1280x720.

Testing this information to it's limits, I found that the cutoff for a successful render is between a frame size of 1610x906 and 1609x905.

Not an Adobe Media Encoder user, so the first question that comes to mind is whether or not the Adobe problem output file meet the JVT specification for a particular resolution/frame rate or attempt to utilize a particular feature incompatible with the JVT specification at the "break point" you discovered. This may sound somewhat overly simplistic but I would check these basics before moving on to more convoluted possibilities.

I'm trying to make a file with the extension ".MOV" using AME's "HD 1080i 29.97, H.264, AAC 48kHz" preset.  AME fails every time with the following message:

 

"Encoding Failed

Export Error

Error compiling movie.

Unknown error."

 

Any other file extension (MP4, M4V, etc.) renders fine.  The issue seems only to happen when attempting to make an MOV file.  It doesn't seem to matter whether I use AME's built-in preset, or customize my own render settings--the problem always happens with any MOV larger than the size I mentioned above.

 

All of this used to work just fine on the same machine 2 years back with Adobe CS5, previous version of windows and QuicTime.  I've been all through the Adobe and Windows possibilities, so I'm grabbing at straws here with QuickTime maybe having something to do with it.

Interesting.

Would you happen to know if Adobe has made any changes to its manner of muxing long-address MPEG-4 AVC data to the MOV file container? Since the MP4 and M4V files encode properly, have you tried opening these files in a media player and simply using the "Save As..." option to move the date to an MOV file container without transcoding audio or video data? I.e., is there any obvious relationship between the size of the MOV file encode (less than/greater than 4 GB) as a function of the resolution "break point" previously discovered?

Good question.  I tried "Save As" from Quicktime Player, but no file actually seems to be saving.  The "Save As" dialogue closes as if everything has gone well, but when I check the destination folder, no new file has been saved.

Have you opened the target window beforehand to see if a file container is actually generated and then deleted by the QT app or does processing terminate immediately?

Also, with regard to the software used with the files you create, does it actually check the file internals to see if the data in in a "real" MOV file container or does it merely trap the file extension. I.e., in some cases your files may be acceptable if you simply change the file extension without actually moving the data to a new file container. Just a thought based on older, co-called "workarounds."

But let's take one problem at a time. The file size issue is a good point.  The MP4 presets I have been using as a workaround actually make a LARGER (approx 120Mb) file than the QuickTime ones (apoprox 45Mb) I used to use for the same length file, 30-second television spots.

This does not sound right if the files are using the same export settings—primarily the same target audio/video data rates. I suspect that if you open the properties windows (or check a media info utility) and compare the files, you will like find the encode settings to be quite different here.

Oddly, this encoding failure doesn't exist on a machine running all the same software versions on a "Windows 7 Ultimate" platform.  Another editor online confirms he has this same problem also only on machines with "Windows 7 Pro".  So it has to have something to do with the OS version.  I'm of course also following-up with Microsoft and Adobe on all of this, but thought I'd try all my options in case someone has already solved it.

This does sound like an OS or media support problem.

Having the same problema, I'm actually running latest CC version on windows 10. Oddly I have a laptop that doesn't fail to encode FullHD .mov h.264 files. So I always have to copy my files and encode them on my laptop. Any solutions?

Ugh, no idea why my first reply was removed. Trying again. I guess conversational posts trip some sort of flag.

Workaround is to start task manager, go to details, right click premiere pro, choose set affinity, and uncheck cores 'til you get down to 8. Then it'll work. Just don't forget to change the affinity back before you start exporting other formats.

Is that enough for the robotic moderator overlords that make stupid decisions? We'll see.