I'm confused about Media Encoder, and hoping someone can help.
I have a short film that's primarily 4K ProRes augmented with some "flashbacks" that are 1920 by 1080 h264 files. All edits beautifully in my 4K ProRes timeline.
I have some Magic Bullet B&W corrections on the 1080 footage. On the 4K footage, I just have an overall grade in an Adjustment Layer (for now). I can play in Software Mode (CUDA won't work on my Retina Mac - separate thread!) at 1/4 resolution. The 4K stuff looks great, the 1080 pretty bad.
I've been outputting by matching sequence settings. The file is TITANIC, but looks great. I use that file to make various smaller files in APPLE COMPRESSOR. I find it better and more flexible (especially with cropping for 2.35, etc.) What can I say. All in all, the workflow works for me.
So here's the problem. Today I wanted to use In and Out to export a small section for music review with a colleague. No need to have a huge file, I just used Media Encoder in a Vimeo SD mode.
In the first attempt, the 1080 stuff oddly looked terrible. Just as it does when viewed at 1/4 resolution. To make sure everything was okay, I outputted that section at Matched Sequence settings. All good - the 1080 stuff had the Magic Bullet B&W look working great.
Then I tried again with the Vimeo SD setting. Only this time I checked Render at Maximum Resolution. Took FOREVER, but all good again. The 1080 stuff was fine.
Next I renendered "in to out" in my sequence (I hadn't done so previously - I was working "red line"). Output without checking Max Render Quality. Back to the horrible 1080 stuff.
Finally, I chose "use previews", but not max render. All good again.
So, at last a question. Does this make sense? I never before had to use either Maximum Render OR Use Previews to get acceptable quality with "device" settings. Is this a bug? Or related to my disparate picture sizes? Or something else? Thank you all!