Premiere Pro H264: How to Import & Edit H264 Videos in Adobe Premiere Pro

From the Premiere Pro supported formats page, we can clearly see that Adobe Premiere Pro natively supports various media that use H.264 encoding. But why there are still some H264 videos that cannot be edited in Premiere Pro smoothly?

H.264 is a popular video compression standard for digital video files and is widely used for video capturing, compression, and distribution. It is accepted by many devices and applications. In general, H.264 is a delivery encoder and not an ideal codec for editing. That’s why it’s sometimes laggy and slow when editing H.264 videos in Premiere Pro. Moreover, if your H264 videos are wrapped in MKV and other Premiere Pro not supported formats, you cannot edit the videos as well.

So in order to smoothly edit H.264 videos in Premiere Pro, keep reading the following contents.

Solution 1. If Adobe Premiere Pro is very slow and laggy in previewing when you import H.264 videos to Premiere Pro for editing. You can try to disable the “H264/HEVC hardware accelerated decoding (requires restart)” option in the “Preference” > “Media” tab and then restart Premiere Pro.

Solution 2. As stated before, if your H.264 videos are wrapped in some Premiere Pro unsupported formats like MKV, you need to change the video container to make the H.264 videos successfully import into Adobe Premiere. Furthermore, Premiere Pro doesn’t support H.264 in an AVI container format. So if your H.264 videos are wrapped in AVI, you also need to convert AVI to MOV or other supported formats.

Solution 3. Also, H.264 is a delivery codec, which is not optimal for editing. So if you want a smooth H.264 video editing process, you may need to transcode H.264 to MPEG-2 or ProRes as they are the best formats for editing on Premiere Pro.

To effortlessly finish the video conversion task, a powerful video converter is essential. And WonderFox HD Video Converter Factory Pro is a handy H.264 video converter that can help you convert videos from/to H.264 for solving the H264 Premiere Pro editing issues. With it, you can convert H.264 encoded AVI, MKV, etc. videos to Premiere Pro's most compatible formats and codecs. The self-explanatory interface and simple workflow make the conversion process easy for everyone, even beginners. Moreover, it can help you customize the video resolution and other parameters in one click.

Now, free downloadfree download the application on your PC and follow the tutorial below to see how to convert H.264 videos to the best video format for Premiere Pro.

Step 1. Import H.264 Videos

Launch WonderFox HD Video Converter Factory Pro after you install it on your PC. Choose “Converter” to enter the video converter interface. Press the “+ Add Files” / “Add Video Folder” button to import H.264 videos or folder(s) you want to edit on Premiere Pro. You can also directly drag and drop the source videos to the workspace.

Step 2. Choose a Friendly Format for Adobe Premiere

Click the format image on the right side of the interface to expand the output format library. Here you can choose a video format under the “Video” tab, like MP4, MOV, MPG, etc., or ProRes under the “Device” > “Apple” option. Then, you can go to the “Parameter settings” window to choose a specific video codec.

For more Adobe Premiere Pro-supported formats and codecs, you can refer to this site: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/supported-file-formats.html

Step 3. Start Exporting Final Files

Now, press the inverted triangle button at the bottom of the interface to set an output path for the converted files, or just leave it as default. Finally, click “Run” to start the conversion.

With the support of hardware acceleration, you will get the converted files in no time.

After finishing video editing in Adobe Premiere Pro, someone may want to export H.264 videos from Adobe Premiere for good compatibility with media players or media-sharing sites. So how can we export Premiere Pro edited videos as H.264?

Step 1. Right-click the video sequence you want to export in the Timeline panel and choose “Export Media” or export the whole project by going to “File” > “Export” > “Media” on the top menu bar to open the exporting settings.

Step 2. In the “Export Settings” dialog box, choose “H.264” from the “Format” dropdown list. Then select “Match Source – High Bitrate” from the “Preset” dropdown menu. You can also scroll down to find other presets like Vimeo, YouTube, etc. Next, click on the “Output Name” to name the output file and choose export location, and then click “Save”. (Make sure “Export Video” and “Export Audio” are checked.)

Step 3. Now, you can click “Export” to export your H.264 videos immediately. But during that time, you cannot edit other projects in Premiere Pro until the previous file is exported. You can also click “Queue” and send the project to Adobe Media Encoder for exporting with other files in batch at a later time.

You can click the “Save Preset” button next to the preset drop-down in the export window to save your export settings as a new preset if you frequently use the settings to output files.

This article shares the way to solve Premiere Pro H264 not importing or editing issues. I hope you can now successfully import and edit H.264 videos in Adobe Premiere Pro. If you want to export H.264 videos in Adobe Premiere, this post also offers a simple guide for you. With HD Video Converter Factory Pro, you can be free from any format and codec unsupported issue.

Thank you for your reading. Have a nice day!