x264 PRO Plugin for Adobe Premiere/Media Encoder stopped working

[Sithtronic]

Hi,

maybe there is someone here, who can help me.

We are using the x264PRO Plugin from 3AM Digital Studios on PC for encoding, especially for Encore-conform Blu-ray and high quality web-videos. The plugin was pricey with 500$ but the results were pretty good and the work-flow was easy.

Recently I had to reset some stuff on the PC and the plugin wanted to be activated again, where I get a "server not found"-error now. It seems, the company doesn't exist anymore (website and server are down) and has abandoned the product without any hint, how their clients are supposed to use the software because of the now impossible activation-function, that protects the software.

This is a real bummer for an expensive plugin like that. Is there any known work-around for that issue?

Any chance to contact someone from that company?

Is there any alternative for encoding Encore-conform high quality h264 or x264-videos from Premiere? I tried Voukoder but that wasn't really working well. I also tried TMPGEnc Movie, which was lacking the "Retain Grain"-option and was not that easy to see through.

Thanks a lot in advance.

[october262]

it seems like the x264PRO Plugin softare was hacked into and pirated, thus
the reason for the shutdown. - https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/bluray-compression-issues-glitches-artefac.../page/2?page=1
other users recommend using the tmpgEnc plug-in or Voukoder - https://www.voukoder.org/

edit: since you've already tried the tmpeg & voukoder, there is one call multicorewarenic - post #3 - http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=174989

[Sithtronic]

Thanks a lot for the links.

It's a shame, I wouldn't even even know, how to crack the software to make it work. At the Adobe-forums I saw the author of the plug-in is Edward Richards but I couldn't find him anywhere and the company is closed.

Maybe I need to try TMPEGEnc a little more. The multicorewarenic-software seems to be h.265/hevc only.

[sophisticles]

We are using the x264PRO Plugin from 3AM Digital Studios on PC for encoding, especially for Encore-conform Blu-ray and high quality web-videos. The plugin was pricey with 500$ but the results were pretty good and the work-flow was easy.

ROTFLMAO!!!

I'm sorry, I just had to laugh. You paid $500 to some scammer for a piece of software that is just the x264 encoder with some activation non-sense wrapped around?!?

Then you wonder why they disappeared?

Come on, man.

Just export your content to an archival/mastering format and then feed that to the encoder of your choice.

And learn from this mistake, never spend a dime on anything that is basically an open source, GPL'd program that someone took and slapped some "anti-piracy" protection on it.

I wouldn't be surprised if the people that hacked it where the x264 devs themselves or someone associated with them, pissed off what what this guy was doing.

[Sithtronic]

@ sophisticles

Wasn't that simple back then. The plug-in would create Encore-compatible streams with x.264 directly from Premiere CS6 timeline or through the AME - which is really difficult until today, because Adobe put in some strange special requirements no one really understands. They stand out from the usual Blu-ray video regulations. You have only the option to use the built in encoder. Everything else would usually be regarded as "not transcoded" and re-encoded with the far worse encoder. That's why I am asking for a hint to a good solution here.

Yes, it was a lot of money and a bad copy-protection but they did help you, if there was any issue and gave a good support and had a very useful product.