Native Apple Silicon Version of Adobe Premiere Pro Now Available in Beta

Native Apple Silicon Version of Adobe Premiere Pro Now Available in Beta

Adobe has announced that a new version of Premiere Pro that runs natively on M1 Macs is now available for public beta testers.

An Adobe Support Community document, shared by The 8-Bit, says Adobe will launch native ‌M1‌ support for all features within Premiere Pro in phases, and that many parts have not yet been ported to the M1. Adobe says it will be updating the Beta frequently as new builds become available.

The first public Beta includes all the core editing functions and workflows like color, graphics, and audio, as well as features like Productions, and multicam.  The company says it prioritized support for the most widely used codecs, like H.264, HEVC, and ProRes.

The average editor is likely to see very little difference from the Intel version, but Adobe says there are some limitations and known issues, which are listed below.

General Things to Know

  • Premiere Pro Beta for Apple M1 uses the new captions workflow, which requires you to upgrade project file format. If you want to work with current projects, we recommend creating a copy of for Beta testing to avoid compatibility issues with any ongoing production work.
  • After Effects and Media Encoder do not yet have Beta versions for M1 Macs.  Dynamic Link with After Effects and Queue to Media Encoder will work with the Intel Beta versions of those applications, which will run under Rosetta 2 emulation mode 

Supported Formats

  • H.264 & H.265 in MP4, MOV, or MXF
  • AVC Intra
  • XAVC-I & XAVC-L in MXF
  • ProRes in MOV or MXF
  • JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP, HEIF/HEIC
  • AAC, WAV, M4A

Known Issues

  • Tapping the tool selector on the Touch Bar (MacBook Pro) can cause a crash
  • Premiere Pro can crash on launch if set to Chinese localization
  • Team Projects collaborators can appear offline
  • Dragging markers in the Timeline or Program Monitor can cause a flicker in the Program Monitor
  • Estimated file size when exporting can be incorrect by an order of magnitude
  • Project Manager has an incomplete set of presets as well as some extraneous presets
  • Using Lumetri color controls while the Program or Source Monitor are set to Multi-Camera view can cause the application to hang

Not functioning currently

  • Learn Panel and in-app tutorials
  • Support for control surfaces
  • Not all video & audio effects have been ported
  • Legacy Titler (use the essential graphics workflow instead)
  • Motion Graphics Templates authored in After Effects (Premiere Pro authored MOGRTs work)
  • Old caption workflow (please use the new captioning workflow which is available in both beta versions, Apple Silicon and Intel)
  • Interchange formats (XML, AAF, OMF)
  • Capture panel & preferences
  • Device Control preferences
  • Third party plug-in support including panels, effects, scripting, and transmit
  • Libraries panel

Adobe advises that while it is working on its M1-native version of Premiere Pro, users can run the current release of Premiere Pro using Rosetta 2 emulation on Apple M1 devices and macOS 11.0 (Big Sur).