Thanks so much for your thoughtful response! I didnt even realize until yesterday that I was not running the native M1 version of Premiere. (i was using v15.1 - a bit of googling revealed native M1 didnt start til v15.4…now im using v22.3.1 - both Intel and M1) - despite that, I was amazed how fast Premiere was working with the Intel version!
As for H.264 encoding for VJing - is it mainly making sure the keyframe is set to “every frame” in order to use well with VDMX? Anything else to keep in mind
Going forward - all my new video work, i will try and use the native M1 version (im assuming its even faster) and as @cmatts mentioned - start mastering my final visuals as ProRes