CS6 encoding: CPU usage only 45% ?

[LucasHoller]

Hey, i have a problem that have been bugging me for weeks, and i can't seem to find the anwser so i wanted to see if anyone here could help.
The problem is that when i'm encoding/exporting my final edit (4k h.264) the process only usage 40-45 % of my 10 core E5-2670 v2 xeon cpu, and i have Ram to spare. The exporting is done from a SSD to an SSD.

i'm using media encoder and premiere pro cs6

my rig:
E5-2670 v2 xeon
Asus rampage IV
120 Gb SSD for OS and program.
256 GB SSD for the media im working on.
1 TB 7200 RPM HDD for storrage, for videos when done and uploaded.
780 TI GPU.
16 Gb of Ram.

hope you can help.

[ALwin]

snip

 

I believe the usage will depend on the effects, edits you are rendering.

 

What editing, effects have you applied to the video?

What is the duration of the video file you are trying to render out?

What specific settings are you using to render the video?

How long does it take your workstation to render it?

 

Additionally if you're getting low CPU and RAM usage, while Media Encoder is doing a good job with the rendering shouldn't you be happy about it?

[LucasHoller]

1: mostly just motion, crop, three-way-color corrector and some times a warp stabilizer but only for a few short clips.
2: the video files i edit 100 mbps 4k fottages in h.264 codec, and the duration are around 5-7 minuts per video.
3: i export in h.264, 4k, 100 mbps, maximum render quality.
4: i can't remember but somewhere around 45 minuts - 1,5 hour to export a 5 Gb file.

yes i should be happy, but if they were running at full speed it would go faster and that would be preferable.
 

[ALwin]

snip

 

 

Have you tried how much CPU/Memory usage occurs with other programs like DaVinci Resolve 12 or a trial version of the newest Adobe Premiere + Media Encoder?  Perhaps CS6 is not fully optimized, have you checked the settings in CS6 to make full use of your hardware?

 

Additionally, I'm curious that you have a 10 core processor but only 16GB of memory, have you considered doubling or quadrupling that?

[LucasHoller]

maybe i shoud try other programs.
yes i have but is i'm not using all 16 Gb yet it's not that important (but i buying an additional 16 gb soon) 

[ALwin]

maybe i shoud try other programs.

yes i have but is i'm not using all 16 Gb yet it's not that important (but i buying an additional 16 gb soon) 

 

Ok if you're interested in knowing, I did a 5 minute static recording with my camera (pointed out the window) at UHD 4K XAVC-I.  A color correction in Premiere Pro CC 2015 using Lumetri Color, rendering out to 4K with VBR 100Mbps.

 

I am on my Mid 2015 Retina Macbook Pro with 16GB of memory and a R9 M370x GPU.

 

Memory usage is currently averaging around 11.3GB, I know Premiere leaves around 4-5GB for the system and other applications to use so that it doesn't hog 100% of the available memory.

 

CPU usage, a i7 quad core, is fluctuating between 60-75%.

 

Media Encoder is estimating around 50 minutes to finish rendering out.

 

Disclaimer, I was just pointing my camera out the window to record whatever was happening outside (people walking, traffic) so obviously our recorded footage will have different bit rates.

 

I'll take the video file at home and test what CPU and memory usage I get with the home workstation (i7 4790K, 32GB memory and dual Titan X) with 2x Samsung SSDs in RAID 0.

 

I wonder how long it would take LMG's powerful, 36-core was it?, video editing/rendering setup to render out a 5 minute 4K footage.

 

FYI, this looks like a nice article.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pro-CC-Multi-Core-Performance-698/

 

4K video has four times the number of pixels as 1080p video so we expected Premiere Pro to be able to effectively utilize more CPU cores when encoding 4K video. Unfortunately, our results were actually the opposite of what we expected.

 

At lower core counts, the simple timeline was 92% efficient and the complex timeline was 97% efficient. However, both dropped off to only 40% efficient after only 5 CPU cores. At first we thought that either the video card or storage drive was becoming a bottleneck but going down to only a single GTX Titan X and changing the storage drive to either a slower WD RE 6TB or a faster Intel 750 NVMe 1.2TB did not result in any change to the export times. It is possible that we are being limited by the RAM speed or something within the chipset, but no matter what the end result is that if you are encoding 4K H.264 video in Premiere Pro you will only effectively be able to use 5-6 CPU cores.

 

[LucasHoller]

what ? only 5-6 cores? how can adobe not be using more? it's a very high end software?

[ALwin]

what ? only 5-6 cores? how can adobe not be using more? it's a very high end software?

 

Would be great to hear some technical info from Adobe's software engineers, hear what they have to say about performance to hardware configuration ratio.

[Scruffy90]

Adobe never went on record as to whether or not PP is more core dependant or clock speed dependant. It's weird because on the adobe forums some of the fastest rendering machines are using i7 2600k's at ~5Ghz. Makes me believe clock speed is more important.

[ALwin]

Continuing from earlier, I did a test with the same video file recorded earlier today.  With my home workstation

 

i7 4790K

32GB

dual Titan X

 

CPU usage: mainly fluctuating between 70-89%, sometimes drops down to 54% or up to 95% but very infrequently.

Memory: Between 9-11GB used.

Media Encoder estimated render time: 30 minutes

 

My Macbook Pro specs are

i7-4980HQ

16GB

R9 M370X

 

In either case, I didn't see a big usage of the GPU, as I was only doing a minor color correction on a video recorded with SLOG3 so I am discounting the GPU as a major factor.

 

 

Adobe never went on record as to whether or not PP is more core dependant or clock speed dependant. It's weird because on the adobe forums some of the fastest rendering machines are using i7 2600k's at ~5Ghz. Makes me believe clock speed is more important.

 

I think it depends on the types of effects that have been applied to the video footage, but yes it does seem like clock speed is a bit more important than the number of CPU cores.

 

So if that article is correct, an ideal CPU for Premiere Pro/Media encoder should have between 4-6 cores, with as fast a clock speed as possible.

[.spider.]

Why do you abuse h.264 as an intermediate codec, instead of using a real intermediate codec? 

[ALwin]

1: mostly just motion, crop, three-way-color corrector and some times a warp stabilizer but only for a few short clips.

2: the video files i edit 100 mbps 4k fottages in h.264 codec, and the duration are around 5-7 minuts per video.

3: i export in h.264, 4k, 100 mbps, maximum render quality.

4: i can't remember but somewhere around 45 minuts - 1,5 hour to export a 5 Gb file.

yes i should be happy, but if they were running at full speed it would go faster and that would be preferable.

 

 

I just realized, you wrote "maximum render quality".  Do you have the "use maximum render quality" check box checked?

 

There are some discussions here, and I am not sure you even need it checked or use it all the time.

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/920605

https://forums.adobe.com/message/3282830

[ALwin]

Can you also post a screen cap of your export settings, and list which effects and what layers you have in the video?

 

There are some discussions about Media Encoder with low CPU utilization.  Here are some of them.

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/933609

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1025520

http://video.stackexchange.com/questions/12859/how-to-force-adobe-media-encoder-to-use-100-cpu-and-memory

 

Which version of Windows do you have, and do you have all the latest versions of drivers and software?

 

This comment was meant for another topic by the same OP.

[LeeWonky]

Why do you abuse h.264 as an intermediate codec, instead of using a real intermediate codec? 

Because why not? I guess (no, seriously, I'm guessing)

[ALwin]

Because why not? I guess (no, seriously, I'm guessing)

 

You don't always need to transcode the camera footage.  Many NLE systems are updated to support the most popular codecs and file formats these days.  There are times when transcoding will be beneficial and when it will not.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcoding

 

I personally prefer not to transcode as my system can handle the camera's XAVC-I in a MXF container just fine.  Sure there is a bit of stuttering when scrubbing 4K footage, but not transcoding actually saves time off my workflow.

 

PS: Yesterday I had the OP transcode some sample footage to ProRes, he didn't see any performance difference by using either H.264 or ProRes.  He seems to have a system or software bottleneck somewhere that is preventing the full utilization of the CPU.

[.spider.]

Because why not? I guess (no, seriously, I'm guessing)

Because there are codecs which are resigned for that thus these codecs are faster.