Render Farm for Premiere Pro CC

[devsinghania]

Hi guys,

 

Okay, before I start, let me mention that I am completely confused at the moment, hence I need your help!

 

I have finally decided to switch from Mac environment (Final Cut Pro X) to Windows based system (Adobe Premiere Pro CC) for the next upgrade to my film production company's editing hardware. I am planning to build two machines (maybe more if I get a better understanding after posting this article):

 

Machine 1: Editors Machine. Primary use for this machine is for my editor to do all the editing on Premiere Pro CC.

Machine 2: Render Farm. Primary use for this machine is to assist during the final render process of the film over a quad channel gigabit network for the output of the master copy.

 

Okay, now the confusing part:

According to this: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2013/07/19/adobe-premiere-pro-cc-hands-on-multi-gpu-support-and-more/ and this article: http://creativeclouduser.com/multiple-gpu-support-in-adobe-premiere-pro/ Adobe Premiere supports multiple GPUs for the render process. And LTT made a video a while back where they showed off their render farm build where they used dual Xeons and dual Titan X GPUs for it.

Video:

So according to all of above, having multiple GPUs should help in Premier Pro during the editing and final render process.

 

But, I was watching Dimitri's video (from HardwareCanucks), and he recently re-built his editing machine where he removed one of the two 980Tis from his system, and mentioned multiple GPUs don't make a difference in Premiere Pro editing process and premiere pro does not support multiple GPUs.

 

And queue the confusion.

 

Video:

 

 

Now at this stage, my final conclusion on the editing rig is to have only one 980Ti (If more than one are better, please mention in the comment and why.)

 

But when it comes to the render farm, I have a few questions:

Q.1: Which is more important when it comes to final render? GPU or CPU?

Q.2: Do I need a single GPU or having multiple GPUs will help with the render time? (If I select CUDA)

Q.3: Will having multiple GPUs benefit the Render machine at all? Or is it better to get an 18 core Xeon (or two) instead?

 

My original plan was to have a Skylake i7 with dual 980 Tis (in SLI) in the render farm machine, but after watching HardwareCanucks' video I am very much confused.

 

Can anyone suggest what should I go for the render farm? And which is more important for render... (Dual GPUs in SLI with Slylake i7) OR (a high end CPU)?

 

Apologies in advance if I sound like a noob, not a very technical person! and very much confused at the moment!

 

Thanks in advanced!

/d

[Beeeyeee]

9 minutes ago, devsinghania said:

 

But when it comes to the render farm, I have a few questions:

Q.1: Which is more important when it comes to final render? GPU or CPU?

Q.2: Do I need a single GPU or having multiple GPUs will help with the render time? (If I select CUDA)

Q.3: Will having multiple GPUs benefit the Render machine at all? Or is it better to get an 18 core Xeon (or two) instead?

 

Adobe rendering only uses GPU's for transitions and small things like that. I have a 980ti and a 4790k and when I render, my CPU is at 100% constantly, and the GPU only spikes to about 30% every once in a while. GPU isn't used anymore. there used to be software support to where its a million times faster to render with a GPU but GPU tech has been so far behind in recent years that there hasn't been any real support for it.

 

1. CPU by far. the more cores and hyperthreading, the better.

2. a GPU will honestly not help your render times by much at all anymore.just one GPU. if you're doing gaming, get a GTX something or other. if not just get a cheap $100 quatro card. 

3. definitely a Xeon.

[devsinghania]

6 minutes ago, Beeeyeee said:

Adobe rendering only uses GPU's for transitions and small things like that. I have a 980ti and a 4790k and when I render, my CPU is at 100% constantly, and the GPU only spikes to about 30% every once in a while. GPU isn't used anymore. there used to be software support to where its a million times faster to render with a GPU but GPU tech has been so far behind in recent years that there hasn't been any real support for it.

 

1. CPU by far. the more cores and hyperthreading, the better.

2. a GPU will honestly not help your render times by much at all anymore.just one GPU. if you're doing gaming, get a GTX something or other. if not just get a cheap $100 quatro card. 

3. definitely a Xeon.

Man thank you so much! This cleared up my doubts

[Aereldor]

40 minutes ago, Beeeyeee said:

get a cheap $100 Quadro card. 

Any recommendations? As far as I know, even the cheapest GDDR5 Quadro cards are at least $250.

[Beeeyeee]

https://pcpartpicker.com/part/pny-video-card-vcqk420pb

https://pcpartpicker.com/part/pny-video-card-vcqk620pb

 

either one of these should be more than enough

[Streetguru]

3 hours ago, Aereldor said:

Any recommendations? As far as I know, even the cheapest GDDR5 Quadro cards are at least $250.

The firepro cards at usually a good alternative

[JimmyGuilbault]

I'm getting more confused now about how CPUs/GPUs are handled in Adobe now because at my school we have Mac Pros with dual, quad-core, 3.0 GHz Xeon CPUs with a Radeon 5000 series GPU. My rig I have at home has one quad-core Xeon at 3.4-3.8GHz CPU and a GTX960 and my rig seems to render much faster than the Mac Pros at my school. My thought was that GPUs help a ton, but now I'm not sure as people are saying CPU matters more. Can anyone explain better?

[devsinghania]

On 19 March 2016 at 6:12 PM, JimmyGuilbault said:

I'm getting more confused now about how CPUs/GPUs are handled in Adobe now because at my school we have Mac Pros with dual, quad-core, 3.0 GHz Xeon CPUs with a Radeon 5000 series GPU. My rig I have at home has one quad-core Xeon at 3.4-3.8GHz CPU and a GTX960 and my rig seems to render much faster than the Mac Pros at my school. My thought was that GPUs help a ton, but now I'm not sure as people are saying CPU matters more. Can anyone explain better?

Yup, thats confusing... Can anyone help? I am interested to know the answer too... I don't wanna invest a ton of money on a dual 18 core xeon and realise it was a waste of money.. 

 

But after doing some testing, I have noticed when I am rendering and making the final export, my CPU usage is at 100%. So I am guessing CPU plays an important role, higher the cores, better the speed... 

 

Still confused though, considering your situation.. 

[SLAYR]

On March 19, 2016 at 7:42 AM, JimmyGuilbault said:

I'm getting more confused now about how CPUs/GPUs are handled in Adobe now because at my school we have Mac Pros with dual, quad-core, 3.0 GHz Xeon CPUs with a Radeon 5000 series GPU. My rig I have at home has one quad-core Xeon at 3.4-3.8GHz CPU and a GTX960 and my rig seems to render much faster than the Mac Pros at my school. My thought was that GPUs help a ton, but now I'm not sure as people are saying CPU matters more. Can anyone explain better?

The dual cpus in the mac pro are socket 771 and compared to the xeon you have they are no where near as powerful. Combined they only are as powerful as an i5.

[devsinghania]

3 minutes ago, SLAYR said:

The dual cpus in the mac pro are socket 771 and compared to the xeon you have they are no where near as powerful. Combined they only are as powerful as an i5.

That makes sense!

[JimmyGuilbault]

7 hours ago, SLAYR said:

The dual cpus in the mac pro are socket 771 and compared to the xeon you have they are no where near as powerful. Combined they only are as powerful as an i5.

Thanks! That makes more since now.

[ImperatorRuscal]

TLDR ::  YES the GPU DOES make a HUGE difference in the ability of Premiere to export.  As long as you have the right GPU.

 

I don't want to rev an old topic for flames, but I do want to correct some bad information.  The GPU absolutely can affect the export speed of the project in Premiere.  In fact, the GTX960 in JimmyGuilbault's home rig IS the reason it works so much faster than the Mac Pro with Radeon kits he compared it to.

 

While other people have properly stated that "rendering" doesn't use GPU outside of effects and transitions, that is because it doesn't need to.  Rendering a non-effect/non-transition is the same thing as directly copying.  It is laying down an unmodified version of the exact same frame and requires ZERO additional processing.  Anything that needs processing in the rendering (transitions, effects, overlays, etc) is capable of being offloaded to the GPU.  And those things get a huge boost when rendered on GPU over CPU.

 

What you guys are seeing spike out your CPU isn't rendering, but encoding.  While most people use the terms interchangeably, they really aren't.  Encoding, is where you take the rendered frames and then move them to the video codec you need for final output (MPEG2 for a DVD, or H.264, etc).  If encoding with a lossless codec then this is, for all intents, the same as rendering.  But in today's world most of us don't encode losslessly.  We encode to something more storage and stream friendly, mostly H.264 or HEVC.  Those are compressed codecs (less data is stored than would be required to fully represent each frame), and compressing video takes mega work.  This compressing is where your CPU is spiking up near 100%.

 

If you have a good GPU with the ability to offload the video encoding (like JimmyGuilbault's nVidia GTX 960 with the NVENC chip & subsystem) then the GPU can handle the encoding for you.  On the other hand, those ATI Radeon 5000 cards don't have a dedicated encoding chip that Premiere can utilize, so the Mac Pros are stuck using only CPU for the encoding.  That is one of the reasons that Adobe will point you towards using a nVidia graphics card with a Kepler or newer chipset when you are building a rig for use as a media encoder.  The Kepler, Maxwell, and (still hard to find for now) Pascal chipsets from nVidia all have NVENC, with each successive generation able to encode an order of magnitude faster.  That is also why my rig with Maxwell chipped GPUs can encode 1080 video at ~840 fps, and the CPU will sit below 60%; but the same rig with the Mercury Engine (the nVidia GPU render engine) disabled only encodes at 90-100 fps, and maxes out the CPU.

 

So for anyone reading, do take care to use GPU based "rendering" when you will be encoding to a compressed file format.  You'll save your CPU from undue stress and get your output significantly faster than using CPU alone.  And if you are building a new rig, get a GPU with dedicated video encoding channels that Premiere supports (like the nVidia cards with NVENC)

 

What does the Mercury Engine do:

https://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/cuda-mercury-playback-engine-and-adobe-premiere-pro/?segment=dva

 

What video cards can offer GPU offload for Premiere Pro:

https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/system-requirements.html

 

[Andrew M]

Hey, sorry to hijack this but I'm considering building a new PC rig that I'm considering using to support my Mac Pro to decrease render times.

 

How are you setting up the syncing/rendering/encoding on your secondary machine? Is there a blog post that describes it? All the google results I can find are from 2012-13 and aren't giving me any helpful information.

 

Thank you so much!