CPU Bottleneck for 4K video editing?

[Layne C]

Hi all,

 

I edit 4K video and was recently looking at task manager while editing and was realizing that for certain aspects of the edit, my CPU usage was at 100% and my graphics card never exceeded 30% while rendering out a video. I don't know much about bottlenecks, but I'm curious if I have had a large bottleneck this whole time from my processor but just never bothered to check. I also noticed my CPU's graphics card was being utilized at one point but my 3060 wasn't. I assume this is due to Adobe assigning tasks to specific components, but do I have a setting turned off that doesn't allow for utilization of my graphics card or something??

 

Editing is typically pretty smooth for me, though there are a couple times I have to wait for Premiere Pro to catch up. I don't have a separate SSD for caching, and I edit off of hard drives so I've always assumed this combination was my bottleneck, though now I'm not sure. My question is, is this a massive bottleneck or would there not be much of a difference if I upgraded my CPU? At the time of buying this CPU, I thought it was a pretty good one (considering my budget too), but 3.60GHz is sort of slow, correct? Is that part of my bottleneck? Is this even a bottleneck at all?

 

Probably irrelevant but can't hurt to add this. I don't game much but I play some League of Legends on max settings and rarely ever get below 100fps. I haven't paid attention to my fps in that game in awhile, I just don't look at it, but I'm pretty sure this number is close to accurate.

 

Screenshots attached.

 

Hardware specs (built new in 2022):

Intel Core i7 12700K 3.6GHz 12-core processor

32GB ram

Gigabyte B660M DS3H DDR4 Micro ATX LGA 1700 Motherboard

GeForce RTX 3060 12GB Graphics Card

Dual monitors, one is 3840x2180 via DisplayPort and the other is 1920x1080 via HDMI

 

Editing Info:

Premiere Pro V24.3

Canon RAW .CRM & .MP4 is the typical footage I'm editing 

The export I mentioned was in Media Encoder and exporting as an h.264 1920x1080 target 16mb/s. About a 5 minute video

I don't edit using proxies

 

Thanks for your help. Happy to provide additional info if needed.

 

[GuiltySpark_]

2 minutes ago, Layne C said:

I edit off of hard drives

That's going to make the actual editing process a pain, especially scrubbing through clips. 

 

I don't know if bottleneck is the right term here. If you're doing an action in an editor that is a CPU function, something like the final export, you're going to see 100% CPU usage, or at least you should. 

 

Lot of good information in this thread. https://old.reddit.com/r/premiere/comments/10zbmm2/how_do_i_get_premiere_pro_to_use_more_gpu_instead/

 

Especially this comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/premiere/comments/10zbmm2/how_do_i_get_premiere_pro_to_use_more_gpu_instead/j83mlot/

[Layne C]

3 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

That's going to make the actual editing process a pain, especially scrubbing through clips. 

 

I don't know if bottleneck is the right term here. If you're doing an action in an editor that is a CPU function, something like the final export, you're going to see 100% CPU usage, or at least you should. 

 

Lot of good information in this thread. https://old.reddit.com/r/premiere/comments/10zbmm2/how_do_i_get_premiere_pro_to_use_more_gpu_instead/

 

Especially this comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/premiere/comments/10zbmm2/how_do_i_get_premiere_pro_to_use_more_gpu_instead/j83mlot/

You're right, that's an awesome thread and comment. Wish I saw that before I made my post. I'm happy to know that all seems normal then, thank you!

[podkall]

13 minutes ago, Layne C said:

You're right, that's an awesome thread and comment. Wish I saw that before I made my post. I'm happy to know that all seems normal then, thank you!

did you try right clicking the CPU graph to show all the cores/threads? (show logical processors graph?)

[Layne C]

29 minutes ago, podkall said:

did you try right clicking the CPU graph to show all the cores/threads? (show logical processors graph?)

I actually didn't even know you could do that. I'll try that next time I edit.

[MadAnt250]

Seems like you are using both cpu and gpu for rendering, you may be able to set a custom export setting and have the gpu just do the rendering, idk. Anyway, it's probably working fine the way it is. I use only CPU rendering at 32mb/s and I do just fine.

[GuiltySpark_]

IIRC, Premier does not offer a pure GPU encode option. (I’m not familiar with a major NLE that does)

 

The GPUs role in most NLEs is for effects processing. 

[Layne C]

1 hour ago, MadAnt250 said:

Seems like you are using both cpu and gpu for rendering, you may be able to set a custom export setting and have the gpu just do the rendering, idk. Anyway, it's probably working fine the way it is. I use only CPU rendering at 32mb/s and I do just fine.

This is good to hear, thank you!

[Layne C]

1 hour ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

IIRC, Premier does not offer a pure GPU encode option. (I’m not familiar with a major NLE that does)

 

The GPUs role in most NLEs is for effects processing. 

Thank you!