Premiere pro CC and 4k h.264 problems

[LucasHoller]

Hey people, i was wondering if anyone can tell me if there's a fix to Premiere pro CC beeing VERY slow at exporting (and rending) 4k footage? 
I shoot with a G7 H.264 100 mbps 4k and i need to export in h.264 4k for youtube. But when exporting 4k the program only uses like 10-20 % of my hardware power and because of that it takes like 10 hours to export a 3 Gb h.264 file.

Hope you can help because it's really becomming a problem for my workflow.

[ALwin]

snip

 

What are your export settings?  100Mbps VBR?  You do know Youtube doesn't recommend such a high bit rate.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

[Enderman]

buy a better PC...?

 

rendering 4k is not easy peasy...

[LucasHoller]

yep my export settings are 100 mbps h.264 and i do so, so that i have a high quility version on my computer and then i let youtube compress it for their site.

Enderman: i have a 10 core xeon 3.0 Ghz masine with 3x SSD's and a 780 Ti - it's is a software problem not hardware...

[ALwin]

Are your Premiere Pro/Adobe settings optimized for hardware acceleration?

[LucasHoller]

ALwin, do you mean Mercury CUDA? if so yes, and i have alocated as much of my RAM to premiere as i can (but it's not using all of it)
seem like it just can't use all of the power avalible but only when doing 4k, when rendering 1080p h.264 premiere uses all of the hardware at like 90% and it goes lighting fast.

[ALwin]

snip

 

Yep, and also making sure your GPU is in the "approved list" for Premiere.

http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/configuring-premiere-pro-cc/

 

Aside from this, I'm not sure what we can do to improve your workstation's rendering time aside from perhaps upgrading some hardware.

[LucasHoller]

but upgrading hardware makes no sence if the software isn't taking advantage of more than 20% of the hardware i already have ?

[LucasHoller]

oh and my 780 TI is one of the cards that work with cuda

[ALwin]

but upgrading hardware makes no sence if the software isn't taking advantage of more than 20% of the hardware i already have ?

 

oh and my 780 TI is one of the cards that work with cuda

 

I hate to use the phrase, but have you considered that there may be a bottleneck in your system somewhere?

[LucasHoller]

i have, but as i can see that my SSD's have lots of headroom, and so do my RAM, CPU and GPU + my power supply is not beeing pushed so couldn't see where it would be, and seen as the problem is not there when exporting with 1080p i know that my system is capable og giver full power. 

[ALwin]

i have, but as i can see that my SSD's have lots of headroom, and so do my RAM, CPU and GPU + my power supply is not beeing pushed so couldn't see where it would be, and seen as the problem is not there when exporting with 1080p i know that my system is capable og giver full power. 

 

At the moment I honestly do not have an idea on how to solve your problem.  I would have to ask you to run some tests.

• Take a 5 minute recording or any short clip you have, with the settings you normally use for 4K.  I assume you are getting an AVCHD or MOV file out of the camera.
• Duplicate the footage and transcode one copy to another format.  If you are using OSX I would recommend transcoding to ProRes, but for Windows I'm not sure what is good.  Perhaps something like this if you can: Avid DNxHD and DNxHR or Cineform, whichever supports 4K in your system.
• Take both your original out of the camera footage and the transcoded footage.  Edit both versions the same way and see which one renders out faster.

During the process, close every other program you do not use or need, including closing Premiere Pro when you are using Media Encoder to render the video.  I want to see if your workstation or software has an issue with H.264.  The first step to figuring out a solution is to isolate the cause of the problem.

 

Normally I prefer to avoid using any kind of intermediary codec if the NLE natively supports the codec used by the camera.

[LucasHoller]

i will try that and return.
Just to let you know, what comes out of my camera is h.264.

[ALwin]

i will try that and return.

Just to let you know, what comes out of my camera is h.264.

 

I know, that's the codec and AVCHD or MOV are the containers.  My previous video camera was the same.  My current one uses MXF as the container.

 

I'm asking you to do this test to see if we can somehow isolate or rule out what could be the cause of your problem.

 

Addendum

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?

[LucasHoller]

i use OSX yosemite 10.10.5 and about the test, i did the same 30 second clip one it the original mov format and one transcoded til preres 4.2.2, the i used three way color corrector + crop (what i normaly use on my longer videoes) and then i exportede both through AME. The time of export was almost exactly the same and i still experienced very low utilisation of hardware. 

[LucasHoller]

i had no ajustment layer on the test so i cannot be that, and i have tried with and without "maximum render quality" and that does not fix it either

[ALwin]

i use OSX yosemite 10.10.5 and about the test, i did the same 30 second clip one it the original mov format and one transcoded til preres 4.2.2, the i used three way color corrector + crop (what i normaly use on my longer videoes) and then i exportede both through AME. The time of export was almost exactly the same and i still experienced very low utilisation of hardware. 

 

How about just using software render without hardware acceleration, mercury playback engine software only.  Maybe that will push the system to use 100% CPU, and might improve render speed if you are not using effects that require GPU support.

 

You're using a Mac Pro or a Hackintosh?

[LucasHoller]

just tried it, and it made no difference. the only thing soo far which have helped is doing 1080p, it seem like somthing about 4k is just not working with PP CC.

It's a hack

[ALwin]

snip

 

I'll try to see how long it takes me to render a 10 min 4K video tomorrow.

 

I also did a test with a 30s 4K clip, and my CPU utilization was always above 80% for 4K 100Mbps, 4K 40Mbps (youtube preset) and 1080p.  My GPU utilization was very low until I added effects that use the GPU (Lumetri Color and Auto Color).

 

Software and Hardware acceleration rendering times were similar, until the effects were added which made the Hardware acceleration perform better than Software rendering.

 

My Macbook is at the office, so I'm on my Windows 10 workstation.

 

Can you dual boot Windows so you can see if there is a performance difference?

[LucasHoller]

what hardware is in your workstation ?

[LucasHoller]

i used around 50-60 % of my CPU when i had an older quad core, so the amount of CPU speed used then and now are the same i just have a much faster CPU now so i only use 20 % of it which should be around the same af the 50-60 % of my old CPU.

[ALwin]

i7-4790K (not overclocked)

2x nVidia Titan X in two way SLI

32GB 1600 DDR3 Corsair memory

Kingston 480GB HyperX Savage SSD (OS and applications)

2x Samsung 512GB 850 pros in RAID 0 setup for files

[LucasHoller]

hmmm..... i really think this is trange.... when looking online it looks like A LOT of people have the same problem but the solution is very very different for everyone and most don't seem to find one .

[ALwin]

Yeah some look like they have a hardware issue, others a software issue or driver/firmware issue.

 

If you could dual boot into Windows on your machine and test how it performs... maybe the bottleneck is because you've set your machine up as a hackintosh.

 

Some friends of mine are planning to get the new Mac Pro, when they get it (who knows when) I will see if I can do some performance tests on it.

 

How do you get your project from Premiere onto Media Encoder?  Is it

• Premiere > export media > queue 
• OR
• Media Encoder > Add Premiere Pro Sequence

[LucasHoller]

i go from Premiere pro > export > choose settings > queue > then it is automatecly thrown to media encoder.

I unfortunately only have OSX on the workstation.