How can we improve Premiere Pro?

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what is the official standpoint on multithreading / multicore?

i just had contact with support regarding super slow rendering times – they referred me here.
i convert an h264 to a cropped png sequence, no effects applied (except the cropping).
if i do this in premiere or ae, it takes at least 2 hours and only utilises a fraction of my cpu. if i do the very same operation via ffmpeg (cli), it's done in less then 7 minutes. attached you'll find screenshots of the two procedures, note the render times (as said, same task, same machine, same result).

is this expected behaviour (because cc simply does not work on more then one core/thread) or a bug (and something can be done about it)?

system: macbook pro 15" mid 2014, macos 10.14.6, geforce gt 750m 2 gb, 16 gb ram, adobe cc 2020.

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  • Antoine Autokroma commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Yeah Adobe softwares should be faster.... I might be able to optimize the rendering and the exporting side of those things. Will look into it

  • philipp hahn commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    this is really frustrating. not only the fact that media encoder is having such drastic problems, but even more so adobe's (non-) way of handeling this.

    i do understand that there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to video performance and maybe this type of re-encoding might be considered a special case (is it though? reencoding long gop formats for editing is quite common), but especially in that case adobe should be transparent about what their software can do and when we should better use something else.

    ps.: i do assume that adobe is monitoring this, as it was adobe phone support who pointed me here, asking me to file a bug report. the fact that it's misleadingly named "how can we improve…" instead of "bug tracker" points in the same direction. adobe's attitude seems to be: "there are no problems or bugs by definition" – completely ignorant of any real world evidence. i would call this mindset delusional, ignorant and very dangerous for anyone relying on them or their products for business.

    pps.: crossposted this to https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/3/1010903

  • philipp hahn commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    update: i tested this with two more beefy machines today, see screenshots attached.

    1. an imac 27" 2019, i9, 64gb ram, radeon pro vega 48 with 8 gb vram – i think that should be well within requirements.
    the result however is the same: media encoder uses one thread on one core and needs 52 minutes to get the job done. ffmpeg in return does the same in 4:15 min, so we're looking at a 12x times speed difference here. (and my old, underpowered 2014 macbook using ffmpeg still outperfomes this beast of a machine running media encoder by the 4-fold).

    2. i also tested the same thing on a 2019, 15" macbook pro, again the same results (if you're interested i can upload these screenshots too).

    only thing: i did get the ffmpeg-time on my old macbook wrong – it's not 6:40 but 11:15, sorry for that (so ffmpeg is not 16x but only 11x faster then premiere on this machine – i'll correct this below!).

    conclusion: this does not seem to have anything to do with neither cc's requirements nor a specific installation (as i have the same results on three different systems), but simply with the fact, that media encoder seems not capable of using more than one thread on a single core (which by the way also explains the heavy hardware requirements).

    @ADOBE: care to explain?

  • philipp hahn commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    hi again,
    thanks for your detailed answer! i actually do have a bunch of pretty beefy machines at my disposal and i'll check wether they'll use their full potential next time i'm at the studio.

    that said however, i still find this rather bewildering: sure, if i have a super fast machine, i might even get my work done if my software is leveraging only 1/8 of its power. but if this is the official advice (like "hey, we don't support multiple cores nor multithreading, so make sure the machine you buy has at least 8 times the power/size/cost then you would actually need"), this is just really bad, inefficient software.

    as said, the task was not an gpu-extensive one and ffmpeg ripped through the very same process on the very same underpowered hardware with about 11x times the speed compared to premiere/ae.
    11x TIMES FASTER!

    last, although not related: i think using interframe codecs for editing is, regardless of the power of the machine, never a good idea as by design you just never will be able to shuttle as fluent through your footage as with intraframe codecs. editing with long gop codecs is like trying to read a book in the dark.

  • Kevin Monahan commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    Hey Philipp, sorry for the frustration. Actually, yes, your CPU is a 4th gen and the minimum is 6th gen for v. 14.0, and that's only for HD. You need a 7th gen CPU for 4K.

    True, your GPU is supported, but only for HD, and that is the minimum spec. And even one part of your system not meeting the requirements puts your whole workflow in jeopardy (in my opinion as an editor).

    I have a similar machine at my home office and have found that the past couple of versions of Premiere Pro are simply too far out of bounds for my installed hardware. I have to do a lot of workarounds for Long GOP 4K footage (basically, I transcode everything to ProRes), but it's rather a painful step that I don't want to take.

    What I truly need is a new MacBook Pro, like one I have here a the office, however, even that one only meets the bare min. spec for 4K.

    I guess my point is that there are a lot of users still on Macs that are not getting the performance they expect from these older machines, then place the blame on the software, even though they are close to or not meeting min. specs.

    As an aside: I'm from Cupertino, CA. I worked at the "other" A on their NLE for two versions so I feel for those that love Macs, even need Macs. However, I think around every 5 years....you do need to upgrade. I think you're in that situation now, as am I. With a new rig, I think you'll get the performance you need. Is that a possibility?

  • philipp hahn commented  ·   ·  Flag as inappropriate

    @kevin: um, is it? according to their official guidelines, i am within specs: https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/system-requirements.html
    also, i do not get any warning about this (apart from cuda being deprecated and that i should use metal).
    this is not about gpu ram / texture size, there are no effects involved (and i'm pretty sure ffmpeg does not use gpu either).

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