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iLuh
iLuh
Known Participant
June 21, 2016
Answered

After update to 2015.3 - Worse preview performance

  • June 21, 2016
  • 6 replies
  • 8790 views

Hello Adobe community,

I'm trying the new 2015.3 version and I have been editing a 1080p 60fps project with 1 AVI video (FICV codec), 1 MTS video (AVCHD) and 1 WAV file.

I do not see better performance in this new version. Or at least the same. It is almost the opposite. And I am afraid to write this...

I did my best to avoid get choppy or laggy preview while editing. But now, even pressing enter and letting premiere to process the timeline from "yellow" to "green" line (which I hardly ever did before because the GPU helped me), preview video sometimes gets stuck. Even if I press space bar several times, Premiere doesn't answer to it until it wants to.

This also happens when I cut a part of a video (a part of seconds) and I scale it, for example. It gets frozen some seconds in preview.

If I minimize premiere when this happens and restore the window fast, my preview screen is in gray color.

I would like to know what could the error be. I asure you that I didn't have these errors until now...

My PC specs are:

Windows 10 64bit

Intel I7 4790K

16gb ram DDR3 (I dedicate 10gbs of Ram to Premiere and I don't open any other Adobe software while editing)

Nvidia GTX 780ti

Hard drives: SSD M2 for software, SSD SATA3 for Scratch (cache, etc) and 2TB 7200RPM for video, audio and stuff files.

Thank you in advance

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer tuckerwagner

Someone mentioned this on another thread and it seems to have fixed the same issue for me and a coworker. Edit > Preferences > Media > Un-tick "Enable accelerated Intel h.264 decoding"

6 replies

DBowker3D
DBowker3D
Inspiring
June 23, 2016

For those that like to know the why/how as much as the "what do I need to do to fix it" I'd like to offer a bit of a technical explanation. This is based on my own reasoning and technical background and not anything from Adobe, but I think it's fairly straight forward.

So let's take a look at exactly what the offending performance-killing Preference actually says: "Enable accelerated Intel h.264 decoding"

At first I didn't think about it much and was just glad to know what to change. But it got me thinking because..."Intel  h.264 decoding"? Wait, how did Intel even become part of the conversation? For years all the tech acceleration in Adobe products has been with Nvidia partnering, and occasionally a bone is thrown to the AMD FireGL cards. But really, AMD is not a player in high-end 3D or high-end video anymore- not really. Whether it's Autodesk or Adobe, Nvidia has made sure to have its products optimized for the software packages that creatives use. Pretty much, you want the juice in the Adobe Suite, like it or not, it's Nvidia or bust.

Except..."Enable Accelerated Intel h.264 encoding" which when looked at another way: Disable Nvidia or AMD encoding, right? It's pretty obvious that's the effect, intended or not. So why would you put the parking breaks on in your customer's race car? I think this is where Adobe was hoping that "magic" actually did exist, and figured they could somehow allow everyone's graphically under-powered tablets to suddenly run full-blown Premiere Pro. Many tablets do in fact run built in Intel integrated graphics processors, and of course most have an Intel CPU. But really, none of them have the RAM of graphics memory to ever do much in the way serious editing. But hey, it sounds cool, right? So wishful thinking and a cool talking point ends up being such a bust that you might even call it a bug if it weren't that it actually is a Preference. Nice going guys!

For the past year most of the Adobe updates have been not only useful, but mostly really "smart" in my opinion. For the most part that applies the the latest, which added in some great features and more. Seriously- some really handy things that will save me and most of you a ton of time long-term. But then you have such a ridiculous example of stupidity, it almost defies the notion of Planning at all. And yeah, how is this a Default setting and not an option for special cases only?

    E
    excited_Genie16B8
    Legend
    June 23, 2016

    Except..."Enable Accelerated Intel h.264 encoding" which when looked at another way: Disable Nvidia or AMD encoding, right?

    The problem with that idea is that the GPU has never before been used for decoding or encoding.  That has always been done on the CPU alone.

    So my guess (and nothing more than that) is that the feature is using Intel's Quick Sync technology for decoding of H.264 media - and that it's just not working too well.  This would probably not effect the use of the GPU for effects, scaling, etc.

    DBowker3D
    DBowker3D
    Inspiring
    June 23, 2016

    Actually, GPU hardware supported encoding and encoding has been around a for a while. Here's the latest info. on this page on the Nvidia Software Development section. https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-video-codec-sdk​

    A small section:

    "The NVIDIA Encoder (NVENC) API enables software developers to access the high-performance hardware video encoder for Kepler and Maxwell class NVIDIA GPUs (See list of supported GPUs below). NVENC provides high-quality video encoding that is faster and more power efficient compared to CUDA-based or CPU-based encoders. When using dedicated hardware for video encode and decode, the CUDA cores and system CPU are free to run other compute-intensive tasks. The Application Note included in the SDK documentation provides an estimate for the # of concurrent streams and performance possible with each NVIDIA GPU."

    I just looked in my Display Driver folder and sure enough the the various encode/decode commands are right in there.

    Digging into this a little deeper and my guess was correct in that the Intel API was implemented on certain lower powered CPUs (laptop or tablet) as an on-board GPU. Intel tried to make the case that suddenly the separate GPU was no longer needed (big surprise there) but it never has held a candle to any serious dedicated graphics cards.

    And fine that Adobe was persuaded to include this switch, but again, it shouldn't be by default as I'm taking a wild guess here that 98% of it's users have hardware that won't be using it.

    C
    cmelton
    Participant
    June 22, 2016

    That solution appears to be working. Thanks...

    Rameez_Khan
    Rameez_Khan
    Legend
    June 23, 2016

    Hi cmelton lsu & myplaycam,

    Are you also on Windows?

    Regards,

    Rameez

    tuckerwagner
    tuckerwagnerCorrect answer
    Inspiring
    June 22, 2016

    Someone mentioned this on another thread and it seems to have fixed the same issue for me and a coworker. Edit > Preferences > Media > Un-tick "Enable accelerated Intel h.264 decoding"

      iLuh
      iLuhAuthor
      Known Participant
      June 22, 2016

      Thanks! It works! Anyway, I think that Adobe should disable it by default!

        Rameez_Khan
        Rameez_Khan
        Legend
        June 22, 2016

        Hi iLuh and cmelton lsu,

        Did you remove the previous version of Premiere Pro (2015.2)?

        Could you start fresh by trashing preferences and cleaning media cache files?

        FAQ: How to clean media cache files

        FAQ: How to reset preferences in Premiere Pro

        Hope that helps.

        Best,

        Rameez

        M
        myplaycam
        Participant
        June 22, 2016

        Hi. I have the same problem.

        -I removed immediately the previous version of it.

        -I cleaned up my chache files.

        -I checked my Poject Settings. Video Rendering and Playback is working on GPU Acceleration(CUDA)

        But the problem is still going on.

        Sometimes space-bar doesn't work at all.

        And It's slugging at many times.

        Please, let me know how I can fix it as soon as possible.

        C
        cmelton
        Participant
        June 21, 2016

        Definitely something going on with the new upgrade. I was working on a file earlier in the day with no problems and against my better judgement, upgraded over lunch and when I came back, the new version is way slower during previews, space bar works some of the time, aggravating. Nothing special, AVCHD 1080p60 etc...

        iLuh
        iLuhAuthor
        Known Participant
        June 21, 2016

        Yes... I am taking a look at the forum and a lot of people are in the same situation... I hope Adobe brings a solution for this as soon as possible...

        N
        NDFFDN
        Participant
        September 8, 2016

        Nope, no solution, worse than ever, they don't care.

        kulpreet singh
        kulpreet singh
        Inspiring
        June 21, 2016

        Hi ILuh,

        Is this issue specific to this project only?

        You started this project in 2015.3 or you started in a previous version?

        Do you have any external audio/video capturing device connected?

        Thanks,

        Kulpreet Singh

        iLuh
        iLuhAuthor
        Known Participant
        June 21, 2016

        Hi Kulpreet and thank you for your answer,

        Yes, I started the project in 2015.3

        I have external audio (plug&play microphone - AT2020 USB) and video capture (elgato HD60pro). But I don't use them while editing. Sometimes I capture my voice in Premiere if I need to, but this isn't the case...

        Thanks!

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