Slow Export Time in Premiere Pro Despite High-End PC

For the OP abdulla_2620 and anyone else who find this while struggling with export times: let me help clear a few things up.

Summary:

• The OPs PC specs are MORE than enough to edit1080/4k 
• Premiere is too poorly optimised to edit MP4 files - you have to convert to another file type first (e.g. Prores)
• Editing 1080p mp4 and exporting at 2160p/4k mp4 will multiply Premiere’s MP4 problems

PC specs:
Even well meaning folks on the Adobe forums will always tell you your PC isn’t powerful enough, no matter what your specification, because there’s always a better setup.

But any PC with 8+ cores, 32gb or Ram and any form of NVME SSD is more than enough for 1080/4k edits of any kind. The OPs specification is well above average for most modern editors. At that spec, any issue is most likely a software issue.

As an eaxmple, I still maintain my old PC as a backup which has an old zen+ 8core 2700x, 32gb of DDR4 and Gen3 NVME rocking a humble 1650super with 4gb of vram. It can handle 1080 no problem and 4k if you have time to wait for a long export.

Re the OPs specific project:

As others observed, increasing the size (scaling) from the original 1080p footage and exporting at  2160p adds a step for the computer to process.

Since 2160p footage has approx 4x as many pixels as 1080p in theory you might expect something like 4x the time required to export. Tho in reality it varies based on hardware, export settings etc.

Based on nearly 20years as an editor and way more than 20 different PC specs used over the years. I would expect the OPs 8minute video to export in a max of 20-30mins with the OPs specification and settings.

BUT and its a big but…

Adobe can not handle MP4 footage.

It appears that the original footage might be MP4 and Premiere has not been able to handle mp4 for a very long time now. Adobe pushed it as the selling point when forcing CC on everyone then abandoned it once everyone was locked in.

If you edit with MP4 files and export to MP4 export times will greatly increase plus Premiere often falls apart with mp4-to-mp4, causing numerous common artefacts, audio glicthes and frequently crashes.

Unfortunately this means going back to the old days and just having to invest the time converting your original footage to a file type like Prores before you start editing.

Milage will vary pc to pc but as an example:

I am currently working on location with a mini PC: Ryzen 8 core 7770x, 32gb DDR5, gen4 NVME and a 4060ti 16GB. Lower spec than the OP and fits in a backpack.

Within Media Encoder this PC relliably converts 1hour of 1080p MP4 footage to Prores 422HQ in about 15-20mins.

It would export an 8 minute edit like the OPs from 1080p Prores to 2160p Mp4 in approx 18 minutes

Assuming 1 hr of footage + an 8min final edit:

Total processing time could be around 30-40mins.
 

Note: Applying effects will increase export time. Some effects require more processing time than others. For this estimate, I have assumed basic effects were present: subtitles, a few overlay graphics and audio filters, maybe a crop and occasional lumetri color tweaks.

The export time the OP is seeing is unusually slow and Premiere’s inability to decode/encode MP4 in an efficient and stable way is the most likely cause. It’s a long term problem with Premiere and unlikely Adobe will fix it, so it’s good to get used to converting to Prores or similar before you start.

I am having the same problems... Did you manage to solve this?

I would add that your computer isn't really a 24-core computer ... it's really an 8 core CPU with ... think if them as "assisting" cores. And only 32GB of RAM, which these days, is just enough to run Premiere or Resolve, but not enough on most rigs to really fly.

And your Nvme main drive is the fastest bit there. That's fine. Do you have any other drives involved, or just that one?

While that rig may do ok with long-GOP, given the way "prioritization" seems to be hitting some users at this time, I wouldn't expect it's long-GOP performance to be amazing. And as noted, you're not only running long-GOP, you're expecting scaling of it to occur. Ouch.

Running ProRes or Arri RAW on that rig would probably work pretty nice.

Not really, your timeline is set to 1920x1080 while you are exporting to 3840x2160 and as Ann says you are upscaling your footage from 1920x1080 to 3840x2160 and that will increase render time. Are your source footage 1920x1080 or 3840x2160?

Select your timeline and go to Sequence > Sequence Settings and change it to 3840x2160 and click OK. If your source footage is 3840x2160 you will have to re-scale the all assets on the timeline.

Try it and report back!

Project Details:

• Resolution & Frame Rate: 4K 50FPS

By @abdulla_2620

@abdulla_2620 

I've moved your post from Creative Cloud Desktop to the Premiere Pro forum

Jane