Media Encoder uses all the CPU when Encoding on Mac OS Catalina. Can I change priority?

[timbo2000]

I used to be able to leave Media Encoder running in the background whilst continuing working in After Effects or Premiere Pro. Now media encoder takes over the entire CPU and I can't even use a browser or edit a document if it is encoding. 

I am presuming this is something to do with CPU priority. I have tried using the 'renice' command in terminal but it has no impact.

I have a feeling it is a fault in Mac OS rather than Media Encoder as the whole ecosystem has changed with Catalina. Has anyone else experienced this issue?

Using version 14.8 build 31

Thank you. Tim

[David Arbor]

I can't speak to using your browser in conjunction with AME, but there's a checkbox in the Premiere preferences that can at least pause AME encoding while playing back in Premiere. 

Premiere Pro > Preferences > Playback > Pause Media Encoder queue during playback

[jaydude-wb]

I am experiencing this on Monterey 12.6 / AME 23.5 (51).

Can't even move my mouse accurately.

[jaydude-wb · Accepted solution]

I was inspired by this thread to investigate the AME Preferences.

Switching off parallel encoding helped for me.

[jaydude-wb]

But in AE, the mouse lag stays, even with parallel processing switched off. In other apps, like Safari, all is fine.

[David Arbor]

I've never been a fan of parallel encoding. I've done so many tests over the years and parallel encoding almost always takes longer than if I encoded jobs individually, so glad you found that one.
The Adobe apps do have prefs for shared resources and then the rest of resources are reserved for the OS and other apps. I can't say I'm surprised that Safari is fine where AE isn't, but I tend to leave my machine alone when encoding an AE project. If Multi-Frame Rendering is enabled in AE (which is definitely should be), you can reduce the CPU utilization it takes in the AE prefs. That might carry through to AME, but I'm not sure. My preference is that MFR in AE uses as many resources as it can to provide the fastest previews possible, but everyone has different needs.