NVidia GPU-accelerated H264-encoder plugin 1.12, ready for public testing

[Guest]

!!!! Disclaimer: NVENC-export is third-party software that is not supported by either Adobe or NVidia. It comes with no warranty -- use at your own risk.

nvenc_export is a NVidia GPU-accelerated H264/HEVC export-plugin for Adobe Premiere.  It is a "proof-of-concept" that provides quick encode times by offloading the computationally intensive video-encoding operation to the NVidia GPU's dedicated hardware block NVENC.
Compared to high-quality software encoder such as x264/x265, NVENC currently produces inferior visual quality and compression efficiency.  However, due to the nature of fixed function hardware, it does offer significantly faster encode times than software alone, with significantly less power consumption.  The speed advantage is helpful for turning out many draft-quality videorenders quickly.

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Minimum hardware requirements:
(1) NVidia Kepler GPU
    (a) for H264 4:4:4 support: Maxwell Gen1 (GTX750) or newer
    (b) for HEVC 4:2:0 support: Maxwell Gen2 (GTX950) or newer
    (c) for HEVC Main10/4:4:4 support: Pascal (GTX1050) or newer
(2) AMD or Intel CPU with SSSE3 instruction support (virually anything newer than 2008)

Minimum software requirements:
(1) Adobe host applicaition: Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 or Adobe Premiere Elements 14
(3) Windows 7 SP1 (64-bit)
(4) Microsoft Visual C++ 2013 Software Redistributables (download this from Microsoft)
(5) NVidia Geforce driver 368.81 or newer (Aug 2016)
(6) for AAC-audio support, you must separately download NeroAacEnc from www.nero.com
(7) for FLAC-audio support, you must separately download the command-line version of FLAC from (www.xiph.org/flac)
(8) for multiplexer support, you must separately download TSMuxer, MP4BOX, and MKVmerge

Installation:
You will need administrator privileges to install nvenc_export, because you must copy the plugin file nvenc_export_112_sse2.prm into the installation dir of your Adobe application.

For Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 or CC:
(1) On your system, locate the installation-directory for Premiere Pro CS6.
  Usually, this is C:/Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Premiere Pro CS6
(2)  Copy the included file Plug-ins/Common/nvenc_export_112_sse2.prm
  to <installation dir>/Plug-ins/Common/

* To use nvenc_export in Adobe Media Encoder, You must also copy *.prm file to the same directory ("Plug-ins/Common/") in your Adobe Media Encoder installation-dir.

For Adobe Premiere Elements 14:
(1) On your system, locate the installation-directory for Premiere Elements 14.
  Usually, this is C:/Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Premiere Elements 14
(2)  Copy the included file Plug-ins/Common/nvenc_export_112_sse2.prm
  to <installation dir>/Plug-ins/Common/

(Older versions of Elements are supported, see the readme.txt file for additional files to copy.)

-> To choose the NVENC-plugin in Media Encoder,
   in the export/format-menu, select <NVENC_export 1.12(sse2)>

Warning!!!: do not copy nvenc_export_112_avx2.prm into this directory, unless you are certain your CPU is recent enough to support AVX2!  If your CPU does not support AVX2, Premiere will *CRASH* at startup (until you remove this file from this dir.)

Known Limitations/problems:
(1) nvenc_export is "beta-quality" software... it is loaded with bugs.
(2) Audio/video is out-of-sync when lookAhead feature is used with HEVC.  (H264 should be ok.)
(3) TSMuxer has problems with HEVC-video (dropped frames, stuttering video, etc.)
     If exporting to HEVC, use MKV instead.
(4) Audio codec support is limited to PCM, FLAC, and AAC
(5) nvenc_export cannot export HDR-video (HDR10, DolbyVision).  Although it now supports HEVC Main0 profile (which is capable of carrying HDR video), this plugin was built using the Adobe CS6 SDK (2012), which predates HDR10 & Dolbyvision. (nvenc_export has other problems, too.  See readme.)
(6) Memory leak inside the plugin.  Over successive export operations, nvenc_export slowly consumes more GPU VRAM.  (Quit and restart Adobe Premiere; that should be enough to release the leaked VRAM.)
(7) HEVC-bitstreams are missing the video usability info (VUI) block and user-SEI (generated by nvenc_export.)  The VUI contains the video's colour-description (color-space characteristics), and the user-SEI lists the encoder-settings in effect.
(8) If the GPU-configuration of your PC changes in any way (i.e. upgrade to new card, or add/remove existing video-card), any saved encoding-presets that you created with your old setup may cause nvenc_export to crash at startup.  Avoid this by deleting *ALL* of the old nvenc_export encoding-presets.

Revision history:
1.12 (Nov 2016) - update to NVENC 7.0 API
⦁ Separate the AVX/AVX2 optimizations from the baseline codebase.  nvenc_export is now compiled for 3 CPU-architectures: SSE2, AVX, AVX2.  Before, nvenc_export 1.11 was only compiled for AVX2, and would *CRASH* if the host-CPU lacked AVX capability.
The "SSE2" build runs on the widest array of processors (though it still requires SSSE3 instruction set suport.)  The AVX and AVX2 offer more optimized YUV-repacking and RGB2YUV conversion routines (these operations run entirely in software on the host-CPU).  In most cases, the Adobe videorender or the GPU-encoding is the speed-bottleneck, so the AVX/AVX2 builds won't offer faster encode (though perhaps reduced CPU-utilization.)
⦁ Add HEVC Main10, FREXT profiles (for Pascal GPU):   10bpp, 4:4:4
⦁ Add new NVENC configuration items exposed by NVENC 7.0:  enableLookAhead, temporalAQ, EnableNonRefP, strictGOPTarget
⦁ Add FLAC-audio support (requires third-party download from www.xiph.org/flac)
⦁ For 5.1 (surround) audio output, make channel-swapping a user-controlled checkbox 'audio51_swap'.  (This is only required for CS6 and Elements 12.)
⦁ In h264 bitstreams, fix dropped user-SEI message (which lists the user's encoder-settings.) [Change nvencoderconfig settings from disabled to enabled: aud_enable, sei_BufferPeriod, and sei_PictureTime]
⦁ Fix some PrPixelFormat autonegotation problems. Premiere Elements 15 no longer provides 4:2:0 or 4:2:2 YUV-video, so nvenc_export will request 4:4:4 YUV. 
⦁ Remove RGB video from PrPixelFormat autonegotiation.  (User still has option to manually force Adobe to output RGB-video, by enabling the checkbox 'forced_PrPixelFormat'.)
⦁ Export operation now generates a debug *.log file
⦁ Fixed some problems with user-interface dialog-boxes failing to refresh properly in response to a change to a dependent setting.
⦁ Allow some user command-line arguments to be passed to third-party tools.  (Note, cannot override the default arguments that are already put there by nvenc_export.)

Message was edited by: Nvenc Tester

[panad49286297]

Moderator Note: This post has been removed. Please do not recommend to others to exploit internal software engineering Adobe tools. Posts containing such information will be removed, as well.

[Guest]

Yes. Everything is fine, until you apply some gpu effect such as color correction etc, then greatly reduces output speed. This is not a real solution.

[panad49286297]

Chest999​, yes, I agree with you that this is not a real solution.

[Guest]

For all who have blocky output like this:

Set this parameter to 0:

For static footage (and black video) coding add one keyframe in this footage for any effect (for example opacity - It is always present by default)

[kaelaria]

I really hope they revert whatever they did, because this last version has a huge memory leak.

[sedver]

CC2017.1.1 (11.1.1(15)) does not work with nvenc_export 1.09-1.12

[DV2FOX]

Having the same issue with 1.12 till Adobe killed it with the latest update.. Is the creator of this plugin still working on workarounds and patches/newer versions of this ?.. Just curious, since it's been a long time without seeing it so.

[aukrupkin]

Moderator note: Please do not describe how to alter the software using internal engineering tools. The content of this post has been removed.

[jasonvp]

Moderator note: Please do not discuss hacking the software package using Adobe's internal engineering tools. Content is removed.

[Guest]

2 jasonvp

That's right.

If you start 2015 and 2017 Premiere both at the same time and on the same PC, 2017 one blocks NVENC on the 2015.

If you close 2017, NVENC's work in 2015-Premiere is recovering.

[jasonvp]

Chest999  wrote

If you start 2015 and 2017 Premiere both at the same time and on the same PC, 2017 one blocks NVENC on the 2015.

If you close 2017, NVENC's work in 2015-Premiere is recovering.

Well that's unfortunate; apparently 2017 is latching on to the NVENC encoder for some reason, and not letting the plugin use it.  And yet there's no indication that Pr is actually using the NVENC hardware for anything.   I wonder why Adobe did that?

Using OpenCL for MPE is an acceptable work-around assuming NVidia's OpenCL performance is as good as its CUDA performance in Pr.

[jasonvp]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/August+Krupkin  wrote

I'd found solution to use nvenc 1.12 with last cc 2017 update.

Checkbox to EnableNVIDIAOpenCL = TRUE in DebugConsole.
Restart PP.

Then export and chek nvenc 1.12/
My configuration - GTX 1070; i7 6700HQ; 32 Ram

Hm.  No luck for me.  I just reinstalled the latest Pr and followed the above instructions.  It still lists my Titan X Pascal (10xx series) as not applicable.  Even with OpenCL enabled.

[aukrupkin]

But NVenc isn't good variant for me.
Adobe products - more lags and more lags with every update and Export and Time problem  - last for me.
I take my projects and export in maximum depth in image-sequence and convert in H.264 and other by DaVinci Resolve.
IT's REALLY FASTER. Ahhahah. Realy faster - turn on my stopwatch.
ADOBE IS — last time.

Every update - new problem.

I'm tired to solve it.

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[josephd92860595]

nvenc 1.11 j3 no problem, if you have good ssd , is much speed, because for finaly compile video and audio is Good ssd 3d nand or samsung or adata

[aukrupkin]

Read from HDD export to SSD M.2 !
SSD is fine for all software and hardware.
This is not the definitive factor in the case of export from Adobe.
The fact remains that Adobe software gets bogged down in the problems deeper and deeper with every update.
I used to not have claims to the export time.

[josephd92860595]

Moderator note: Please do not distribute software patches on this site. It is against our community guidelines.

[sedver]

E U R E K A ! ! !

Moderator Note: Link removed.

[Guest]

2 sedver

Thanks!

[jasonvp]

Downloading an EXE off a Russian forum isn't high on my list of "trustworthy" things to do.  Has anyone run that through any malware/virus/etc filtering yet?

[quannVR]

thank you so much for your plugin!

It very very good for encoding video with 1-2 video source.

But when increase to 3, 4 or more video source, it's not working (no crash, no error, but only CPU working...

Is there any one get same trouble with me?

my GPU: Quadro M1000M

Thank for your shares.

[Ibbanez]

Hello there, I was just wanting to say thanks for such a great plugin.  I love that this one uses AVX2.  Is there any future plans on updating this with the newer NVENC versions?  Again, thank you so much for this plugin, I use it religiously.

[Jupers]

Do I have to turn off cuda for using this plugin? If so it's completely useless for complicated projects.

[DV2FOX]

Don't turn off Cuda

[Jupers]

MKVToolNix generates error when using h.265: after encoding a short clip 4k 60 fps (50 frames in total) I'm getting only 30 frames. Does anybody know the reason?

H.264 works fine but i still can't force nvenc to adjust dynamically the range between i-frames. This range is constant. Can you tell me how these three functions work: AQ, TemporalAQ and LookAhead?

[Jupers]

Can you post any working settings for h265 2 pass and lossless? I have no success with gtx 1060 and hevc.