Slow Render on macbook pro

[Nicollas]

Hello everyone, I have a question, how can I use more memory and CPU usage during rendering in the media encoder? When I look at the activity monitor, they are not in high usage, even though everything is ok, I believe that my rendering could be faster if I used more processing power, but I don't know how to do this, can you help me? I will leave the PC specifications and images of the configurations below:

Macbook Pro
M3 Pro
18GB RAM


*Premiere and media encoder are up to date and so is my operating system

[Warren Heaton]

Hi @Nicollas 

Having sufficient RAM—or in this case, more RAM than needed—doesn’t speed up render times; it simply enables the process to happen. Render time is primarily determined by the computer’s central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU). All else being equal, an M3 Max will render faster than an M3 Pro, which in turn will be faster than a base M3.

From your screenshots, it looks like you're using an older version of Premiere Pro running under Rosetta on macOS.

While Premiere Pro performs well under Rosetta, you should see better performance running it natively on your M3 Pro. Try the latest version, Premiere Pro 25.1.  In addition to being Apple Silicon native, this release features enhanced H.264 performance on Apple Silicon, and version 24.5 (also Apple Silicon native) introduced up to 3x faster ProRes exports.

You didn’t provide details about your workflow, but I recommend looking into Smart Rendering. Since you're on a Mac, consider using ProRes from source footage through editing to the final master—if you’re not already doing so. Ideally, use the same ProRes version throughout the process. For example, ProRes 422 LT for source footage, sequence video previews, and final export. You can then encode the export into any necessary delivery format using a Watch Folder. Depending on your delivery requirements, ProRes 422 HQ may be a better choice.

- Warren

[Nicollas]

Hi dude, I'm actually already using the most up-to-date versions of the OS and Adobe applications, but I really don't have access to how the recordings are made, they just come to me in format X and I need to edit them, they come in the most varied types.

[Warren Heaton]

Hi @Nicollas:

If making no changes to your workflow, you should see faster render times using a M3 Max, M4 Pro, M4 Max, or M2 Ultra.

I recommend enabling the Transcode option in the Project Ingest Settings and set it to ProRes 422 LT.  You can edit while the various formats that you receive are transcoding in the background, ProRes 422 LT source can be its own Preview File in the Timeline (double-check that your Sequence Video Previews are set to the default ProRes 422 LT).

For exporting, select QuickTime as the format and enable "Match sequence preview settings" as the preset. Then, export to a Media Encoder Watch Folder that applies your delivery setting preset(s).