Media Encoder is not using GPU for rendering

[RoosterCreativeMarketing]

I have recently discovered, after upgrading to a new workstation (6core i7, 64gb ram, 3x GTX1080) that Adobe Media Encoder doesn't actually use any of the GPUs for rendering (having selected GPU acceleration (CUDA) as renderer, of course).

I've checked this with GPU-Z software.

It doesn't even use the CPU at full capacity (only about 60-70%)

The same goes for After Effects when rendering RAM preview.

Any clues on the issue?

[Mylenium]

And what are the exact render settings? What's going on in your comps? not everything is GPU-accelerated, so this could be perfectly normal.

Mylenium

[RoosterCreativeMarketing]

Well, exporting a comp from AE with effects and multiple layeres, to be rendered in Media Encoder and selecting the GPU acceleration (CUDA) as renderer, one would assume the GPU will be used for rendering. It doesn't happen.

So I' not sure what other settings should be checked.

[Szalam · Accepted solution]

What effects are you using?

AE is mostly CPU-based.

There aren't many things in AE that are GPU-accelerated right now. It wasn't until the previous release (CC 2015.3) that AE even had any native effects that were accelerated by the GPU (well, except for creating geometry with the now-obsolete ray-traced renderer, but I don't count that because that is an entirely different thing altogether).

The latest release of AE (CC 2017) that just came out last week adds several more effects to the GPU-acceleration list.

Now, other than native effects, there are also a number of third party effects that render on the GPU such as Video Copilot's Element 3D, Red Giant Universe, Zaxwerks 3d Invigorator, Mettle's ShapeShifter, and Red Giant's Magic Bullet Suite.

[RoosterCreativeMarketing]

Thank you for your reply! This makes some sense. I am using the latest version (2017)

So this basically means that the GPU/CPU switch on the Media Encoder doesn't do much at this point for AE renders.

But then we are left with the problem that AE is not using the CPU at full capacity either.

[Rick Gerard]

The media encoder has never supported GPU based rendering in AE for things like Ray-Traced rendering. The new GPU supported C4D rendering may or may not work as expected. I have not tested it yet because I just don't use either of those in any of the work that I'm getting paid for. You'll have to check the documentation but I suspect we're not there yet.

The AME does use GPU accelerated effects if you are using Premiere Pro with a supported card.

[Szalam]

Rick Gerard wrote:

The new GPU supported C4D rendering may or may not work as expected.

The C4D renderer doesn't use the GPU at all. It is CPU-only. However, it is fully multi-threaded.

[Szalam]

RoosterCreativeMarketing wrote:

So this basically means that the GPU/CPU switch on the Media Encoder doesn't do much at this point for AE renders.

But then we are left with the problem that AE is not using the CPU at full capacity either.

Correct.

The AE team is working on the best way to update AE's renderer. As it is, we have some GPU-accelerated effects and they are trying to figure out the best way forward on the other parts of it.

I mean, they have users running super-lo-end processors with 4 GB of RAM and then folks like me with 128 GB of RAM and dual Xeons and they have to make a renderer that works for all of it. Plus they have to plan for the future of what computers will be. They are trying to come up with a big, new thing and it's understandable to me that it'll take a while. That being said...I still want a new rendering engine in AE sooner rather than later of course!

[TGDan]

This does not make sense CUDA is a GPU programming Language, Does media encoder apply filters at run-time? I thought Media encoder just converted the file raw files to a particular codec.

[Szalam]

AME can use the GPU to accelerate encoding H.264 a bit, I think.

One of the big deals with the ray-traced renderer was that when rendering a comp with it out of AE's render queue, it could use the GPU to make it (much) faster, but AME wouldn't. I don't know if that's true for the newer GPU technologies too or not. I haven't tested. Would be worth checking out though.