Community Manager

Question

DISCUSS : AMD GPU decode for H264 & HEVC

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
September 7, 2020
9 replies
7300 views

With the latest Adobe Premiere Pro Beta build we have enabled Hardware Accelerated Decoding through AMD GPU cards.

If you have AMD GPU card on your Windows machine, you will be able to use this feature.

Feature is enabled by default. If it finds AMD GPU card it will start utilising it for decode.

Feature is enabled in Adobe Premiere Pro Beta , After Effects Beta, Adobe Media Encoder Beta and Adobe Premiere Rush.

Please try it out and give us your Feedback.

We are looking for feedback on playback, seeking, scrubbing, reverse playback and export.

Please try out the feature and share your feedback.

This topic has been closed for replies.

N

Neha Chaudhary

Adobe Employee

Thanks for showing HW decoding in the video.

P

Paul PF Films

Participating Frequently

Thanks Adobe for bringthing this fearture to us. I have soooo been wishing for this feature!

R

radeko39580356

Participant

Hardware Accelerated Decoding will be available in premiere pro for MAC OS?

N

Neha Chaudhary

Adobe Employee

Thanks for your query.

There will be no changes to Mac. AMD HW decoding feature is for win only in 14.5 release.

R

radeko39580356

Participant

It is working

Nick Lear

Inspiring

I tried to test playback streams, but in the Beta I got no playback at all (this is on build 17) - I press play and nothing happens.
And a strange coloured bar in showing at the top of clips which is there also after export.

U

Umang Mital

Adobe Employee

Thanks for your feedback.

The strange coloured bar on the top, is the issue with AMD driver. We have already reported this to AMD. This is happening in all other application using AMD decoding.

Good thing is that it happens only with few of the clips, most other clips play fine.

Regarding the playback not working issue, I would request you to please test with some other clips as well, and if possible, share a test clip, that we can use to reproduce the issue at our end.

Nick Lear

Inspiring

OK i'm sure you'll get that sorted in time.

I tried multiple clips and multiple codecs (H.264, BRAW, Prores) and all of them showed a freeze frame of video while playing the audio. Basically no clip at all plays for me so I don't think there's any point in sending a clip. I'm guessing the RX480 just isn't supported?

I didn't have the coloured bar btw on build 15.

Nick Lear

Inspiring

Yes, sorry I should have been more clear.

As hardware encode was already present, in theory the addition of hardware decode should improve render times as to render from H.264 to H.264 or to Prores, the computer has to decode first and then encode second - and Task Manager does show it doing so in the relevant tab. So I was testing the first part of that, pitting CPU DECODE vs QSV DECODE vs AMD DECODE - all feeding into the AMD ENCODE which is there for all 3 tests. For me I saw no improvement with the RX480, but there should be for more powerful GPUs.

To test this you just need to chuck an H.264/AVC clip into both the current Media Encoder and export as H.264 and then do the same in the beta AME. And then check the log for the encode time.

I haven't had a chance to test timeline playback or scrubbing yet.

U

Umang Mital

Adobe Employee

Thanks for your feedback.

Encode time depends on various factors including different GPU card and machine CPU capabilities. For this new feature, we are focusing on improving the playback and timeline experience. Thanks a lot for your feedback regarding degradation in export time, we will work on fixing it, and make sure there is no impact on encode time. Thanks.

Nick Lear

Inspiring

Hi Umang

Is there any reason not to focus on both?

A large proportion of pro editors use a proxy workflow for H.264 clips. That means the only times they need to decode H.264 are a) when making proxies (decodes H.264 in order to encode to the proxy format) & b) when doing a final export from a timeline with H.264 clips (decodes H.264 in order to encode to the delivery format). If using the GPU to decode the H.264 (as well as encoding which was a very valuable addition, thank you) could speed these processes up, it would save a lot of time for a lot of people.

Or am I missing something?

Nick Lear

Inspiring

Doing some quick and dirty tests now.

Initial Q - why isn't anything showing int eh Video Encode section of my GPU?

Nick Lear

Inspiring

Though actually in the current version 14.3.2, nothing shows there during hardware encoding, yet software encoding uses 100% CPU, so it must be using the GPU to encode, it's just not showing in Task Manager for some reason

EDIT - It does seem to show GPU Video Encode during H.264 export, but not for H.265 export, even though the RX480 is listed as doing both. https://www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/radeon-rx-480#product-specs

Nick Lear

Inspiring

My initial tests are not promising for rendering.

H.264 to H.264 hardware encoded is identical in time for me. I also tried turning QSV off by disabling the Intel GPU in device manager and the render times were the same. CPU vs QSV vs AMD GPU H.264 decode all gave the same times.
H.264 to Prores proxy is 8% slower in the beta.
H.265 to H.265 is 40% slower in the beta.

And Task Manager is suggesting that H.265 is not using the GPU to encode in either the beta or the main version. And that for H.264, GPU Video Decode is only using 25%, as opposed to 100% GPU Video Encode. For H.264 Video Decode shows at 80%.

I have the RX480 which is not a powerful GPU by today's standard & doesn't seem to beat the Intel QSV decoding, so I would like to see people test this with a better GPU.

But if this feature comes into the main version & can't be turned off, for me it would mean much longer render times for H.265, not that I use that much.

Nick Lear

Inspiring

Is there a way to turn it on or off to do benchmark testing?

Nick Lear

Inspiring

I'm guessing one way is for me to just do some tests in current latest version of Premiere and then do the same tests in the beta

N

Neha Chaudhary

Adobe Employee

Yes, that's the correct way to do the benchmarking.

johnpooley3

Inspiring

I'm running a laptop with both Intel integrated graphics and a WX 3200, and I'm not seeing any usage on the Radeon. I saw Enable AMD Decode disabled in the Debug Database, after enabling and restarting the application I'm unable to get any video from even internally generated media.

B

Brajesh

Author

Community Manager

HI John, Can you please check and confirm the build no by checking it in Help>About Premiere Pro

johnpooley3

Inspiring

Sorry for the delayed response, 14.5.0 Build 17[R]

I'll loop back once I try with the HP laptop forced to Discrete graphics tomorrow

johnpooley3

Inspiring

Comment has been edited, I meant to post this one on the NVDEC thread

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