Extremely underwhelming Performance on Mac Pro 2019

[chfilm]

Hey guys,

so I got my new 16 Core, Vega II Mac Pro and was super excited for the huge performance gains that I was expecting to see for my daily work with Premiere... until I did some tests to see the actual speed and to compare it with Apple Compressor.

To call the results underwhelming is even some sort of understatement.

I took four different kinds of footage and just wanted to see how quickly media encoder could transcode them to ProRes 422 HQ.

ProRes 422 4k Clip: Media Encoder: 14:03 min /// Compressor: 01:15 min

ProRes 422 2k Clip: Media Encoder: 00:08 min /// Compressor: 00:25 min

Sony 4k MXF Clip: Media Encoder: 05:06 min /// Compressor: 00:57 min

GoPro 4k Clip: Media Encoder: 08:58 min /// Compressor: 01:32 min

Seriously how is this even possible? I was monitoring the CPU usage and Media encoder used maybe 30% of the power available, while Compressor maxed it out completely, as it should be!

Maybe it's because the Adobe suite isn't optimized yet, but given my past experience, I have very little hope for that to change, EVER. 

Besides these actual speed comparisons, don't even get me started about the laggy UI within Premiere's timeline in comparison the FCP X. 

I was hoping this problem would go away with the 32gb VRAM, but no, it just got a littttttle bit better, but is still pretty darn annoying.

I'm using a Dell 5k Display.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi Ben,

Sorry. You say your issue is related to slower performance on a 2019 MacPro. What kind of footage are you editing? These Mac Pros do have an Achilles heel when it comes to handling popular footage types. The 2019 Mac Pros with Xeon processors may be at the heart of the matter. Xeon CPUs do not do well with H.264 footage, especially 4K or larger. These Mac Pros are more suited for a ProRes workflow like transcoding or using ProRes proxies. 

You need Mac with an Intel processor with an iGPU to have a CPU that uses "Quick Sync," which tears through H.264 and HEVC footage much more effectively. You can also look into the newer Macs and how they work with those formats.

My Xeon CPU workflow advice is to transcode or create proxies. You might also consider getting different hardware if you wish to natively cut H.264 and HEVC.

Thanks,.
Kevin