FAQ: What Hardware Makes Exporting, Encoding, and Rendering Faster?

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hardware Considerations

The first thing in improving encoding speed is to consider your hardware.

CPUs: Encoding is a CPU intensive process, so the main control you have over export times is to have the fastest CPUs possible installed in your computer. More CPUs are better, as well. Consider that another computer in your facility, school, or home office might have faster CPUs. 

AMD vs. Intel CPUs: Which is better? (August 2020)

The choice favors the the format and workflow you use. If you use H.264 or HEVC formats, Intel CPUs with Quick Sync capability are recommended because encoding and decoding these formats are done in hardware, and are more performant over other CPUs. If you use other formats, you can use either Intel or AMD CPUs.

Additional SSD hard drives, RAID arrays, etc.:

• Another hardware consideration is to purchase a separate SSD hard drive (or RAID array), minimum, that you are encoding to.
• It helps if the drive is a high-speed drive (or RAID) for transferring the file data.
• Separate high-speed drives for preview files can also assist the encoding process if you use preview files in a smart rendering scenario.
• Hard drives should be connected so that transfer rates are optimized.
  • Internally connected NVMe or SSD drives are typically the fastest.
  • A RAID optimized for both redundancy and speed can be installed inside the computer for encoding too.
  • External SSDs: You'll want the fastest connection possible available for your computer and those external drives, USB 3, 3.1 or Thunderbolt 2 or 3.

GPU: The GPU comes into play into to arenas as far as exporting goes:

1) Hardware accelerated encoding of H.264/HEVC codecs (new!)
2) Hardware accelerated effects handling on export, like Lumetri Color, Warp Stabilizer, and Scaling (as part of the "Mercury Playback Engine" set of operations).

Hardware accelerated encoding

June 2020, this section has been updated as GPUs and iGPUs are accelerating exporting speeds for certain formats. Read these FAQs to be up to date on GPU interaction with Premiere Pro:

• FAQ: All about Hardware Encoding in Premiere Pro 14.2
• FAQ: Everything you need to know about GPU use and Premiere Pro
• Puget Systems White Paper on hardware encoding here.

• As of May 2020, with Premiere Pro 14.2, and later, certain supported GPUs accelerate the encoding process for H.264 or HEVC formats, whereas previously, GPUs did not. 
• Previous to May 2020, certain supported Intel CPU/GPUs accelerate the encoding process for H.264 or HEVC formats, whereas previously, GPUs did not.

Currently, if you have supported hardware of both types installed in your computer, Premiere Pro will choose the method of export that would perform better.

If you are exporting a different codec, say, ProRes, then this accelerated encoding process does not occur. Hardware Accelerated GPU encoding is for H.264 or HEVC codecs only. Regardless of your export codec or CPU, the GPU will still perform its duties for export in regards to the Mercury Playback Engine, which is separate from the above functions.

"Mercury Playback Engine"
As far as the Mercury Playback Engine and the GPU are concerned, a GPU of any type does not assist the actual encoding process, however, it can improve the processing speed for exports in certain cases. It depends on a number of important factors. This blog post about the Mercury Playback Engine explains what a GPU can and cannot assist. In some cases in an exporting job, the GPU is used minimally, as there might not be many processes available for the GPU to handle. Real-time GPU accelerated effects may not have been added to the sequence, for example. There is a forum discussion around the Mercury Playback Engine here.

That said, a system with a well-performing GPU (or even dual GPUs or more) can be a boon to improving exporting times, as indicated in this article. Some editors create sequences with a great deal of GPU-accelerated effects, for example, others commonly scale 4K footage to HD frame sizes. The GPU offloads processing for items it can handle, like these effects and scaling, giving the CPUs the opportunity to focus on the encoding (rather than effects processing) which can speed up the entire process greatly.

Hardware resources for encoding:

• You can also refer to this blog post for overall performance tuning for both encoding and rendering: Recommended systems for Premiere Pro by Puget Systems
• Post in the Hardware Forum or further questions about your hardware and potential encoding bottlenecks.

In the end, it is pretty complicated in understanding how you can make your exports go faster. Sorry about that, it's always been this way. As you can see, your export speed largely depends on many factors: your hardware, how your media is optimized, the effects you've applied, and the formats you are exporting.

Back to the FAQ: How do I speed up rendering, exporting, or encoding?