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fedes_gl
fedes_gl
Participating Frequently
June 9, 2021
Question

Hardware DECODING

  • June 9, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 980 views

Hello everyone,

I'm just being courious about how/when the HW decoding works, and if the folowing behaviour is normal, I believe it's not.

I'm using Premiere Pro and Media Encoder, both v15.2, but had same behaviour with v15.1. 

 

In Preferences, I can choose to use Intel or Nvidia for decoding footage (I know I have to restart the App to apply changes). I want to use Nvidia both for accelerated playback and exports, but can't put Nvidia to work when exporting media.

 

When I look into task manager the usage of the "decode" processor (for each GPU), this is what happens:

 

In Premiere Pro:

 

  • If I select (tick) Intel and Nvidia hardware:

-Playback in Premiere Pro shows activity at Nvidia Decoder

-Exporting in Premiere shows activity at Intel decoder

 

  • If I only select Nvidia:

-Playback uses Nvidia decoder

-Exporting uses CPU (Intel Decode and Nvidia Decode shows no use)

 

  • If I choose only Intel it works both for playback and export

 

 

In Media Encoder:

 

It always uses Intel Decoder, doesn't matter if I choose only Intel, only Nvidia or both. 

 

 

Could I be doing something wrong?

 

When I updated PPro and AME I first uninstalled 15.1 and then installed 15.2

I reinstalled GPU drivers (Intel and Nvidia), using DDU, reinstalled same version.

 

Is there anything else I can do? 

 

 

Here are the system's spec:

 

Notebook: Asus GL553VE

Intel i7-7700HQ (integrated graphics HD 630)

Nvidia Geforce GTX 1050Ti 4GB

16GB Ram

 

Windows 10 20H2 19042.867

Nvidia Studio driver 462.31 (Nvidia settings: VSync=ON)

Intel graphics driver 27.20.100.9466

 

Footage is  H264 2704x1520 29.97fps 4:2:0

 

 

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

R Neil Haugen
R Neil Haugen
Legend
June 17, 2023

Just to make all this more confusing (as if it isn't enough already) ... there are two types of "hardware" encoding in Premiere.

 

The first is for visual effects, mainly color/tonality things or some sizing things, like Lumetri and Warp.  And is totally based on the GPU capabilities. So that usage only occurs when you have the affected effects in use on the sequence. Which can in and of itself be puzzling enough.

 

The second is of course long-GOP decoding/encoding. Which when it first appeared, was totally dependent on the CPU having the extra bit that handled that process. And that was only on certain Intel CPUs. A lot of users just bought spendy Intel CPUs expecting that they would then get H.264 de/encoding, but were furious when their spendy Intel CPU didn't.

 

Because it wasn't the cost, it was the series type ... of CPU that mattered.

 

And now ... some GPUs can do H.264/5 under certain circumstances, or help the CPU at that task.

 

But a further point of confusion, is that only some forms of long-GOP can even now be handled with "hardware" processes. Two-pass encoding is always a software-only option. Some HDR is as I understand still only software-only. And I can't keep track of all the ifs ands buts nor details.

 

@RjL190365 is the only person on the planet that I know ... knows this stuff.

 

And it is so freaking frustrating that it's this complicated.

 

Neil

Everyone's mileage always varies ...
F
Fedess_gl
Participant
June 20, 2023

Yes, CPU should be carefully chosen, Intel's finished with "F" have not GPU, like i7-9700F , i7-12700KF, etc

And Intel's QuickSync technology works very nice (at least for me), it is pretty stable and I find in my experience better quality than NVENC (on my laptops GTX1050Ti), newer nVidia generations may do better though. 

    fedes_gl
    fedes_glAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    June 12, 2021

    no one?

     

    Can any people using Nvidia hardware export a video from an H264 source and check if Nvidia decoder is being used at Windows' task manager?

     

    Thanks 

    K
    Koroku92
    Participating Frequently
    June 17, 2023

    Be happy that your hardware accelerated decoding is working at all! I think it's best for you to tick both (Nvidia & intel) to have the best of both worlds.

     

    My hardware decoding is not working at all on the latest build of premiere with an Nvidia GPU (RTX3090). I have to use proxies/mezzanine codecs or my timeline is a lag-fest.

    F
    Fedess_gl
    Participant
    June 20, 2023

    I had some issues with latest Studio drivers from nVidia. I'm currently using 528.49, maybe because I have an old Pascal's series GTX1050Ti in my laptop. But probabbly you can troubleshoot your issue too.

     

    Anyway I'm using GPU only for processing effects (as described by  R Neil Haugen  in the first paragraph of his comment) because I found that hardwware encoding quality is not as good as other transcoders.

     

    On the other hand, for editing its strongly recommended to transcode (I use Avid DNxHR, Apple ProRes or GoPro Cineform) and put transcoded files into a fast storage. I bought a Sata SSD for my laptop (has only one M.2 slot, used for S.O.) and the different was much higher than using H264 / H265 + HW decoding. 

     

    So HW encoding and decoding is still useful, but only for small and fast projects in my use scenarios.

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