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Answered

Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration Grayed Out

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
February 4, 2025
4 replies
3042 views

I had upgraded from an Intel Mid-2014 i7 to a 2023 Apple M3 Max 16 Core and 40 Core GPU. The transition was smooth as transferring to my new Macbook Pro. All was running well until I had to render a project using some fancy transitions. I received a message saying "Error compiling movie. Accelerated Renderer Error. Unble to produce frame" which had me wondering what was happening. I checked my settings when it came to rendering and I see where the Mercury rendering GPU was greyed out . This is disappointing. I'm currently running MacOS Sequioa 15.2 and I have a couple of projects on hold because of this. I tried to out smart the situation by importing the Premiere Pro project inside of After Effects. It started rendering at a snails pace, moving uphill and it failed to render the project which was only 1 minute.

Correct answer RjL190365

If you're exporting from within Premiere Pro, then you're permanently locked to the Metal GPU-accelerated rendering mode with all apple Silicon Macs. The default rendering mode will be shown within the grayed-out selection box – in this case, Metal. You cannot select software-only rendering or any other API because Apple silicon Macs do not support them at all.

Software-only rendering on Mac is available only on (older) Intel-powered Macs.

MyerPj

Community Expert

Hey @MarsRoberge

You can still do the render in 'software only' mode. Hold down shift as you start PP, then chose that options.

M

MarsRoberge

Participant

I will check that out. Thank you @MyerPj

M

MarsRoberge

Participant

I have had the same issues. I'm running an older Mac on Monterey with the latest version of Premiere Pro and suddenly I can no longer export my 4k timeline in true 4k without the compiling movie error. I spent several remote sessions with Adobe Support and get the run-around where they say to export the movie to FCP XML then import it into a 2024 version of the software. However, when I do that, it doesn't replicate my timeline: many frames are off with the x,y axis and certai effects have been removed such as invert colors, etc. If I want to export the movie, I'm going to waste another month of my time adjusting shot-by-shot. WHY?!! Adobe Support, please put back the software-only render fuctions or give us more options like before. If it's not broken, why fix it?

R

RjL190365Correct answer

Legend

If you're exporting from within Premiere Pro, then you're permanently locked to the Metal GPU-accelerated rendering mode with all apple Silicon Macs. The default rendering mode will be shown within the grayed-out selection box – in this case, Metal. You cannot select software-only rendering or any other API because Apple silicon Macs do not support them at all.

Software-only rendering on Mac is available only on (older) Intel-powered Macs.

H

Hugo36391780k9m5

Participant

I've found Premiere to be lagging more after this happened, any idea why? I have a 32gb mac and it was never an issue before the greyed out that area.

C

Charles38967273k665

Inspiring

I am experiencing extreme slow down, using PC. This is really unacceptable to me. I deleted the cache, checked my nvidia card settings, nothing helps. Any ideas?

MyerPj

Community Expert

Maybe that's the only option available to you? Adobe is going to remove the software only setting.

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