My brand new £4000 MacBook Pro exports 3x slower than my 2015 one

[Black Rainbow UK]

i9 6 core 32gig ram Vega 20 Gpu

any ideas? I’ve spoken to adobe and Apple on the phone. adobe told me to talk to Apple and Apple told me it’s adoves fault for not optimising for Mojave.

It feels to me like premiere  just using the 1.5gig graphics card instead of the 4gig Vega 20 card But I have no way of knowing.

is anyone using the Vega 20 successfully ?

[John T Smith]

Not everything uses CUDA, especially for exporting... read this

https://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/cuda-mercury-playback-engine-and-adobe-premiere-pro/

Mac troublshooting steps https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1622987

-Mac Utility for dual adapters http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1017891?tstart=0

[Black Rainbow UK]

The VEGA 20 runs on Metal not open CL - article is from 2011 donor sure how relevant that is to this problem.

[R Neil Haugen]

First, there's been numerous comments here and elsewhere about Mac users not finding Metal as fast as OpenCL, but not having much options. Not a great thing, but I'm sure Apple knows best ... or at least they think so.

Second, what's the CPU speed in Ghz of that CPU?

Neil

[Black Rainbow UK]

Yeah I'm not sure that apple will introduce a totally new system that would be completely useless for Premiere users in their top spec model. It's not like it's a little slower it's like slower than a 2014 bottom spec laptop

[R Neil Haugen]

Pr is apparently rather affected by CPU speed, and sadly, 6 core  2.9Ghz ain't speedy. They list those as having "turbo boost" available but I've no clue how usable or safe that is.

Also, make sure it is plugged in and disable all power saving features.

And I hope someone else has better ideas.

Neil

[Mo Moolla]

The issue is Mojave not your MBP or Premiere

It is by far the most problematic OS ever created by Apple. I had similar issues when I tested it.

Roll back to High Sierra and you will see a marked improvement all round

Mo

[Kevin-Monahan]

Ever solve this one, Black%20Rainbow%20UK? Let us know.

Kevin

[Black Rainbow UK]

No I haven't. I've taken the machine back to apple and swapped it but it's still the same. spent an hour talking to them and they said Adobe hasn't made their software work properly with their new metal system. Spent an hour talking to Adobe and they said Apple hasn't made their new OS work properly with the new Premiere. Which is it?

I just need to know if this is ever going to work properly or I need to take this machine back and get a less powerful but working GPU. If indeed that is the problem.

s

[Black Rainbow UK]

ok so looking at the activity monitor it is using the right graphics card although the usage seems inconsistent - screenshot below during an export.

I've also done a side by side with my old 2015 Macbook Pro - specs below. So yes it's faster but only twice as fast. I would have expected much better performance from this spec. Something weird must be going on.

Exporting 21seconds of 4k Canon RAW lite to ProRes 422

2mins 1sec to export

2018 Max spec Macbook Pro

MacBookPro 15,3

Intel Core i9 2.9GHz 6 Core

32 GB RAM

Radeon Pro Vega 20 4080 MB

Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB

4mins 2secs to export

2015 Mid range MacBook

MacBook Pro 11,3

Intel Core i7 4 core

2.5 GHz

16 GB RAM

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2 GB

Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

[Black Rainbow UK]

Can you help with this ? Is anyone else reporting slow export speeds in Premiere?

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi,

If the speed is bothering you, let the devs know here: Premiere Pro: Hot (4461 ideas) – Adobe video & audio apps

Thanks,
Kevin

[Black Rainbow UK]

I've posted it there - hoped new updates would fix this but it still seems really slow. Even trying to make proxies is taking hours

[Kevin-Monahan]

BR UK,

Sorry for the problems with your export times. Which format are you trying to export? Is it H.264?

I can see that neither machine supports Hardware Acceleration for H.264. Your new rig is not supported and your old rig is too old to support that feature.

You may want to make sure that is disabled in both machines and do another quick test.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Black Rainbow UK]

not sure what you mean by 'Hardware' - you mean GPU? I don't have the 2015 Macbook pro any more. When I have been doing tests I have been comparing to my 6 Core trashcan.

Does the Premiere make the most of the this laptop?

[Kevin-Monahan]

not sure what you mean by 'Hardware' - you mean GPU?

Oh, this was a fairly recent feature that got added for exporting H.264 using QuickSync technology. It's in Preferences > Media. This process harnesses the power of certain CPU/GPU combinations for creating standard quality H.264 exports.

doing tests I have been comparing to my 6 Core trashcan.

OK, this makes much more sense since the MacPro's i7 CPU does support QuickSync while the MacBook Pro's i9 does not. That might explain why your H.264 exports are faster with the older machine.

Does the Premiere make the most of the this laptop?

Sure, except in the case of hardware accelerated H.264 exports. This is the case of an older technology that Premiere Pro finally caught up with. I also find it odd that the new processors coming out now simply don't offer this tech. That said, you'll get faster high quality exports and faster exports of other codecs.

Please come back with any questions.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Black Rainbow UK]

So just to be clear. my brand new £3000 laptop is not optimised to export h264 which is what everyone uses all the time but my 4 year old laptop worth £700 is? I'm struggling here...FYI i have the 'enable hardware acceleration check box ticked already

What codec would this fly with? I'm delivering for digital 90% of the time.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi,

This can be confusing. Sorry! The confusing bit is differentiating between "Hardware Acceleration" and "GPU Acceleration" as they aren't the same things, but sound the same!

• Hardware Acceleration: related to faster exporting of standard quality H.264 files using the i7 CPU and Integrated GPU hardware.
• GPU Acceleration:
  • related to accelerated playback of GPU accelerated effects in the Timeline (tech referred to as the "Mercury Playback Engine").
  • GPU Acceleration in this case is also related to faster exports for all formats/codecs only when the following effects are found in the Timeline: scaling, clips with frame rate and color space differences, along with Lumetri Color and other GPU accelerated effects. If none of these are present, a GPU will not accelerate the export of files. GPU Acceleration uses the "discrete" GPU in your computer.

So just to be clear. my brand new £3000 laptop is not optimised to export h264

For a specific flavor of standard quality H.264 that is correct. The newer computer with the i9 CPU does not take advantage of a Premiere Pro feature that can be taken used with an earlier i7 processor.

This has nothing to do with Premiere Pro, or Adobe. It has more to do with Intel and the way the i9 chip was constructed.

That said, if you needed a higher quality H.264 encode, your newer computer will perform better.

which is what everyone uses all the time

For some people, H.264 files derived from QuickSync encoding is not of a high enough quality for them. These exports are more susceptible to video glitches, for example. For others, the quality is just fine.

but my 4 year old laptop worth £700 is?

No, your legacy MacBook Pro doesn't have a new enough CPU to support QuickSync. The model that came one version later than yours does carry the proper i7 chip. The MacPro also has this capability.

What codec would this fly with? I'm delivering for digital 90% of the time.

Just use standard H.264 encoding for the newer laptop for most things. It will take longer than the MacPro in QuickSync Hardware Acceleration mode, but will give you better quality and won't take much longer if your discrete GPU is enabled under Project Settings > General.

Personally, I export to the ProRes codec and create my H.264 files from this master. The reason is because I use a smart rendering workflow, which involves changing the rendering codec to the mastering codec. That way, exports go much, much faster than a standard H.264 encode. See my blog post.

Hope that helps. Please come back with any questions.

Thanks,
Kevin

[basil1891]

Regarding GPU usage during rendering, there is a bug in Premiere. Seems it's an old one, though discovered only recently.

Check the info, you may find it useful:

Re: Order of filters/effects and drop in CUDA-rendering speed, is it a bug or a feature?