OpenCL and Pr 2021 OSX

[Jim Curtis]

I've been giving Pr 2021 (15.x) some road tests since release, and NOT having good results overall.  I'm doing most of my work in Pr 2020.  I'm a full-time post pro - spend hours every day on Pr.  I just tried another project in 15.4 and noticed that OpenCL is no longer an available renderer.  I wonder why that is because I got FAR superior performance with it over Metal. 

[Brandon Loshe]

Hi Jim,

I've noticed the same thing about renderer results. I also have been sticking with OpenCL, although it makes me nervous that it has been noted with Deprecated for a long time now. Does OpenCL become unavailable when updating the Apple OS? On Premiere Pro 15.0 I'm still seeing OpenCL - Deprecated on my options. And I'm on macOS Catalina (10.15.7). Just curious when OpenCL becomes unavailable, if it's Apple's OS or Adobe simply removing it as an option. 

[Kevin-Monahan]

Jim,

What are your system specs again? Meeting system requirements? 

Thanks,
Kevin

[Jim Curtis]

Kevin, my computer is only about 20 months old.  Here are my specs:

MacPro7,1 - 2.7 GHz 24-Core Intel Xeon W - 256G RAM - AMD Radeon Pro Vega II 32 GB

ATTO R680 PCIe SAS SCSI RAID6 (8 drives)

OSX 10.15.7

Premiere 14.9 most of the time

most used source codecs: .mxf, .mov, .mp4

most used Sequence settings: HD 23.976 stereo

PS.  Sorry for my slow replies.  I have "Email me when someone replies" enabled, but it's not working.  Plus, I also get that extremely frustrating and positively erroneous "post flooding" error a lot.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Jim,

I'm reminded that OpenCL support is simply no longer available in the new version and that's because the path to develop on that no longer exists from what I can tell. Sorry about that. You can let Apple devs know how you feel: https://www.apple.com/feedback/

Thanks,
Kevin

[Jim Curtis]

Thank you, Kevin.  Please allow me to play Devil's Advocate.  Is the poor performance in Premiere under Metal Apple's fault?  Or, is there some shortcoming in the way Adobe is implementing it?  I really don't expect you to implicate your employer here.  It does appear that Apple is deep sixing OpenCL in Monterey and M1, but I've read it's still supported in Big Sur, which is still the current version of the Apple OS (until Monterey is officially released).  So, why would Adobe ditch it while it's still supported, I'm wondering aloud in print.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Sorry, I don't have anything. I'm not sure what you were expecting me to say. I am under NDA at both places, etc. Maybe you can get a response from the engineering staff on user voice?

Adobe does tend to try to put itself ahead of the curve of changes in high tech, from my observations, though. The re-engineering of the ProRes codecs is one good example. Dev started years ahead of the date that they were no longer supported as a 32 bit codec. I would draw your own conclusions and then move on to what works.

Regards,
Kevin

[Jim Curtis]

Kevin, I didn't/don't expect you to be critical of your employer.  Some companies will admit mistakes and shortcomings, and that's a job for Marketing and PR when the situation warrants.

You may not recall this conversation, but it was you who told me that I'd have to buy a new computer to keep up with advances in Pr's technology.  I spent $14,000 on a new MacPro just 20 months ago, and now Adobe and Apple are pulling the rug, unless I'm perfectly OK with being stuck on Pr 2020.  For the most part, I am.  I'm getting work done, and making money.  But, I'm paying rent for new software builds I can't use, except for certain functions.*

* I do closed-captions for one client, and finding the new captions feature in 2021 better, even though exporting an SRT from the Captions Tab is still broken, and I have to export a movie from 2020 in order for 2021 not to get dozens of Event Tab errors due to my .mxf source footage.

I won't be surprised when Adobe drops support for Intel chips on OSX.

BTW,  I'm still not getting notification emails from this forum, and have learned that my "post flooding" error was a Firefox issue.  I'm having better luck with Safari.