Premiere Pro Throttled with extraordinary GPU usage

[Joshua L Core]

Specs at the end.

I built a new Windows 10 PC with one of the goals being that it be capable of editing video.
It runs perfectly smoothly in every respect, but Premiere Pro is nearly impossible to use.

What I've gathered is that Premiere Pro scales the drain on the GPU by the power (and threads) of the CPU. So because the PC's power is heavily weighted towards CPU (an intentional choice given editing typically uses far more CPU than GPU), the GPU is unable to keep up with Premiere's demands and thus throttles the whole process. 

In practice this looks like Premiere struggling to play a timeline of a completely unedited piece of footage. Adding a second layer, or any transition, or any editing causes the playback to stutter and lag, with a framerate approaching 0fps. Premiere even continues to play audio after the timeline has been paused, and it continues to do so until the GPU has stopped having a heart attack (5 seconds after finishing all of the edited parts). The other tracks at that point in the attached picture are empty. It is simply 2 overlapping video files, both at full size (no editing has been done yet). 

I would take ANY solution to this nonsense. Can I tell Premiere to only use 20% of the CPU thus creating an effective equality? Can I weight Premiere more heavily towards CPU? I've tried a number of similarly powerful GPU's to the same effect.

Specs:

Windows 10 Professional

AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (12 Core 3.8GHz)

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super

Samsung 970 EVO 1TB SSD

32 GB Ram

Monitor Resolution 1650 x 1050

[R Neil Haugen]

32BG is enough for one track of 4k, maybe two.

Make sure you have a Studio driver for that GPU, as the game-ready drivers are causing all sorts of bad things in Premiere at the moment. If you have a game-ready driver, go to the Nvidia driver support page and dwonload/install the latest Studio driver. Do a clean install, and you might need to go back a Studio driver version also.

Neil

[Joshua L Core]

I'm only editing 1280x720 footage. I have another computer which I use for editing and it runs beautifully with 6 layers and many effects while having a less powerful CPU and a RTX 2070 (notsuper). 

I do have the Studio Drivers installed, and after your suggestion I tried a few older versions to no avail.

[R Neil Haugen]

I'm not the best one around here to explain the intricacies of Premiere's hardware issues. @RjL190365 is much more knowledgeable than I. I can give decently solid but general comments.

What I do know is enough to say your assumptions of how Premiere "views" the hardware are not actually correct. It's not one or the other, it's a balancing act. But what needs balancing?

The entire computer.

Not just the CPU and GPU, but the RAM ... Karl Soule suggests a minimum of 2GB per CPU core, I've seen others suggest 4GB/RAM per CPU core. You seem pretty decent on RAM also. Of course, GPU vRAM counts, and that card is pretty good.

But another massive area, is drive utilization.

In your computer, your CPU looks pretty decent, as is the GPU. But you only list one drive, and if that's all you're using, right there is a bottleneck in working with Premiere.

One drive is simply not going to work as well as multiple drives. Even with a couple Nvme drives involved, it's better to have programs/OS on one drive, another drive totally dedicated to cache/preview files, and a third to projects/media. All the working drives being SSDs, or coming from a massive RAID that has the internals and connections to sustained read/write well above 6Gbps.

So maybe if rjl pops in, he can give some specifics.

Neil

[Andy 1968]

What video codec are you editing? 32 GB of RAM and one M.2 SSD can play multiple layers of 4K Pro Res, BRAW, R3D and H.264. That being said your CPU and GPU are a good match. I would like to see the stats of your system using the Windows Task Manger. The AMD CPU and Nvidia GPU combo seem to be problematic with Premiere Pro. Do you have the latest GPU driver? There might be a BIOS setting that might help or simply installing an ASIO4ALL driver might help. Someone with an AMD system stated unpluging their headphones fixed everything. Go figure. The video below show the Task Manager stats I am looking for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L-erwmRxAU&feature=emb_imp_woyt

[Joshua L Core]

Im editing 1920 x 1080 Source footage with the codec recognized by Premiere Pro as: MP4/MOV H.264 4:2:0

I edit the same footage on my aforementioned slightly less powerful other PC with buttery smoothness except in cases of excessive effects (5 tracks with transitions, colour, comparison view, etc). 

I'd hate to think the combination of AMD and Nvidia is the problem, since that would be a costly fix. It does mark one of the few big distinguishing features from my other PC though (Intel and Nvidia). The drivers are up to date (updated since picture) and ASIO4ALL seems to have dud download links. 
I'll happily try BIOS settings, but it'd be nice to have some direction on what settings might help so I am not flailing about too much.

[Andy 1968]

Sometthings is wrong. The hard drive and RAM are OK. What happens if you disconnect from the Network and dissable all other porgrams?

The ASIO4ALL audio drivers can help when using Premiere Pro but it depends on your audio gear. I know the new AMD motherboards can get a performance boost when using an AMD GPU. I think the BIOS is tweaked for AMD GPUs but I cannot say for sure. Cheking the GPU BIOS is just a guess. I am not saying it will work.

[Joshua L Core]

I tried it without any network. Nothing else is installed or running. And I even tried the Game Ready drivers just in case they helped (they added 2% load to the GPU). Nothing helped. What the heck is going on!

[Andy 1968]

Maybe a BIOS update or chipset update? I would call AMD.

[Joshua L Core]

I played in the BIOS as much as I was willing and tried AMD Downcore Control to throttle the CPU down at every available option. Exact same result. GPU Decode running flat out while the rest of the computer sits idle.

[Joshua L Core]

Still completely stumped here. Any card I use has the exact same problem. Every other part idling while Video Decode runs flat out. The cards all function fine in every other aspect of the PC's use, and one of the ones I tried is the one I use daily for video editing on my personal PC with buttery smoothness despite lower specs. 

[samnalven]

I'm having a similar issue with 3950x, 3080, 128gb of ram. In the process of rolling back through older versions of premiere but no luck yet. Sure hope there's an update or a solution!

[Joshua L Core]

UPDATE:

I have had the PC hardware professionally tested (down to the motherboard slots for everything) and every part works perfectly. I've tried a 3080 card, different drivers, and older versions of Premiere. I tried footage that works fine on my other PC, and I reset the PC again for good measure.

I noticed that disabling hardware acceleration results in slightly better performance (because of the relatively heftier CPU) but still throttles out (this time at 50% CPU) weirdly. Again this is with 2 tracks of 1080p footage at any display quality (1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8) and some simple transitions. Definitely not something that can be justified as insufficient hardware power.

All that is left is a bug in Adobe or it's interaction with some piece of hardware. Cannot even suspect the Nvidia/AMD interaction since disabling hardware acceleration only leaves it working with AMD tech. 

I do not know how to proceed. Even buying an entirely new PC might have the exact same results, and would be a massive waste given that every bit of hardware is running perfectly.

[basil1891]

1) Usually this issue ( overloaded GPU decoding along with stutter) happens when you deal with VFR footage, especially when you overlay tracks. Transcode such clips to CFR via Handbrake, Avidemux, or even via build-in Windows editor.

2) Regarding hardware accelerated decoding on/off switch.

It is recommended to clean media cache each time you change that settings. 

Close PP and manually clean media cache  (%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Common ) and delete folders:  Media Cache, Media Cache Files, PTX, Peak Files)

3) Make sure that NVidia G-Sync is off in driver control panel (G-Sync) Choppy playback when Premiere window is active, pl... - Adobe Support Community - 11797036

[Joshua L Core]

I am using CFR footage, the same footage that runs smoothly on my less powerful other PC with more layers and transitions.

G-Sync is off, and persumably couldn't have caused the same issue while hardware acceleration was off.

The switch between hardware acceleration / not was really just to demonstrate that the problem is not on the GPU. What should be possible, just isn't. 2 layers of 1080p footage should not be causing this PC to struggle, but something (presumably on Adobe) is trying to do far more video decoding than it should, either on the GPU or the PC, and thereby making editing almost impossible. 

Every bit of hardware works, and it is a more powerful PC set up the same way as my lower spec machine, but still it is vastly inferior when it comes to actually editing.

[basil1891]

Just to make sure we are on the same page, When you mentioning "hardware acceleration" do you mean:

1) Preferences > Media => Hardware accelerated DEcoding ...

or  

2) Project Settings > General > Renderer > Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration...

It's different things, I was referring to the 1st one. No need to turn off MPE CUDA renderer. Only HW Decoder. And as suggested, close PP and AME, and clear cache manually, include all 4 mentioned folders.

[Joshua L Core]

The first. 
I have also tried the renderer options.

But having Hardware Accelerated Decoding (recognizes Nvidia card) ON throttles playback with 94% video decode on the GPU (see screenshot above) while having it OFF has the same playback issues with 50% cpu usage.

[Andy 1968]

Something is wrong. I would like to think Adobe is looking into it. There seems to be an issue with AMD CPUs and Nvidia GPUs. Your RTX 2070 Super and AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (12 Core 3.8GHz) should be a good match. That is not to say an RTX 2080 wouldn't be a better match.

[Joshua L Core]

Unfortunately an AMD video card is the only thing I have not been able to test. I did get to try it with a 3080 and it still had problems. At this point I wouldn't expect the GPU to be the cause though since taking it out of the equation still results in laggy playback at a CPU level.

[basil1891]

I am using CFR footage, the same footage that runs smoothly on my less powerful other PC with more layers and transitions...

Against all chances, trancode the footage as if it's VFR, and check how it's work. People are using various tools like Handbrake, Avidemux, ffmpeg, nvencc, even buil-in Windows editor.

I use this, ffmpeg-based one: batch converter

[shriefgroup]

Greetings Joshua,

Did you find a solution to your problem? I am asking because I am facing a similar problem.

[Joshua L Core]

I found the worst sort of solution possible, and I'm sorry.
I had the luxury of being able to leave the problem alone, gave up on editing with that computer and used it for other things. When I gave it another try a few months later it was better.
I'm sorry to hear you are having a similar issue and I hope you can get it fixed. 

[shriefgroup]

That's the last reply I thought of getting haha, I even thought no one would answer especially after 2 years or more.

Nonetheless, thanks a lot for the reply I appreciate it, I will try to satisfy the hunger of RAMs by adding 64 GB, may be it will make a difference, and I will certainly write an answer here if I remember.