Transcrabe performance issue in 23.5.0 (Build 56)

Report · Jul 20, 2023

Dear team,

I wanted to bring your attention to a significant issue with the Transcribe feature in Premiere Pro, particularly on Windows (I'm not certain about its behavior on Mac).

The problem arises when the Transcribe process runs in parallel for videos that are either imported or selected for transcription. This causes a considerable strain on the system's resources and significantly affects performance (a job never finishes).

For instance, when attempting to import or transcribe 50+ videos simultaneously, the feature fails to function properly. However, when the workload is reduced to 10-20 videos, the process works smoothly and completes in approximately one minute.

Upon closer observation, it seems that the requested videos are processed concurrently, leading me to believe that this is the root cause of the issue.

I kindly request your prompt attention to this matter and urge you to fix this problem, as it severely impacts productivity and forces users to resort to manual transcription requests for packs of 10-20 videos, which is highly inefficient.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

Best regards,

Nick

Report · Jul 23, 2023

Nick,

> when attempting to import or transcribe 50+ videos simultaneously,

omg, way to push the limits. I love it!

I don't think my test files directory has 50 videos! So while I think about how to test this, are all of these the same format? What format or formats? Are any of them really long? For example, someone reported a single transcription that never ends, but it was an almost 4 hour long mp3.

Thanks for mentioning that this happens on import (automatic) and on manual selection.

I am also on windows.

Do you have any guesses on whether the multiple progress bars correlate to multiple processors being used? I see the bars even on single video transcriptions, but never examined that.

I may start by testing your 10-20 observation and work up from there.

I'm also Windows, still win 10.

Stan

Report · Jul 23, 2023

Okay, my fun project for the day....

To simplify this first test, I duplicated a 3 and a half minute mp4 50 times and renamed it [Name]01, 02 etc. This is a single speaker and a single stereo audio track.

I had the latest Beta open, so I did the test there. My System info:

Application: Premiere Pro (Beta) v23.6.0.56
OS: Windows v10.0.19045, RAM: 63.80 GB GB, CPUs (logical): 16

I imported all 50, and in project 1, I selected 10, then right click and "Transcribe", and then did it with 20. With only 20 left, I created a new project (closed PR in between), and ran all 50.

I used the Win Resource Monitor. Under all conditions, all 16 CPU cores are close to maxed, computer fan running, and all CPUS drop and fans stop on completion. RAM is around 28%.

I opened the PR Progress Panel to watch the process. All videos (whether 10 or 50), quickly move up to 17-24% completion and the overall completion goes to about 30%. Then only 4 videos at a time are showing progress until they are complete. This varied some, but the general pattern appeared to be consistent. These move pretty regularly down the Progress Panel stack, with the exception of the 20-video run where it was not consistent, and the final videos were toward the middle of the stack.

Total time for completion for 10, 20, and 50 videos was 2 minutes, 3:45, and 9 minutes.

Obviously, very different results might occur with longer videos, and different formats (particularly audio).

Stan

Report · Jul 23, 2023

Thanks a lot, Stan, for looking into it!

Let me answer your questions first and later comment on your observation 🙂

omg, way to push the limits. I love it!

I can explain it :)))) I have travel shoots, so for a project, I usually have 100-300 video files 5 seconds to ~5 minutes long (avg is about 10 seconds long). Most of them do not have voices.

I'm also on Windows, still on Win10.

I'm on Win11 Pro / Version 22H2

System info:

Premiere Pro 23.5.0 (Build 56)

AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX with Radeon Graphics 3.30 GHz

32.0 GB (31.4 GB usable)

Cores: 8

CPUs (logical): 16

Are all of these the same format? What format or formats?

Yes, all the same, MP4 from Canon camera. 4k (if it's important).

Are any of them really long?

Only a few are up to 5 minutes, usually up to 30 seconds.

Do you have any guesses on whether the multiple progress bars correlate with multiple processors being used?

I'm not sure I got your question.

When I try to process many videos manually, I can't open progress bars at all. It just can't start so many tasks.

When I try to process 10-20 videos manually - it gets stuck for 3-5 seconds (maybe up to 10 sec), and after that progress bars show something you can track. So my guess - the problem is during task creation for many files and because of parallelization.

About your tests, the difference I see - your setup starts processing 50 videos, mine can't do it (only smaller chunks).

Please let me know if you need more information from my site to test/debug it.

Nick

Report · Jul 24, 2023

Thanks, Nick.

Do you have any guesses on whether the multiple progress bars correlate with multiple processors being used?

I'm not sure I got your question.

Not really relevant now: All 16 cores maxed no matter how many videos are actually being processed. And the "active" processing appears to be 4 at a time.

I reran the 50 video test in PR 23.5.0. All is the same, EXCEPT, and perhaps unrelated to PR version, I have a service CPU usage of 50%. This drops to 7% when transcription ends.

The 50 videos still processed, and took 14:45 compared to 9:00.

@Alexander_DVA @Kerstin Ebert @Kevin-Monahan Any thoughts about what Nick is experiencing?

Stan