Why can Vegas Pro export videos with GPU acceleration, but Premiere can't?

[andrewb99819184]

I just recently switched from Vegas Pro 16 to Adobe Premiere Pro. One of the major differences I'm seeing is that GPU hardware encoding when exporting a video is basically non-existent in Premiere, and everyone just seems to be alright with that.

This seems really unusual to me, especially since Premiere is a "professional" level software that very well-known Youtubers use, and major production companies even use to edit movies and TV shows. Hardware encoding is a pretty basic, yet incredibly important feature to just... not have.

Vegas can export a video with the "AMD VCE" render option in about 12 minutes that Premiere took about 4 hours to export.

So is there some legitimate reason why Premiere can't use the video encoders in graphics cards (like AMD VCE and NVIDIA NVENC) to export projects?

[R Neil Haugen]

Every NLE handles what they do with hardware differently. It's mostly tradeoffs. I've been hanging in conversations with heavy AfterEffects geeks arguing whether certain things should be rebuilt into GPU use or not.

Someone says X effect would be awesome if done with GPU. Someone else is horrified because that would disrupt their carefully planned comps that use the way the app uses resources precisely.

If say the GPU was pegged for half the general encoding tasks, that would be good for users who don't use current "GPU Accelerated List" effects much.

But the tradeoff ... and there always is one ... would be less GPU available for all the color work that someone like me does.

And for those who live by Warp Stabilizer.

Pick your poison. It's inherent in the lives of those doing video post processing. No matter which platform or apps you use.

Neil

[andrewb99819184]

This is an irrelevant answer, you're talking about the processing of effects. I'm talking about plain hardware based video encoding, which is not even an option in Premiere.

[R Neil Haugen]

Communicate to the engineers. Post the request on the bug/features UserVoice system. That goes directly into their system plus the upper managers who make budgeting decisions.

Neil

[Ann Bens]

Vegas is not Premiere and Premiere is not Vegas: two different NLE's.

If you want hardware encoding you need a intel cpu with graphics capability.

What the gpu does and does not do.

CUDA, OpenCL, Mercury Playback Engine, and Adobe Premiere Pro | Adobe Blog

[andrewb99819184]

Why would their only hardware acceleration support be for Intel integrated graphics? They're not powerful at all. Seems totally absurd.

[R Neil Haugen]

Because up until a bit over a year ago, AMD developed for gaming, not video post. The needs are very different. So the Adobe video teams didn't waste much time on using what little AMD had available. The Nvidia cards had so much more power for video post.

Then AMD decided to drastically up their game for video post. Their cards still don't quite pull up to Nvidia's in so many ratings in actual use, but they can be very good for the price.

So now the development teams are working at porting to the AMD cards. But that's not something they could just turn a switch and have running.

I'm glad that AMD is finally trying to compete in this market. And hope the Adobe video teams can get better use of the cards. But you can't change how this came about nor immediately have equal use.

Neil

[andrewb99819184]

This thread is not about video post, once again. It's about hardware encoding. Neither of the cards have any use in Premiere when it comes to hardware encoding.

[R Neil Haugen]

Sorry, but any NLE is about video post processing. Which is not the same as general video encoding. Having discussed this sort of thing with tech people from Avid, BlackMagic, Filmlight ... all of which use hardware very different from each other. And none work just like a video encoder.

Which is why there are some very expensive professional apps that do *nothing* but incredibly high-speed encoding.

I've had this explained to me many times. Someday I may even be able to explain the difference. A young friend is a brilliant geek, gamer, and builder of software infrastructure. He thinks the "proper" use of AMD cards should push NLEs towards real-time gaming speeds.

No matter which app's developers I've talked with they all say it doesn't work that way. Can't.

So, from my experience, the people writing the apps would tend to disagree with you. I'm not a code warrior though. I just love talking with them, and asking tons of questions.

You wanna know the differences between Vegas and Premiere, there's a ton of them. Vegas does some things real slick. Premiere does a lot of other things real slick that Vegas simply can't.

They're both simply *tools*, designed by different groups of humans. Use whichever tool works best for your needs, it's all ok.

And go to NAB some time, and discuss this with the engineers. Of all the companies. Argue with them, I certainly do.

Neil

[Carlos Ziade]

can you be more specific?

what kind of video? what format are you exporting to?

your premiere pro project workflow?

any plugins used?

effects?

do your sequence settings and export settings match?

system specs?

when you say exporting a  video, you mean a video file or a project?

workflows can be waayyyy different with waayyy different outcomes when comparing 2 different softwares

[andrewb99819184]

can you be more specific?

what kind of video? what format are you exporting to?

4k30 AVC/.MOV and exporting to 4k30 AVC/.MP4.

your premiere pro project workflow?

I don't know what you mean by this.

any plugins used?

No.

effects?

Zoom, pan & crop, that's it.

do your sequence settings and export settings match?

Yes.

system specs?

Intel i7-8700k

32GB (4x8GB) 2666 MHz DDR4

WD SN750 NVMe SSD

AMD Radeon VII w/ 16GB HBM2

MSI MEG ACE Z390

Seasonic Platinum Focus 750W PSU

when you say exporting a  video, you mean a video file or a project?

I mean exporting a project to a video file via File > Export > Media.

[RjL190365]

Also, you have to know that Vegas PRO supports only OpenCL for GPU acceleration in H.264 and H.265 exports. No CUDA support. This heavily favors AMD GPUs in general, but some NVIDIA GPUs cannot use OpenCL effectively. As such, those particular NVIDIA GPUs permanently lock the Vegas PRO encoder to the CPU-only mode.

[andrewb99819184]

That's actually not true that they favor OpenCL anymore. They shifted their focus to include more CUDA support awhile back.