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Participating Frequently
May 9, 2019
Question

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

  • May 9, 2019
  • 3 replies
  • 2553 views

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?

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

Legend
May 9, 2019

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.

Participating Frequently
May 9, 2019

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

Community Expert
May 9, 2019

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

Participating Frequently
May 9, 2019

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.

R Neil Haugen
Legend
May 9, 2019

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

Everyone's mileage always varies ...
Participating Frequently
May 9, 2019

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.

Participating Frequently
May 10, 2019

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


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.