CPU and GPU barely used in slow render

[lcamps3]

Premiere Pro is often only using under 3% of the CPU and under 1% when rendering, and consequently doing it really slowly. A 45-minute export is taking around 2 hours, whether to h.264 or PR422. This is using OpenCL.

I'm on version 14.8

CPU: i9-10940x @ 3.30GHz

GPU: AMD Radeon R9 290x (I know, I know, but there's a great GPU shortage ongoing...)

RAM: 128GB (up to 104GB dedicated to Premiere)

OS: Windows 10

I've benchmark-tested the GPU and CPU and they're both running above expectations.

The workflow is reading from the a USB 3.0 drive, caching and scratch disk to a Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus, and exporting to separate Samsung SSD 870 QVO 4TB. I'm rendering previews as ProRes 422.

The sequence has Magic Bullet Looks on about 2/3 of it and some blurs, but nothing too complex FX-wise, but even so, it's not struggling; rather, it's just not really trying. Any advice as to what I might be doing wrong?

[basil1891]

I'd try to decompose the problem: turn off all effects, left only transitions maybe, and try to render/export. If it'll run as expected, I'll activate some effects, an so on.

[lcamps3]

Yep, I'm pretty sure it's the FX that's triggering it, based on trial and error. I'm just wondering why it has started happening, i.e. why the CPU and GPU are sort of surrendering, and not trying much to process the FX.

[R Neil Haugen]

Magic Bullet looks and blurs ... right there is a ton of processing. So yea, check with those 'off', you'll probably get much faster results.

Plus ... your original media is on a USB-C external? What is the sustained read/write while this is going through Premiere?

Neil

[lcamps3]

Thanks for the prompt replies. To clarify, my issue isn't strictly the speed of render. I've been working off USB 3.0 drives for years, with Magic Bullet and various effects, so I know how slow it can be at times, particularly my antiquated GPU.

But my concern is that the CPU and GPU don't even appear to be trying to work through it. It's not that they're working hard, yet the render is slow, but that they're barely engaged, therefore the render is slow. Wondering if there are any ideas as to why Premiere isn't kicking them into gear.

Incidentally, software only rendering gives much better results. To me that's a workaround though, as it doesn't explain why it's happening to begin with. This is a pretty recent though, so wondering if something has changed in recent versions that may account for it.

[davids58395606]

There have been a lot of issues for quite a few of us recently in regards to rendering issues, not really sure what's the culprit but you're not alone at the moment.