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HW decoding on nVidia GPU

Community Beginner ,
Jul 13, 2020 Jul 13, 2020

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Hi all,

 

as a tech integrator I'm solving an issue for one of my clients. He's running Win 10, 8core 1.8GHz Xenon CPU and a Quadro P4000. He would like to use a multicam workflow for editting 4 channels of 4K footage. Unfortunatelly CPU is not capable of decoding such an amount. The GPU is, though. When I run four instaances of VLC player with the same footage, VLC offloads the decoding to h.246 decoders on the GPU card. Problem is, Premiere seems not being able to do the same thing. I can see some CUDA utulization happening, so Premiere does communicate with the driver, but decoder cores are not being used. Most of the decoding heavy lifting is still done by the CPU. Is that a normal behaviour, or am I making some mistake somewhere?

 

(HW acceleration is allowed in the preferences, Mercury engine is set to CUDA.)

 

I tried to contact a support about this, but eventhough I was asking on behalf of a company that has a teams account with bunch of licences, I was redirected to this forum as a "best way to contact developers". ...so eventhough that company pays god knows how much on Adobe subscription, I'm doing as I'm told.

Please help.

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Freeze or hang , Hardware or GPU , Performance

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Adobe Employee , Jul 15, 2020 Jul 15, 2020

mK,

Currently, there is no GPU hardware decoding other than Quick Sync available for H.264, HEVC, or any other footage. Please make a feature request on User Voice. https://adobe-video.uservoice.com/forums/911233-premiere-pro

Thanks,
Kevin

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Community Expert ,
Jul 13, 2020 Jul 13, 2020

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playing back 4 streams in a media player is not the same thing as doing a "live" switch in an editing program... but I have no idea if it's possible with this hardware.    One solution for your client is for him to use a proxy workflow.   I've done it with exactly this situation and it was rocksolid.  

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 13, 2020 Jul 13, 2020

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Yeah, I did recommend him that. Yet, it would be nice to be able to work without it. I'm trying to find out, if Premiere Pro uses iGPU/QuickSync for HW decoding by default and without it it switches to plain CPU, or if it's supposed to try HW decoders on the nVidia card like VLC is able to. My next steps will heavily depend on this information. If it should try nVidia decoders, I have a problem in SW setup somewhere. If it tries QuickSync only and then gives up and return the decoding back to CPU, I'll have to contemplate a CPU upgrade, as this Xenon doesn't have iGPU at all.

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LEGEND ,
Jul 13, 2020 Jul 13, 2020

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There are some posts around on the recently expanded use of hardware decoding, which is possible with newer Intel CPUs, but doesn't work with the older ones. I'm not sure of the age of that CPU.

 

The user here with the most encyclopedic understanding of this sort of data is 'RJL' ... so you might search for his user profile or the forum and look for his answers.

 

mgrenadier is probably the closest to RJL of the rest of us, btw ...

 

Neil

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Community Expert ,
Jul 13, 2020 Jul 13, 2020

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what gave you that idea? I know next to nothing about this stuff
except for what I ready here... which is invaluable.

I've been starting to transition to windows from mac. Long complicated story...
but when I hooked up a custom built machine (originally intended to be
a hackintosh) what did I see last week but exactly what people have
been describing. Downloaded and installed new drivers for the nvidia
card and fixed the problem. so thanks to you, Neil and everyone else
who contributes so much.

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 14, 2020 Jul 14, 2020

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It's a new CPU, but maily for servers. It doesn't have the onboard GPU at all.

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LEGEND ,
Jul 13, 2020 Jul 13, 2020

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 14, 2020 Jul 14, 2020

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I checked this setting multiple times with subsequent restarts. No luck. 😕 HW decoders still not being even touched. Also, the article speaks mainly about encoding.

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Community Expert ,
Jul 13, 2020 Jul 13, 2020

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He would like to use a multicam workflow for editting 4 channels of 4K footage.

 

Mind you that 4 channels of 4K footage requires a good disc setup as well that can sustain the data rate and all simoustanely calls from Premiere Pro to the disc that "asks" for the data. Using more than one disc helps a lot. 1.8 GHz on the CPU is really on the low side as well. Premiere Pro loves clock speed over cores. The biggest problem seems to be that a 1.8 GHz CPU cannot decode the footage but am pretty confident that a 8-core Xeon W-2145 @ 3.9 GHz would struggle as well.

 

You don´t mention which version of Premiere Pro you use or what footage (from what camera, etc) the footage comes from, but the latest version of Premiere Pro can decode some footage using the Nvidia GPU.

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 14, 2020 Jul 14, 2020

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He's using the latest version (updater is working there) and the footage is 60Mbit AVC in MOV container. (Mavic Pro footage) I haven't checked the color space. It might have been 10 bit. But still. If VLC is able to use nVidia's HW decoding on the same footage, Premiere should too, if it's about to even try.

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Guide ,
Jul 14, 2020 Jul 14, 2020

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There ia a lot of incorrect information on this thread. You don't need super fast disk speed to edit 4 layers of H.264 at 4K resolution.  Most hard drives can do it. That being said 4K Pro Res or BRAW would require a fast HD system.

Premire Pro does use Quick Sync if the driver is installed and you enable the IGPU in the BIOS . Intel's Quick Sync is part of the IGPU. The Xeon CPU do not have an IGPU. The video link below might be worth watching.

https://youtu.be/pE6t1ryanO4  

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 14, 2020 Jul 14, 2020

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Yes. All of the tutorials and forum posts lead me to the same setting in preferences. I do have this enabled. The CPU does not have iGPU hence it does not have QuickSync. The answer I'm unable to get from Adobe, or this forum for that matter, is, whether Premiere can utulize nVidia's h.264 decoder cores instead of QuickSync or not. It can use CUDA for processing, yes, that is working, but I need to know if Premiere should also try to use the nVidia decoder cores (like VLC can) or these cores are not supported. Official support sent me here and I've got six different versions of "tick this setting in Preferences". ...but no answer to my quite straight forward question. "Is Premiere supposed to attempt decoding on nVidia h.264 cores or not?"

 

Really my patience with Adobe is running out. This is why people pay them monthly fees? They really are becoming the second Avid. With support like that, I'm recomending Resolve to clients from now on...

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Guide ,
Jul 14, 2020 Jul 14, 2020

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I don't think Premiere Pro uses AMD or Nvidia GPUs for playback of H.264. It can use them for rendering. Keep in mind NVENC nor Quick Sync has unlimited performance. If you have a 12 core CPU NVENC and Quick Sync might hit a bottleneck before the CPU. The CPU might play six layers of H.264 at 4K but the NVENC and Quick Sync might only play five layers. You cannot have multiple devices encode and decode H.264 similtaneously.   Only one device can encode  and decode. In some cases the IGPU will be the best option. In other cases the CPU or GPU might be the better option. Quick Sync helps if you have a laptop without a dedicated GPU. That being said Premiere Pro cannot use Intel's Quick Sync as good a FCPX and Edius. 

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LEGEND ,
Jul 14, 2020 Jul 14, 2020

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They're working on it.

 

Here's a link to a staffer post on the Public Beta forum ...

 

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-beta/feature-focus-windows-intel-hw-decode-performance-i...

 

Neil

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 15, 2020 Jul 15, 2020

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Neil, I don't see they are. The forum post mentiones Intel HW decoding again, it even references the requirement sheet that strictly states Intel's QuickSync/iGPU is mandatory. There is no mention of nVidia HW decoder support.

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LEGEND ,
Jul 15, 2020 Jul 15, 2020

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You might be correct ... and in another thread it popped up that there is a free plugin called Turbocut available from the Adobe Extensions system or Cinegys I think it is, that uses Nvidia GPUs for playback.

 

https://www.cinegy.com/

 

I'll be testing that out later today.

 

Neil

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 15, 2020 Jul 15, 2020

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Let me know how it went. My client's GPU is a Quadro P4000, which is still Pascal based. I'm affraid this utulity might not work as they state newer GPU cores as a prerequisity.

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Community Expert ,
Jul 15, 2020 Jul 15, 2020

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I did a test today, playing back four 4K streams simultaneously in a multicam environment. All footage is H.264 from a Panasonic GH4. My Nvidia Titan X Pascal pegged around 25% during playback no matter what the "Enable hardware acellerated encoding and decoding" are set to. So for me my Nvidia GPU does not help to decode, at least so it seems.

 

On the other hand i wonder why it demanded 25% in both cases. 25% seems high, but i work mainly with 1080 footage so that may explain it or simply that the card is relatively old. No matter what, all four streams were decoded without issues, no dropped frames, no stuttering. The CPU worked hard in both cases. (No QuickSync in my CPU.)

 

- Premiere Pro 14.3

- HP Z4 G4 Workstation (Art nr. 8JK46EA#UUW)

- Intel W-2245, 8-core @ 3.90 GHz

- 64 GB RAM

- Nvidia Titan X Pascal

- 4TB NVMe Corsair (Did not try SATA SSD)

 

I do miss any input from Adobe regarding your question in this thread. This do often mean that it will take some time before (if ever...) we will see any decoding by the Nvidia and AMD graphic cards. When Adobe is silent they do not have any answers. It would be better if they just communicated that fact, "as of now we don´t know when bla, bla, bla will be implemented."

 

If it´s urgent, don´t waste your time waiting. Get a new computer that solves your needs now rather than wait for Adobe to fix it next month or in two years or never.

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LEGEND ,
Jul 15, 2020 Jul 15, 2020

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They have a demo tutorial using a 1050, which is also Pascal ... huh. Well, viewing their demo using the 1050, he noted the Pascal cards benefit some but the RTX/Turing cards will benefit much more. Apparently the Pascal get some benefit but not the full meal deal.

 

Just going to try it.

 

Neil

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Community Expert ,
Jul 15, 2020 Jul 15, 2020

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Neil, "They"? Adobe or Cinergy?

 

The test i did was Premiere Pro only. 🙂

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LEGEND ,
Jul 15, 2020 Jul 15, 2020

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Cinegy.

 

Neil

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LEGEND ,
Jul 15, 2020 Jul 15, 2020

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Well ... no. The Pascal cards don't get anything I'd guess from Turbocut. Sigh.

 

You need the RTX/Turing cards ... yep.

 

Neil

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 16, 2020 Jul 16, 2020

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Damn. That's sad. This was my wild horse to try when I get to the workstation.

 

Btw the station my client has is HP workstation too. They really should put a sticker on their website that their workstations are not compatible with Premiere. Almost all of them use exclusively Xenons without iGPU/QuickSync. I've found just ONE model using K series of i9 processors.

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Community Expert ,
Jul 16, 2020 Jul 16, 2020

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I've found just ONE model using K series of i9 processors.

 

HP have more models with i9 processors. AFAIK there are 4 different i9 10-series processors to chosse from. The 10900X, 10920X, 10940X or the 10980XE. Contact a reseller or configurate one on their website.

 

I would not say that Xeon workstations are incompatible with Premiere Pro. My Xeon workstation handle the workflow you aim for and i would not call that incompatible. Buying a new computer often require some planning before buying, such as what workflow/footage do i use and what´s the requirements for that, what does Premiere Pro like best, more cores and low clock speed or fewer cores and a higher clock speed? How much RAM do i actually need, what graphic card do i actually need, etc, etc. Yes, that´s not fun and it requires time but do often pay off in the end. But i am very well aware of that it can be impossible sometimes. I have seen IT departements deploying office computers to the video editor and that never ends well.

 

Good luck with the new computer. 🙂

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 16, 2020 Jul 16, 2020

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The problem is, if you google the X series of i9 processors they also lack iGPU hence can't do QuickSync. Only K series has it. I think Adobe just relies on the assumption that if you want to do multicam thing, you'll buy a processor with ridiculous core count. 

 

Honestly, if Adobe wants to really make this the "proper" way, there should be a scalable requirement sheet in terms of playing back 4K encoded video. How many cores and GHz you need for each simultaneous channel, or how much percent of UHD-630 iGPU decoding will each channel o 4K use?

 

The computer my client has now was chosen, because it was labeled by HP as a high power workstation and the requirement for QuickSync wasn't stressed enough by Adobe. Sorry, but you simply don't expect in 2020 that an industry standard editting sofware is unable to utulize dedicated HW decoding cores on a professional graphics card. Especially when free VLC player (which in it's core has an implementation of FFMpeg, a community project for god's sake) is able to do it.

 

If this conversation haven't happened, I'd do the exact same mistake when ordring a professional workstation as well. And I'm sure many more people will do too.

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