No hardware Encoding in Premiere Pro 2020

[darinh]

I am running an Nvidia K5200 card with 8GB of RAM and since upgrading to 2020 I no longer can export with hardware encoding and it has slowed my exports immensely.  What driver is recommended and how can I turn on Hardware encoding?  I don't see the same options (in Preferences I think) that previous versions had. 

[darinh]

I used to "Use Previews" for exporting and could export a timeline at approx. 2x realtime (:30 to export a minute of timeline), and now it won't use Previews (so I think something else is going on). But if I de-select "Use Previews" I can get it to export but a 1 minute timeline now takes over 3 minutes to export (1/3 realtime)  😞 bummer. 

[Byron Cortez]

Read this please:

Everything you need to know about GPU in Premiere Pro

[darinh]

Thank you.  I tried the clean install of the driver and changing to CUDA hardware rendering in ME and PP and it appears that it is the same old Adobe taking away efficiency and functionality with the "upgrades" again.  I'll try to edit on 2019 as long as I can (where I still get the hardware accelleration and fast exports) until this gets fixed or until I get an entirely new system and gpu that Premiere likes.  

Currently running  HP z840 Xeon E5-2620 v3 @ 2.4GHz (2 proc) with the Nvidia k5200 8GB  

thanks! 

[R Neil Haugen]

Which "hardware encoding" are you referring to? It includes two completely different things.

If you mean the phrase "hardware encoding" in the Summary section of the exports, that has nothing to do with GPU use. It only refers to the presence of Intel QuickSync hardware in your CPU ... and is only a factor for H.264 exports. If your CPU has the QuickSync hardware and its enabled in the BIOS, you get "hardware" in the Summary section. Which means the CPU is sending the H.264 encoding to its own internal circuit for processing.

But if your CPU does NOT have the QuickSync hardware inside, you will see "software encoding" in the export dialog's Summary section. Meaning the H.264 encoding is done totally by the "regular" part of the CPU.

NEITHER ... has anything whatever to do with the use of the GPU by Premiere, and yea ... it's so totally confusing.

If you are set in the Project dialog to use Mercury Acceleration/CUDA for that card, Premiere will do so ... for the parts that Premiere uses a GPU for, and those parts of the work only. Remember, Premiere uses the GPU only for those things on the GPU Accelerated Effects List ... but not for other things.

The items on the list are things that involve major frame reszing like Warp Stabilizer or color work such as Lumetri.

The CPU is the center of the export process and it will send things to the GPU that are "appropriate" within the coding, as the CPU gets to them. So a sequence that's completely resized on export will have heavy GPU use for that export. The same sequence without frame-resizing or GPU-accelereated effects will have virtually no GPU activity.

That's just the way it's written. So which is it ... the Summary section of the Export dialog? I'm thinking that is possible, as nearly every post ever filed saying they can't get "hardware encoding on export" is actually referring to the Intel QuickSync hardware issue, and not Premiere's GPU use.

"Use previews" works very differently depending on the previews chosen, btw. Use an intraframe codec like ProRes or DNxHD/R and export to that same format/codec, as every frame is complete, it works well. Use an interframe H.264 codec, it can't work like that. Really doesn't help at all.

Neil

Edit: On thinking a bit more, I don't believe the Xeons have QuickSync hardwared inside ... and another note ... in testing, the Premiere team found that the Intel QuickSync encoding is a bit faster than "software only" meaning the standard computations of the CPU ... but the software encode is a slighly higher quality. Just FYI.

And of course, that only is "a thing" with H.264/long-GOP exports.

[darinh]

Mr Haugen, thank you for responding and for the thorough explanation. It is in the export window where I'm seeing it and I wrongly made the assumption that that was what was increasing my export times.  I will need to do some digging then to see if there is something else going on that is increasing my render times - possibly old or third-party plugins/effects or motion graphics templates that are not compatible and need updated to work more quickly.  I appreciate you taking the time to explain that.  Now I need to do some trouble-shooting and try to isolate where the hang-up is.  Thank you!  

[R Neil Haugen]

You are most welcome. That bit is SO bloody confusing. I mean ... really, could it be more confusing somehow? Not thinking so ... 😉

Premiere 2020 has higher hardware demands a bit than 2019, and seems really "intriguing". On some systems it's fast and smooth, others ... a bit less than 2019 ... and some systems just bump along poorly in playback and exports.

Neil

[Frederick T]

I found the video below and that will likely help you. It made my hardware encoding option appear. Though I didn;t understand the language, it's easy to follow.....a simple proces

https://youtu.be/2qykZIvdfzc