Premiere Pro 2020 Long export times with H.264 format and no effects

[#1]

I know very little of video editing (about codecs and formats and what not) and this is also my first post, so if I forgot to mention any information or details, please let me know!

I have a Windows 10 PC with the following hardware:

• Intel Core i7 7700K
• MSI GeForce GTX 1060 OCV1
• Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB
• Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB

My renderer is currently set to Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (CUDA).

Export settings:

• Format: H.264
• Preset: Match Source - High Bitrate
• Encoding settings - Performance: Hardware Encoding
• I never touched the rest, because I am by no means a video editor.

My source videos are MP4's, 1920x1080 @ 60 fps and are between 2-4 hours long. (Twitch VOD download). When editing the Sequence Settings looked as follows (default when dragging source into new sequence):

• Editing mode: Custom
• Timebase: 60,00 frames/second
• Frame size: 1920x1080
• Preview File Format: I-Frame Only MPEG
• Maximum Bit Depth & Maximum Render Quality not checked

What I normally do is simply cut the source video into parts of around 30min each (for YouTube), add a fade in/out, and add a 5 second clip at the start and a 20 second clip at the end. Next to some Audio adjustments (normalize peaks), that's all the editing I do, nothing fancy.

Rendering normally never took long, but since this week, when I picked up making videos again, render times have been extremely long. A video of 30min, which is basically a snippet from a VOD, now takes 1h30min to 2h+ to render! I've never had these extremely long render times. I've looked at Smart Render, but that doesn't seem applicable to my MP4 (H.264) source videos.

Does anyone have any tips or ideas on how to make this process quicker? I basically just want 30min sections of the source with minor edits and that's it.

[#2]

I know very little of video editing (about codecs and formats and what not) and this is also my first post, so if I forgot to mention any information or details, please let me know!

I have a Windows 10 PC with the following hardware:

• Intel Core i7 7700K
• MSI GeForce GTX 1060 OCV1
• Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB
• Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB

My renderer is currently set to Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (CUDA).

Export settings:

• Format: H.264
• Preset: Match Source - High Bitrate
• Encoding settings - Performance: Hardware Encoding
• I never touched the rest, because I am by no means a video editor.

My source videos are MP4's, 1920x1080 @ 60 fps and are between 2-4 hours long. (Twitch VOD download). When editing the Sequence Settings looked as follows (default when dragging source into new sequence):

• Editing mode: Custom
• Timebase: 60,00 frames/second
• Frame size: 1920x1080
• Preview File Format: I-Frame Only MPEG
• Maximum Bit Depth & Maximum Render Quality not checked

What I normally do is simply cut the source video into parts of around 30min each (for YouTube), add a fade in/out, and add a 5 second clip at the start and a 20 second clip at the end. Next to some Audio adjustments (normalize peaks), that's all the editing I do, nothing fancy.

Rendering normally never took long, but since this week, when I picked up making videos again, render times have been extremely long. A video of 30min, which is basically a snippet from a VOD, now takes 1h30min to 2h+ to render! I've never had these extremely long render times. I've looked at Smart Render, but that doesn't seem applicable to my MP4 (H.264) source videos.

Does anyone have any tips or ideas on how to make this process quicker? I basically just want 30min sections of the source with minor edits and that's it.

[#3 · Accepted solution]

I'm guessing your sources may have a variable frame rate which can cause all sorts of issues in premiere

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro/faq-issues-with-screen-recorded-footage-in-premiere-pro/...

use mediainfo to determine whether your source is variable or constant frame rate
https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download
if it's variable use handbrake to convert to constant frame rate
https://handbrake.fr
and here's a tutorial on how to use handbrake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=34&v=xlvxgVREX-Y

[#4]

I used MediaInfo to check out one of the source files and I got the following information out of it:

Container/General information:

• MPEG-4 (Base Media): 9.74 GiB, 3h46min
• 1 Video Stream: AVC
• 1 Audio Stream: AAC LC

First Video Stream:

• 6000 kb/s
• 1920*1080 (16:9) at 60.000 FPS
• AVC (High@L4.2) (CABAC / 4 Ref Frames)

First Audio Stream:

• 144 kb/s
• 44.1 kHz
• 2 channels
• AAC LC

I don't see anything about a variable frame rate

[#5]

Set MediaInfo to Tree mode and look for this:

[#6]

Ah thanks, didn't know.

With Tree mode I see indeed that the frame rate mode is Variable.

[#7]

I checked out Handbrake but converting the above file takes (according to Handbrake) 2 hours. It also uses all of the remaining CPU power so I'm capped at 100% non-stop.

Is this a recent problem/thing? Because the last time I made an edit like this (about a month ago) it didn't take this long to render. 

[#8]

After some testing with footage with Constant and Variable frame rate, the Constant frame rate exports much more quicker. On a 1 minute video it was already a noticeable difference let alone 30min. I probably won't be able to use the downloaded VODs anymore as converting them takes a large amount of time. I did a test with recording using the same software I use to stream and so far have had files with Constant Frames rates. 

[#9]

CUDA acceleration and GPU hardware encoding and decoding are not the same things. You have to set things up 100% correct. The video below might be helpful.

[#10]

I have it set up as follows:

I am currently rendering a video using Media Encoder and I noticed that my GPU is barely being used:

[#11]

Try exporting using Premiere Pro not Media Encoder. Media Encoder needs to be setup correct as well.

[#12]

Premiere Pro was already set up accordingly for Hardware Encoding when I was trying to export from Premiere Pro. I watched the video you recommended but all the settings where already correct. I was using Media Encoder so I could run the exporting in the background.