Which renderer setting prevails when queuing from Premiere Pro to Media Encoder?

[lawrencevonforum]

I often use presets in Premiere Pro that include software encoding as part of the preset.  If I choose one of these presets when exporting and queue the export to Media Encoder, what happens if the hardware (CUDA) renderer is selected in Media Encoder?  Which choice prevails?

[Ann Bens]

Hardware/software encoding and cuda are two different things.

Former is for accelerated encoding/decoding H.264 (setting is in the Preferences)

Cuda as in MPE hardware/software video rendering and playback (setting in the Project settings).

Some of the things cuda does:

• some effects
• scaling
• deinterlacing
• blending modes
• color space conversions

[lawrencevonforum]

I'm still confused here.  When exporting a video in Adobe Media Encoder, you have the option in a dropdown menu on the main window of choosing "Hardware (CUDA)" as your renderer or "Software."  So if I'm exporting in H.264 (which I am), the ambiguity remains.  If I choose software in Premiere but Hardware/CUDA in Media Encoder, what is actually happening during the export?

[R Neil Haugen]

Clear as mud? Yes, because there are several types of and places for encoding/decoding stuff.

The CUDA options in both Premiere and it's allied encoding app MediaEncoder have as Ann said, absolutely almost nothing to do with H.264/HEVC encoding/decoding. Those are settings for whether or not Premiere uses your GPU for the typical things Pr/Me use the GPU for. Which she listed.

While Me is a 'different' app, it's also the background encoder for Premiere. If it's something you're exporting directly from Premiere, then your settings in Premiere are in charge.

However, if you queue over to Me, then the settings there for such things as CUDA in the Mercury Acceleration option in Preferences are of course noted. If you've got a usable Nvidia GPU, you'll want CUDA set in both places really.

Those preferences options, however, have nothing to do with the software/hardware encoding for H.264/HEVC in the export dialog or presets.

That very specific encoding depends on the settings in your preset or export dialog and your computer hardware capability. And the computer hardware's capability for H.264/HEVC varies maddeningly between CPUs.

It is darn confusing to see "software encoding" appear in the summary section of the Export dialog ... but again, that only refers to that specific part of the encoding task and not to whether Premiere will use the GPU for the processing prior to the actual file encoding.

Further, no hardware exists that can do 2-pass encodes with hardware acceleration. ALL 2-pass encodes will be software on any computer made.

Neil

[Ann Bens]

https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/gpu-acceleration-and-hardware-encoding.html

[lawrencevonforum]

Thank you, both.  I finally get the picture.  Having the "hardware/software" choice for two different processes, and having one of those processes in the foreground on one program and the other process in the foreground on the other program was keeping me from understanding.  I think I would have understood more easily if the options were provided in a parallel manner between the two programs.

[R Neil Haugen]

It is totally confusing as it isn't just the two apps, but two entirely different "software vs hardware" encoding processes, each having nothing to do with the other. One is simply whether PrPro will use the GPU if you have one it can use, and for only the things PrPro uses the GPU for.

The other is H.264 encoding, whether there will be specific hardware involved in either the CPU or GPU, or whether it's simply done in 'normal' CPU work. Which doesn't have anything to do with the above section.

And they're both hardware versus software in the terminology used.

Actually, the two types are handled the same in the two apps. So ... hardware/software in Project settings for Mercury Acceleration is the same thing in both apps. And hardware/software in H.264 work is the same in both apps.

Neil