Need Help Testing Performance in Premiere Pro/After Effects

[KeelerJ]

Hello!

I am currently working on several complex projects in Premiere Pro and After Effects, and I'm concerned that I'm not getting the performance I should be getting out of my computer. Specifically, I don't think Premiere Pro is using the GPU the way it's supposed to.

I've already covered the basics of troubleshooting—Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Media Encoder are all set to use the CUDA version of the Mercury Playback Engine, and GPUSniffer correctly identifies my GPU.

Now I'm ready to embark on more serious testing. For starters, here's my system build:

Intel i7 8700K Processor (running at stock speeds)

MSI Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB GPU

32GB RAM

250GB Samsung 860 EVO SSD (Windows 10, Adobe apps, Adobe project files)
500GB Samsung 960 EVO M.2 SSD (Project files, media cache)

My projects vary in length and complexity, but one I've been working on is an 11-minute video with multi-cam editing of three angles, two shot in 1080x1920 and the other shot in 2.7K. All three angles have Lumetri Color and Unsharp Mask applied; the third-party plugin Neat Video (for noise reduction) is applied to some of the clips. All cameras are being downscaled to 720x1280 during editing and are rendered at that resolution. Codecs vary; some of the footage is C-Log Pro-Res, while the 2.7K is from a GoPro, so I'm assuming that is H264 (and it's certainly the toughest for my computer to handle with effects applied).

The Neat Video plugin utilizes the GPU, and if I'm understanding correctly, the downscaling and Lumetri Color should be utilizing it as well. However, export times are surprisingly slow; granted, it's an elaborate project, but watching how the resources are spread, my CPU is doing the vast majority of the work (which it should, I understand that), but the GPU seems to be doing essentially nothing, floating around the 1%-3% utilization range throughout the export, which takes a bit more than three hours.

I'm suspicious that something must be up because one of my coworkers is able to get similar (or faster) rendering times on an older Macintosh running a four-core, 2.7GHZ i7 and an AMD Radeon GPU.

So basically, I'm ready to give my computer a thorough testing to see where the issue might lie, and I'm looking for any advice/help on how to proceed. I believe a user here (Bill Gehrke?) has a test project for Premiere Pro that could help pinpoint if my system is being bottlenecked somewhere. I'd also like to test the speeds of my SSDs to make sure they're performing as they're supposed to.

If you need any additional information, please let me know, and I'll provide it to the best of my ability. I'm hoping to work through this relatively quickly since these projects need to keep moving through the pipeline, and if I'm having issues, it will be a big help to have them resolved as soon as I can.

Thank you!

[Ann Bens]

I would not put any project files on the same drive as the OS and programs.

Where is your media stored?

My understanding is that Neat Video does not perform quite as advertised.

[KeelerJ]

Thanks for your reply, Ann Bens! My apologies for leaving out the media information—my media files are stored on the Samsung 960 EVO M.2 drive. I have had project files stored on both the boot drive (the 860) and the media/cache drive (the 960); I have not yet noticed any differences, though I've only recently tried storing project files on the 960.

[Peru Bob]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Ann+Bens  wrote

My understanding is that Neat Video does not perform quite as advertised.

That is correct.  Neat Video says that it utilizes the GPU, however it is not very efficient at that task.  Neat video taxes a system very much.

I use Neat video because it is good at what it does and am willing to take the performance hit, however, it is the next to last thing at I use.  Lumetri is the last effect that I apply.

[KeelerJ]

Can anyone point me toward a good program for testing the read/write speeds on my SSDs? Thanks!

[Ann Bens]

Try this:

BillG Video Editing Blog

[KeelerJ]

Thanks for the link! I downloaded the test project, worked through all the steps, and ran the script to compile the time data. Here's what I've got:

41, 74, 25, 289

Let me know what you think! I'm encouraged to see that my GPU was used correctly for the appropriate test renders; I was watching its performance during the render and usage jumped up significantly, even pushing 100% at times. In that case, perhaps the projects I'm working on just aren't a GPU-centric as I though they would be.

[RjL190365]

KeelerJ  wrote

41, 74, 25, 289

That's about par for that particular configuration, especially since the m.2 PCIe SSD (the 960 EVO, in this case) is running off of the Z370 chipset's PCH rather than directly off of the CPU's PCIe controller hub. Unfortunately, there is not much that you can do there (short of upgrading to a more expensive HEDT LGA 2066 platform with Intel's X299 chipset), especially when there are only 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes that are going directly to the PCIe x16 slots; everything else must be run off of the PCH.