Hi Everyone
So I have been having issues with Premier Pro, After Effects and Encoder on my new PC . This seems to be a big issues as I see this problem on forums and discussion boards across the internet and while some have fixed it or made it better there is no definitive global fix. It seems to get tossed up to hard drive performance which I am stating is false. Unless I am proven wrong - I hope my findings will help further push for a solution
This happens equally with 2015.3 and 2017. I do not use 2015.5 (too many bugs but same performance issue)
-- Computer Specifications ---
- HP Pheonix Envy 860
- Fresh CLEAN Windows 7 Professional 64x Install 10/22/16 - Fully Operational 10/29/16 (Did not use HPs Recovery Disc set)
- i7 5820K 6 Core 12 Threads (O.C. 3.6Ghz) - Liquid Cooled
- 24GB Ram 2133 Mhz DDR4
- NVIDIA GTX 960
- 2x 2TB Seagate 7200 RPM 3.5" HDD SATA 3
- - C: 1x OS / Programs
- - E: 1x Media Storage
- 1x 750 GB Toshiba 5400 RPM 2.5" HDD SATA 2
- - G: Export HDD
- INSTALLED ADOBE VIDEO SOFTWARE
- Premier Pro 2017
- Premier Pro 2015.3
- Encore CS6 (Uninstalled Premier Pro CS6 - Only needed Encore)
- After Effects 2017
- After Effects 2015.3
- Encoder 2017
- Encoder 2015.3
I am making a case as people always say that its the amount of hard drives in the computer or the fact they are 5400rpm vs 7200rpm or your not using a SSD for your OS, or your Adobe Cache is not on the correct drive and adobe heavily utilizes this cache during exports (which I found to be false on my PC)
So I ran a battery of comparison test and more to come... I compiled all the tests down to 4 below.
-- 1ST SERIES OF TESTS --
Specs during test
2x 2TB 7200 RPM HDD
- C: OS / PROGRAMS / CACHE
- E: MEDIA STORAGE / EXPORT
NO 750GB HDD
Original Video File: 6.5minute 1080p 50Mb/s bitrate. MP4 XAVC-S
Exported Video File: 6.5 Minute 1080p 40Mb/s bitrate H.264 - No effects
CUDA HW Accel PROCESSING ACTIVE
Exporting video file from Premier Pro / Encoder
According to Windows Resource Monitor
- Adobe READS from E: MEDIA STORAGE @ 4.5MB/s
- Adobe WRITES to E: MEDIA STORAGE at 2.5 - 3.5 MB/s.
- CPU 45%-50% Spikes of 60%-70%
- GPU 1%, 5%, 25%, 50%. Spikes of 100% every few seconds for a split second (Varies to much) Average I would say is 20%
Changes and Adjustments
Moving Cache from one drive to another made ZERO difference.
Exporting to one drive or another made ZERO difference
-- 2ND SERIES OF TESTS --
Specs during test
2x 2TB 7200 RPM HDD
- C: OS / PROGRAMS
- E: MEDIA STORAGE
- G: EXPORT HDD (Added to test if an additional drive would help) Specs for drives at TOP of post
- F: 256GB USB THUMB DRIVE (USB 3.0)
Original Video File: 6.5minute 1080p 50Mb/s MP4 XAVC-S
Exported Video File: 6.5 Minute 1080p 40Mb/s H.264 - No effects
CUDA HW Accel PROCESSING ACTIVE
CHANGES & ADJUSTMENTS
Moving CACHE between 3 drives had ZERO effect. In fact, No cache activity was reported during exports when one drive was strictly used for cache only
Image Below shows export writes at 3.3MB/s to MEDIA STORAGE E: (Media reading from E: as well) while CACHE was moved to G: - Notice....G: has ZERO activity during exports in this test
Test 1 - Export from Premier Pro to G:
Exporting video file from Premier Pro / Encoder
According to Windows Resource Monitor
- Adobe READS from E: MEDIA STORAGE @ 4.5MB/s
- Adobe WRITES to G: MEDIA STORAGE @ 3.5 MB/s.
- CPU 45%-50% Spikes of 60%-70%
- GPU 1%, 5%, 25%, 50%. Spikes of 100% every few seconds for a split second (Varies to much) Average I would say is 20%
.jpg)
Test 2 - Export from Premier Pro to G: while Copying a 34.8GB video file FROM E: MEDIA STORAGE to USB THUMB DRIVE (USB 3.0)
Exporting video file from Premier Pro / Encoder
According to Windows Resource Monitor
- Adobe READS from E: MEDIA STORAGE @ 4.5MB/s
- Adobe WRITES to G: MEDIA STORAGE @ 3.5 MB/s.
- FILE COPY WRITES to F: @ 80+ MB/s
- FILE COPY READS from E: @ 80+ MB/s
- CPU 45%-50% Spikes of 60%-70%
- GPU 1%, 5%, 25%, 50%. Spikes of 100% every few seconds for a split second (Varies to much) Average I would say is 20%
.jpg)
Test 3 - Export from Premier Pro to G: while Copying a 34.8GB video file FROM USB DRIVE (USB 3.0) TO G: at same time
Exporting video file from Premier Pro / Encoder
According to Windows Resource Monitor
- Adobe READS from E: MEDIA STORAGE @ 4.5MB/s
- Adobe WRITES to G: MEDIA STORAGE @ 3.5 MB/s.
- FILE COPY WRITES to G: @ 80+ MB/s (Windows Copy Window says 200+MB/s - confusing)
- CPU 45%-50% Spikes of 60%-70%
- GPU 1%, 5%, 25%, 50%. Spikes of 100% every few seconds for a split second (Varies to much) Average I would say is 20%
.jpg)
From these test, I find that the hard drives are not at fault and 3 drives make little difference than 2. If adobes encoder worked the way it should, more drives might make a difference, but in this situation, adding another 3rd drive did not make any major difference...only about 1MB/s write/read. I was able to copy and export to the same drive which made no difference in encoding time or encoding read/write speeds. Which tells me the HDD and SATA system is not choking.
Moving CACHE from one drive to another made ZERO difference. Adobe Encoder seems to not use CACHE during exports. Probably only for Renders.
Can anyone tell me what the heck is going on? I bought this PC thinking I would get insainly fast exports as I have very important TV Show work to do and I can barely preview edited work with minor effects in real time or export in any reasonably timely manor. I also wanted to export in 4K.....it takes unbelievable amount of hours to export in 4K which it shouldn't.
I am going to compare my results to more test I will perform on my i5 Laptop I used for encoding before.
54
Replies
Its very interesting that the NVMe and Sata SSD produced the same number in premier pro. Sata SSD obviously has a much slower interface than NVMe and you proved that you could export at 1.9GB/s producing the results ("19","51","10","251"). No SATA SSD could ever reach 1.9GB/s write speed So i'm curious as to why the numbers for the SATA SSD ("20","50","10","251") are so close to the same? I can't imagine the SATA SSD reaching the same speeds..
I assume you are referring to my post on PPBM8.com? That is where I ran the benchmark with the Boot (OS/Applications) drive being either another Samsung 960 Pro M.2 drive versus a SATA III SSD and if you read the intro you would see that any run score +/-1 is not any difference. All Adobe Premiere project files and exports except the "Media Cache" and "Media Cache Files" folders which were in the default Adobe location on the boot drive are on the 1TB Samsung 960 Pro M.2 drive. Therefore there is no advantage having a much faster Boot drive than a SATA III.
I have the system ready for SLI. So im going to do some studying on this.
You do not want SLI it can cause problems
EDIT
Here are three results from my next GPU posting which could help in your GPU selection
Notice the two colored columns, these are the two GPU Accelerated scores from PPBM. I do not have a GTX 960 to test but notice how much better even the GTX 1060 with very simple and safe overclocking can be. Also the 900 series cannot be CUDA overclocked but the 1000 series is easily done. A single GTX 1070 mightr be almost as good as the two GTX 1060's.
Ya I got my thoughts all twisted up with your blog about the M.2 Drive. My bad.
So I installed a ZOTEC 980Ti AMP Extreme 6GB. Below are my numbers now. The issue before with RED footage I think was linked to the 2GB of VRAM on my old gtx 960 card. Got used up quickly.
OS, Programs, Cache, Conformed Media, Export = 960 EVO NVMe
Raw Media = Seagate 7200 RPM 2TBx2 RAID 0
"55","66","16","338", Premiere Version:, 11.0.2.47
Compared To; (HP OEM GTX960)
"48","110","44","342", Premiere Version:, 11.0.2.47
I noticed a slightly slower disk test but but don't think that had anything to do with the GPU. I had other small programs running.
So getting back to the original problem.
So I don't think I can get much faster numbers upgrading hardware without now jumping into prices that are have no reasonable expectations. Getting SSDs I think "could" help. Switching my Boot drive to SSD and m.2 to export "Could" help. Same with getting an Intel i7 6950x 10 core. Right now, the bottle neck is Adobe it seems or the codecs. Since most projects have 0-5% GPU usage and 20-50% CPU usage when exporting. It seems rare to see 100% though it does come around. If this happeneds I still get very very low write speeds, under 1MB/s. During these exports with the usual GPU and CPU utilization I will only see under 10MB/s writes but most of the time under 1MB write speeds. Very rarely I may see a nice high spike in write speed
Pic during a 1080p export of a project with a mix of 4K footage and some transitions and color corrections. This is what I normally see.
It appears getting faster hardware that performs MUCH faster at lower utilization (1-20%) is how you get faster performance. Adobe just doesn't seem to use every ounce of available resources at its disposal.
Last CPU & GPU, RAM Specs
CPU: 5820K O.C. 4.5GHz 6 Cores @ 1.30v - 1.32v | 4.6 Ghz up to 3 Cores @ 1.328v
GPU: ZOTEC 980 Ti AMP! Extreme 6GB Vram (No OC)
RAM: 48GB
What's interesting is when exporting to the M.2 960 for the "disk test", initially I get a write speed of 1.3 - 1.7GB/s but then after a few seconds drops to under 700MB/s and further to under 600MB/s. Not sure what the reason is. Maybe cause its the drive for everything? Adobe? Media? The CPU usage is higher at that same moment too which also drops. This causes the CPU clock to drop.
Intel SpeedStep is still on so the CPU is not stuck at 4.5GHz 24/7. Problem with this, is the fact that since adobe doesn't utilize a lot of the CPU mos times, the processor may run at 3-3.3ghz for extensive amounts of time. The only way to combat this issue is to run SpeedStep off which I wont do. No reason for the CPU to keep running high voltage through it.
This also makes me wonder how much faster the i7 6950x would be with 4 more cores but at a max OC probably around 3.8-4GHz due to the temps that processor would have. With a $1700 price tag, it better cut the processing down by 50% but my guess it would only be very marginal.
Did I benefit from upgrading the GPU to the Zotac 980ti? Short answer: Yes. Long Answer: I don't know
After Effects uses this better, exports with graphics are a "tad" bit faster with real world projects but the this comes back to the obvious problem. Adobe not utilizing the GPU enough to even speed up the core clock to full speed. With all of its real small hits to the GPU while processing, the GPU just doesn't get used to the fullest extent. The Bench Mark numbers are much better, but real world exports and renders just don't prove to be sped up reasonably. This GPU cost close to $400 on Ebay (Open Box, Brand New, Never Installed) Buying a NEW 1060/70/80 just doesn't seem real beneficial even in after effects for the price. On the other hand, buying the most expensive video card could process more frames at one time at very low utilization which can speed things up, but is it worth the price tag?
** Suggestions for Adobe **
"Full Performance" Option
I am not sure how programmers can make it happen as I know nothing about this, but as advanced as Adobe is, it would be nice to see a "Full Performance" option. If they are gearing toward multi tasking while exporting and thats the reason for not using all resources. "Full Performance" would use all or most available resources at all times during exports, realtime previews and preview renders.
AE Real Time Render in Premier Pro / Better GPU utilization
At times I have an After Effects project imported into Premier Pro. When I "play" the time line even with my 980ti. The preview starts smooth for 1-2 seconds and becomes extremely choppy. GPU is usually 1-5% during this time. CUDA Acceleration Enabled. It would be nice if when "playing" the timeline that Premier renders ahead to create a smooth near or actual real time preview.
After Effects also doesn't utilize the GPU fully during playback. Playback render is better now with a faster card but still has a very low utilization .
I have the system ready for SLI. So im going to do some studying on this.
You do not want SLI it can cause problems
I was reading its not good to use SLI. Which then really pushes for a single card unless you can turn SLI on and off through software? That would really be for Editers that also game with performance benefits of SLI. I don't game really so SLI is not an big push for me.
EDIT
Here are three results from my next GPU posting which could help in your GPU selection
Notice the two colored columns, these are the two GPU Accelerated scores from PPBM. I do not have a GTX 960 to test but notice how much better even the GTX 1060 with very simple and safe overclocking can be. Also the 900 series cannot be CUDA overclocked but the 1000 series is easily done. A single GTX 1070 mightr be almost as good as the two GTX 1060's.
Seems Adobe doesn't use the dual GPUs very well. dual 1060s I would expect much better numbers especially if one 1060 is as fast as it is.
I was thinking of dual 980ti's for the price of one 1060/70/80. You would get 12GB or ram and hopefully much better performance?
When using DUAL GPUs, does adobe combine the VRAM of the two GPUs? So for two "Identical" GPUs which both have 6GB VRAM. Will adobe have 12GB VRAM at its disposal?
Another Example.
Optical Flare being used. Takes a long time to render - this should have near real time play back but PC hardly does anything.
Come on Adobe. You can't tell me your pcs in your office have no issues like this! Push the hardware! That's why it's there! In this selected render I have an AE project imported which uses Vidoe Copilot Optical Flares.
Thanks 
There are a few other tests I want to do with my new system. Now that I noticed a project in After Effects 2017 rendering in the timeline faster after moving cache and conformed media to my m.2 nvme ssd. I want to swap the cache and conformed media around to the slowest drive and see if it makes a difference.
I also have my major media files on a 4tb RAID 0 partition which tests at 413MB Read and 380MB write. According to windows there is usually less than 10MB/s being moved around from any drive in my system so It should be interesting.
I am also going to run Adobes Benchmark File that I couldn't fully run before and see what the numbers are.
I wish I had both systems running. Someday I will upgrade to either a 5960x 8-core or i7 6950x 10-core knowing Adobe might not utilize all the cores. Then use my left over parts to upgrade my AMD A8 3870k Movie Server to a Intel i7 5820k Movie/Render Server. Premier Pro seems to utilize multiple cores better than After Effects.
AdChoices