New GPU acceleration patch for Adobe Premiere Pro makes video encoding much faster

[Cal Jeffrey]

Bottom line: Adobe's next update for Premiere Pro will implement hardware-accelerated video encoding for huge gains in exporting. Version 14.2 of Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder will leverage the discrete hardware encoders on Nvidia and AMD GPUs to boost export times by as much as 400 percent. After Effects and Audition will also receive GPU acceleration.

Hardware acceleration in Premiere Pro is nothing new. It has been using Nvidia CUDA for acceleration for a while now. Version 14.2 incorporates Nvidia's Nvencode API to utilize the video card's hardware-based NVENC encoder. Likewise, the patch will use the VCE hardware encoder on AMD GPUs. Both will significantly improve export times over using the CPU alone, especially when working with 4K video.

Graph via Adobe

"These improvements are the result of years of collaboration between Nvidia and Adobe to deliver high-quality applications and tools to creators," said Adobe's Senior Engineering Manager Manish Kulkarni. "With new support for NVIDIA GPUs on Windows, exports are hardware accelerated leveraging the power of the GPU to make Premiere Pro more powerful and keep video creators productive and nimble."

The update also supports Apple's ProRes RAW files, so importing and exporting between Window and macOS is a single-step affair with the same acceleration.

Graph via Nvidia

In a practical application using a GeForce RTX 2060 versus and Intel Core i9 9750H, Nvidia found the RTX to be about two-and-a-half times faster with 4K basic transcode. Of course, it is worth noting that Nvidia was using a six-core laptop CPU in the comparison. Adobe recommends "a fast (3.2GHz or higher) CPU with eight cores for video editing workstations running Premiere Pro.

"Core i7 or Core i9 Intel processors or AMD equivalents are strongly recommended," says Adobe in its help pages. "Depending on the task, Premiere Pro runs at 93-98% efficiency with 8 cores."

So properly outfitted workstations should see better results.

That said, Adobe promises the performance gains from version 14.1 to 14.2 will be worth it. It should be releasing the update later this week.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/85296-new-gpu-acceleration-patch-adobe-premiere-pro-makes.html

 

[ColdSoup]

Massive speed up in 4k encoding with Nvidia GPUs? Awesome.
Adobe's comparison of CPU vs. GPU? Completely useless.

 

[EClyde]

In these kind of cases faster is better

 

[tygrus]

Video timeline length is 3:09 (mm:ss) for the graph from Nvidia...
"For example, the music video below is three minutes and nine seconds long. With traditional software encoding using a Core i9-9750H laptop CPU, it takes 3:48 to export. By using the NVIDIA hardware encoder on a GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q GPU, the export completes in one-fifth the time — a mere 47 seconds." quote from Nvidia from the link included by Techspot above.
https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2020/05/19/gpu-acceleration-adobe-premiere-pro/

We will see more independent testing as people update. CPU & CPU+GPU before update compared to CPU & CPU+GPU combinations after update. Q's for future review, how the model of GPU affects performance, Nvidia vs AMD, budget GPU vs top gamer vs PRO models. Hopefully enabled on more GPU's as time goes on (non-PRO Radeons).

 

[Evernessince]

Massive speed up in 4k encoding with Nvidia GPUs? Awesome.
Adobe's comparison of CPU vs. GPU? Completely useless.

With all GPUs that support NVENC or VCE:

"Likewise, the patch will use the VCE hardware encoder on AMD GPUs"

 

[pencea]

It's about time...

 

[Lounds]

No graphs with AMD graphics cards though.

 

[Mister_K]

No graphs with AMD graphics cards though.

The update does not improve AMD Hardware encoding so it will be probably considerably slower.

Gerald Undone done a video on this as well. Still with the amount of crashes Premiere has, I've been moving to Resolve and trying to use it as much as possible.

 

[krizby]

With NAVI VCE being broken AF will there be supports for AMD GPU ?

 

[Irata]

The update does not improve AMD Hardware encoding so it will be probably considerably slower.

Gerald Undone done a video on this as well. Still with the amount of crashes Premiere has, I've been moving to Resolve and trying to use it as much as possible.

That‘s not what the article says: „ Likewise, the patch will use the VCE hardware encoder on AMD GPUs.“. Now which encoder works better remains to be seen, but since Adobe specifically mention their collaboration with nVidia, it is probably the latter.

With NAVI VCE being broken AF will there be supports for AMD GPU ?

In what way / how? Have not noticed any issues recording or streaming.

 

[TheBigT42]

I have always read that CPU Video Encoding yields better quality.

 

[Markoni35]

AMD video processing was always much better than Nvidia. Much higher quality. Nvidia was always considered a gaming option, while AMD was for professionals. Since the very first day ATI and Nvidia started making graphics cards till today AMD/ATI meant better picture and video quality.