Premiere pro CS5.5.2 using only 20% of Processor?

[Dave Morgan]

I am using Premiere pro CS5.5.2 and when I render video files with effects applied premiere only is using 20-30% of the processor. Is there a way to make it use ALL of it?

My specs are the following.

Intel i7 920
Nvidia GTX 570HD
18 Gigs of ram
Windows 7 64bit

[Andy Wilkinson]

What kind of video files are you encoding?

[Dave Morgan]

Cineform 1080p 23.976 in a Cineform preset.

dslr converted with neoscene,

Im refering to when you hit the Enter Key, to render the timeline.

When I use media encoder to export, they use all of the processor.

[Bart Walczak]

Premiere Pro internal renderer is different than AME (which BTW saved me at certain point, when AME was unable to convert a clip), and it might be that for some reason it processes Cineform files only in a single thread. I would suggest asking this questiono on the Cineform forum, perhaps David will be able to answer.

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by Dave Morgan

I am using Premiere pro CS5.5.2 and when I render video files with effects applied premiere only is using 20-30% of the processor. Is there a way to make it use ALL of it?

I've had a similar problem when I've applied some effects in AE and brought them into PPro via dynamic link. In this case PPro used AE to apply the effects, but AE would only run as a service, which limited it to a single processor, so it was a huge bottle neck.

This is probably not your problem. But it does point to the fact that it takes time for software to make the full transition to 64 bit and multi-threaded. It's possible that the effect you want to use is itself not fully multi-threaded yet.

Another possibility is that the various processors are being memory starved. IIRC I read somewhere that you'll get better rendering performance with a minimum of about 2GB per processor core.

Another possibility is that you're disk starved. You'll get best performance if your source disk and render (target) disk are two physically separate HDDs.

Give us more detail about what you are doing (CODEC? Which effect(s)? Stand alone PPro?) and maybe one of the Adobe gurus will be able to point you in the right direction.

[Jay West]

I think Dave gave us the Codec --- Cineform 1080p 23.976 in a Cineform preset. --- but I otherwise agree with Bruce.

I'm not an Adobe guru, but do have some additional suggestions.

First, Dave, since you have a GTX570, are you running with hardware MPE enabled for your sequence? You do understand that the point of hardware MPE is to offload rendering from the CPU to the GPU? Encoding is a different story: it is done primarily in the CPU. That is why one would normally expect to see light CPU usage during rendering but high usage during encoding.

Second, look at the effects and layering you are working with. MPE and other accelerated effects (in the effects panel) will have icons to their right; non-accelerated effects will not have any. Using the accelerated effects means a light system load.

Third, try switching from hardware MPE to software MPE and then re-run your renders. If you see a large jump in CPU usage when using software MPE, then hardware MPE and your GTX570 have been doing their jobs. If you see no jumps or only a little increase, then you've got a system bottleneck. In that case as Bruce says, the most likely culprit will be in the hard-disk subsystems. If you want a better handle on this, go the PPBM5 website (PPBM5 Benchmark) and get the free test suite. Running that may tell you where your system needs work. Harm Millaard (one of the PPBM5 designers) has a lot of helpful articles and postings about disk-setups here and over at Adobe.

Fourth, as a long time Cineform/GoPro user, I have to ask the tangential question of what benefits you see in using Cineform presets and/or the Cineform RTFT playback engine as you apparently are doing?

Are you aware that you do not need them to use Cineform files in PPro CS 5/6 projects? AFAIK, there may be benefits only when working with 3-D projects. Otherwise, you can use any kind of sequence settings you choose. Once upon a time, using Cineform files required you to use Cineform sequence settings and the CFRT playback engine to get real time playback. That has not been true for years. I happily use Cineform AVIs with PPro, using either the Adobe Player (for two screen editing) or an MXO2-Mini (for three screen editing). My preferred way of editing multi-cam projects is to convert my AVCHD and HDV files to Cineform AVIs and run First Light alongside PPro. I can do the all or the large majority of color matching in First Light and have the changes appear instantly in PPro without need for any rendering. As I said, this works great with Cineform files whether I am using Adobe or Matrox timeline presets and/or the Adobe or Matrox players. However, using the CFRT playback engine and PPro's Cineform presets is usually problematic and unstable on my systems. So, that is why I am asking about your use of the Cineform presets and player.

[Bruce Watson]

Originally Posted by Bruce Watson

I've had a similar problem when I've applied some effects in AE and brought them into PPro via dynamic link. In this case PPro used AE to apply the effects, but AE would only run as a service, which limited it to a single processor, so it was a huge bottle neck.

Found out why. In a document called After Effects / Dynamic Link and After Effects Adobe explicitly states: A linked After Effects composition will not support Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing. WTF?

But just because they documented it doesn't make it a feature -- it's still a bug, and it's still broken. I mean, this is 2012! This is CS6 we're talking about! They can't make a legitimate claim that using just 1/8 of my processing power is a good thing.

[Pete Bauer]

This thread is diverging from the OP's original question about PPro performance. Please stay on topic here, and if desired, start a separate thread to discuss AE Render Multiple Frames feature and multithreading (two different things, BTW), or continue the discussion alread in progress here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/adobe-cr...imes-free.html.