Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2018 and Media Encoder CC 2018 CPU utilization question.

[Jikangire]

Hello everyone,

     I have a question in regard to CPU utilization when it comes to exporting videos from Premiere Pro CC 2018 and Media Encoder CC 2018.  Up until two days ago I was using a computer with an Intel I7-6700K CPU (4 Core 8 Threads), 16 GB of DDR4-2400 RAM, and a GTX 1080Ti.  When exporting from Premiere Pro CC 2018 or Media Encoder CC 2018 I would check Windows 10 Task Manager and could confirm that the encoding process was using around 95 percent of all CPU resources.  This being the case I knew that basically my current setup was giving it all to get that file or files encoded in the least amount of time possible.

     Fast forward to yesterday and I built a brand new desktop PC with a Ryzen 7 1800X (8 Core 16 Threads), 16 GB of DDR4-2400 RAM, and a GTX 1080Ti.  Keep in mind this is a completely new desktop with all software freshly installed.  After getting all software and drivers installed and setting all the Adobe software back up, I decided to do a test video encode.  Now is where the confusion starts.  You see, now when I check Task Manager while the file is being encoded, my CPU utilization never tops 30%, and the encoding time is taking about the same amount of time as the original Intel I7-6700k CPU did when it was running at 95% utilization.  So my first question is why isn't the encoding process using around 95% of the AMD CPU like it was when I was using the Intel CPU?  Is there any settings in Adobe Premiere Pro and/or Media Encoder that I need to change to make these programs utilize more of my new AMD CPU?  I see all the time on YouTube where people are extremely happy with the amazing performance in Premiere Pro when they use the AMD Ryzen 7 CPUs, so I'm guessing I'm missing something in a setting somewhere.  The next question is, what settings needs to change?

[Moderator note: moved to best forum.]

[RjL190365]

That 95% CPU utilization is no guarantee of a balanced configuration. In fact, your previous i7-6700K may be too underpowered for that GTX 1080 Ti. This can be checked by running GPU-Z at the same time as monitoring your CPU usage, when you do your tenders with many GPU-accelerated effects.

On the other hand, the low total CPU utilization from the Ryzen CPU could mean that there is something else in your system that's preventing any of the processors from becoming anywhere close to fully utilized. The bottlenecks may include, but are not limited to, an excessive number of background Windows processes and certain types of software also running in the background.

[Jikangire]

This is another part that is rather confusing.  Is it the GPU that's doing the work for the encoding or the CPU, or a combination of both?  Based on what you were saying in regard to my I7 6700K being too under-powered for the GPU, does that mean the new Ryzen 7 CPU is over powered for the GPU since it's being way under utilized?  Is there a way to force Premiere Pro to utilize more CPU power, rather than GPU power?  Would that even make a difference?  Considering I spent quite a bit of money building this new computer to be my upgraded video editing workstation, these results make me feel like I wasted my money.  Here's a screenshot showing Task Manager, GPU-Z, CPU-Z, and HWMonitor while Media Encoder is creating Proxy files for 4K HDR video files.  As you can see Task Manager shows overall CPU utilization is only at 23%, and that's for all processes, and HWMonitor backs that info up.  GPU-Z shows that GPU Core Clock, GPU Memory Clock, and Fan Speed seem to be maxed, however GPU Load is only 10%, so I have no idea what that means.  It seems the more questions I get answered, the more questions I have.  I really hope I can get this figured out soon.

[Jikangire]

Just to give a little update in regard to this issue, I can now confirm that it's only happening when Adobe Media Encoder is ingesting files for proxy use.  If I do an actual export of edited media the AMD CPU is being fully utilized.  At least this narrows down the issue, however I still have no idea how to fix it.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[Jikangire]

Actually I may have spoken too soon.  I just queued up about 7 videos to be exported at 4K with HDR using H.264 and they are only exporting using less than 30% CPU resources.  I really wish I could figure this out because at that CPU utilization level I'm looking at about five hours per 4K/HDR video of about 10 minutes.