Premiere Lags When Using Media Encoder

[zaka2868632]

Hey all,

I'm running the latest version of Adobe CC as of 8.13.18. I have an iMac Pro, 3 Ghz Intel Xeon W, 64GB RAM, Radeon Pro Vega 64 graphics card, External G-Drive Thunderbolt 3 harddrive.

Recently when I export projects through Media Encoder, Premiere just lags throughout out the render process. It won't play back, trying to copy a sequence in the Project Bin causes the spinning ball. The application doesn't crash but it takes maybe 30 seconds to respond to any commands. As soon as encoder is done, everything comes back. Activity monitor usually says by system is only about 40% active during renders.

The reason I export to encoder is so that I can keep working in Premiere but this hasn't been possible lately. Any thoughts on what the problem is?

-zak

[R Neil Haugen · Accepted solution]

I'm not at my editing rig right now, but there's an option in the Preferences, can't remember if it's PrPro or Me, to pause Me during activity from PrPro. Check for that, and see how it's set.

Neil

[Bruce Bullis]

PPro --> Preferences --> Playback --> "Pause Media Encoder queue during playback"

[zaka2868632]

Thanks! This is definitely a box that was not checked, so that helps, but can you help me understand why when it isn't checked and I'm having playback problems my activity monitor shows so much idle resource?

[Bruce Bullis]

Why it wasn't checked?

Poltergeists? I think it's checked by default.

...shows so much idle resource?

Specifically, what resource(s) would you expect to be busy, which are idle? Broadly Speaking™: Big annoying processes are not always limited by the same factors: Some are CPU-bound, some are storage-bound, some are RAM-bound.

[zaka2868632]

Sure. I'm looking at CPU % specifically. Looks like the render I'm doing right now takes up 366% in the PProHeadless process and Premiere is at about 6%. With everything else going on in my computer it shows 76% idle. If I playback Premiere during the render it jumps to between 500% and 1000% and PProHeadless drops to 250%. That still leaves about 30% of the CPU idle according to activity monitor. I guess I'm just wondering why Adobe doesn't use that last 30%?

[Bruce Bullis]

...I guess I'm just wondering why Adobe doesn't use that last 30%?

Output can often be storage-bound.

One Such Example™: Smart rendering a boring "cuts-only" (no effects) sequence with media from an XDCAM-50 MXF, back to XDCAM-50 MXF, with default transitions between clips. [This is a typical new production workflow.]

The only parts of the timeline which will require processing are the transitions; for the rest, PPro can copy compressed blocks of frames from the source to the destination, without troubling the CPU much.

In your case, it sounds like the sequence you're rendering IS pretty CPU-intensive. Part I don't understand; if PProHeadless is at 366%, how is your entire system's load still down around 24%?