Adobe Media Encoder CC - You Need to Add Unsupported CUDA Cards to supported_cuda_cards.txt

[Keith Moreau]

Hi Folks

I'm running on a Mac Pro with an NVidia GTX 770 with 4GB. Premiere Pro CC utilizes the GPU for playback and export but will give you a warning when you first enable CUDA in Mercury Playback Engine. However...

I was noticing that when I queued the export to Adobe Media Encoder CC, it was taking forever to encode simple queued sequences.

After doing a bit of research on the internet and even in these forums I realized that while Premiere Pro was being ok with supporting a non-supported card, Media Encoder was not. I added the GTX 770 to the supported_cuda_cards.txt file locate here: /Applications/Adobe Premiere Pro CC/Adobe Premiere Pro CC.app/Contents/ (you will need to be slightly geeky to find and modify this file - more info than I care to provide in this post but you can look up how to locate files in Mac OS).

Voila! AME now encodes super speedly, like 4 times as fast as before!!!

Thought I'd just provide this little tip for people experiencing this problem.

Adobe... can you do something about this? I know it's a corner case but really - maybe something in AME preferences or something... Like "Use CUDA capable card even if not on supported CUDA list" checkbox or something.

Now I can get back to work.

-Keith

[John T Smith]

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform is where you tell Adobe what you want

[Keith Moreau]

Thanks John, Done. I'm probably  not the first person to encounter this problem don't you think?

[Jim_Simon]

Dude, I never thought of doing this.  I ran some tests and found that AME no longer respects GPU acceleration like it did in CS6.  PP no longer requires the hack for it to work, I assumed AME wouldn't need the hack either and that Adobe purposefully disabled it in AME for some reason.

I love that you figured this out, and thank you for posting.

[jasonvp]

Jim Simon wrote:

Dude, I never thought of doing this.  I ran some tests and found that AME no longer respects GPU acceleration like it did in CS6.

I suspect this is why my export tests were so much faster than yours were.  I just deleted the file, which has the same effect as adding the cards to it.

FWIW, I deleted the OpenCL file as well, so that I always have the choice between the two.

[Jim_Simon]

That was likely it.

[Keith Moreau]

To Jim

You're very welcome for this. I'm also grateful to you for all the amazing help you give people on this forum. I don't know how you do it but you are always there for people. (I mean always!)

I have used the Adobe and the Creative Cow Premiere forums to research and get information that has saved me countless times, I think it is the least I can do to pay back. I think in general people should post workarounds if they find them. Software is complicated and there are bound to be bugs, Adobe is a company with finite resources so not everything will be discovered nor workarounds explained, especially in this 'unsupported' scenario.

In thinking back on it, I think if Adobe updates AME CC, it should just 'honor' that Premiere Pro is ok with the card, I think that information can be passed along with the dynamic link info from the sequence export or in the sequence somehow. Adding another checkbox i AME prefs adds extra work for Adobe but doing it under the covers is pretty easy.

Regards,

-Keith

[Jim_Simon]

AME CC...should just 'honor' that Premiere Pro is ok with the card

Agreed.  It was my false assumption that this would be so which caused my problem and confusion.  I wouldn't even make it a checkbox.  If it's on in PP, via whatever method, then it stays on through AME.

[shooternz]

Anyone know the file path for this on a PC?

[Jim_Simon]

Define 'this'.

[shooternz]

"this" is a very hard word to define without using the word "this"! 

But..this...

Is there a different path for the cuda txt hack in CC AME than CC Premiere and where is it on a Win PC?

[Jim_Simon]

Oh, the text file.  It's in the same place it's always been, the PP folder in Program Files.  AME doesn't have it's own.

[shooternz]

Something else I discovered inspired by this thread.

In CC Premiere cuda .txt file..my Ge Force GTX 670 card is not on the default list ...yet I have GPU Acceleration.  I have a second card in the system (GTX 560) and that is not listed either!

I will add the GTX 670 now but isnt that weird?

Thoughts?  Maybe this is what the OP thread is all about?

[Keith Moreau]

To Shooternz: Are you sure you have acceleration with Adobe Media Encoder CC? The problem is with AME, not Premiere Pro CC, which will give you one warning when switching from software Mercury Playback Engine to an unsupported CUDA card but will happily use it it when you dismiss the warning. AME will only use CUDA if it 1) Is in the supported list file or 2) the file doesn't exist (according to Jason van Patton)

[shooternz]

No..I had no idea if I had acceleration in AME.

Its a bit difficult to tell in short form work (TVCs) and I did not test it as Jim did.

What I was saying.. I did have GPU (Cuda) acceleration in Premiere which surprised me when I discovered that the card(s) were not even listed.

They are now.

[Jim_Simon]

You don't need your card on the list to get acceleration in PP any more.  You can still turn it on and just OK the warning.  That's what tripped me up.  PP will allow it even if the card isn't listed, but AME still needs that list.

[nw42]

Thanks to Keith for this very important finding!!!

Can't belive it... That strange behaviour should be mentioned by Adobe because it affects rendertimes like night & day...

[X0026571]

I just made this change in the AME ".txt" file for my GeForce GTX 670 (i7, WIn 7 Pro, 32 GB, and I know it's not "certified" for CUDA), and now have it in both the PPro and AME ".txt" files. While I'm waiting for AME to finish, this thread raises questions in my mind.

It's been my understanding that AME was engineered to run in the background, allowing other work to be done in PPro without the 2 "getting in each other's way".

I'm happy with the rendering speed in PPro, and I see that hardware rendering is working there.

If AME now makes use of the GPU while I'm doing other work in PPro, (like maybe "rendering the selection", or an entire sequence in PPro), does that affect the performance of either the file that AME is currently processing, or does it affect what I can do/performance I'll get while concurrently working in PPro?

Are CUDA/GPU resources  "shared" between PPro and AME? Or, are the apps likely to "trip over each other"?

If AME does, in fact, make use of the GPU, is there something other than the ".txt file hack" that I must do to enable the renderer in AME to use MPE hardware? As I type this I have AME working on a PPro sequence but I see that the "Renderer" is showing "Mercury Playback Engine Software Only".

I feel like I'm missing some important tidbir of information, but I don't know what that is.

What am I missing?

[Keith Moreau]

What I have found is that AME pauses whenever anything else, particularly Premiere Pro, is actually requiring resources. So while it's working in the background it releases the resources it's using unti they are free again. So using Premiere Pro while AME is encoding will not impact PPro's speed much except possibly for a very short time when starting to use Premiere Pro while AME is encoding. Hope this helps.

[Guest]

Thank you sooooo much. This is a lifesaver... My AE rendering times just went more than 3 times shorter after deleting supported cards txt files...

Amazing...

[Gazzaspi]

Thanks Keith, well spotted..big improvement for me as well.

Gary

[Paleus]

Can someone please help me find the file I need to edit using CC on Windows PC?

I'm also not sure what I need to add to this .txt file as I am not entirely sure what my video card is.

Any help would be much appreciated.