Why is my render not making more use of my GPU?

[site_fail]

We recently upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 (clean install), added two SSD drives (one as a system drive, one for Adobe cache, etc.), and the system has a 10TB RAID for media.  The system is a dual proc Xeon machine.  We also upgraded from the Quatro 4000 to the M5000 (properly connected and supplied with the additional power required, latest drivers installed).  The problem is that I notice no difference in the slugish performance I see in Premiere and in rendering.  I've attached a screen capture that shows almost no GPU usage and the render of a 24 second clip taking nearly an hour with long gaps between frames in which the computer seems to do nothing.  And why is CPU utilization so hight?  There are a few effects applied to the footage, mainly MagicBullet Denoiser II as well as some Grad filters. Raw footage is BMCC DNG image sequence.  I understand that Denoiser II is slow, but I'm not understanding why it is so slow on such an expensive system and why the graphics card spends most of its time doing nothing. I've even closed all other applications and told the nvidia control panel to set power use to prefer maximum performance.  Any advice would be appreciated.

[Ann Bens]

Might want to read this doc on what cuda does and does not do

CUDA, Mercury Playback Engine, and Adobe Premiere Pro « Premiere Pro work area 

[site_fail]

Thanks but that raises more questions than it answers as all of the effects I'm using, including Denoiser II, are supposed to be GPU accelerated. 

[Ann Bens]

Premiere does not support MPE hardware on Denoiser.

Might want to contact Red Giant on this one.

Red Giant - User Guides

[site_fail]

"Our latest update features a GPU speed enhancement that is supported on systems with OpenCL 1.1 and higher. The "Use GPU" checkbox is turned on if Denoiser II v1.4 detects a suitable GPU."

Red Giant | Compatibility

[Jim_Simon]

If you turn that effect off, how the performance?

[site_fail]

Not nearly as bad, but playback is still only 1 or less frames per second at 1/2 res.  With denoiser on it is unusable (which I can accept and I usually just apply it just prior to render...what I can't accept is a 24 second clip taking an hour to render and the GPU hardly being used).  With effects turned off playback nearly reaches realtime at 1/2 res.

[Jim_Simon]

OK.

What kind of performance are you seeing with just the clips, no effects at all?  Do you get realtime at Full quality?

[site_fail]

About 5 or 6 frames per second with nothing rendering.

[Jim_Simon]

OK.

What kind of CPU usage are you getting for just the media at Full, no effects?

[site_fail]

It spikes to 100% on playback, no effects.

[Jim_Simon]

OK.

So my first thought here is that even with the dual Xeon's, your system just isn't powerful enough to properly handle this media.

Those CPU's are pretty old.  You might do well to consider upgrading again to a more modern 5930K.

[site_fail]

Thanks for all yer responses.  It is an HP Z800 workstation with upgrades, including RAID card, additional memory, and a graphics card (nvidia M5000) done by CDW under a corporate account.  I find it difficult to believe that a workstation that costs in excess of 10 grand can't play this video (it actually did better with the old card).  When it comes to playing DNG image sequences, the bottleneck should be the drives, not the processor since there is no long GOP codec to decode.  And there is hardly any load on the drive that the media is on.  Additionally, I see a graphics card that cost thousands of dollars sitting around doing nothing when, according to everything I've read, it should be doing the majority of the work. I'm thinking there may be some sort of conflict somewhere?

[Jim_Simon]

Well, that you're pegging the CPU during simple playback is a pretty good indicator that you just don't have enough CPU there.

Like I said, they're pretty old.

If you care to upload a clip somewhere, I can test it here, see how it runs.

[RoninEdits]

what resolution is the bmcc cinemadng footage? 2.5k or 4.6k or different? i would think your computer could handle 2.5k or lower fine. im not sure about 4.6k, but would still expect it to do better than 6fps. your dual xeon, as jim points out, is old tech from around 2010. its comparable to a fast new intel 4 core cpu. the quadro m5000 is an underclocked gtx 980. it has alot of power, so if it is having to wait on the cpu's for frames to work on, it will show alot of idle time and low usage.

premiere doesn't use the gpu for the majority of the workload, it has always been the cpu. the gpu is still important and in some projects with enough gpu effects can start to equal the cpu workload, but not replace it. Adobe Premiere Pro CC and GPU support | Premiere Pro work area   however premiere is suppose to use the gpu for debayering with the cinemadng footage. Ingest and edit native camera formats in Premiere Pro CC | Adobe Premiere Pro CC tutorials‌.  if you disable mercury playback engine gpu acceleration cuda, does playback perform any worse or the same? if its close to the same, then perhaps there is an issue with premiere not using the gpu for debayering.

when you tested just the media and got 5-6 fps on playback, was that in the source monitor or a new timeline without the grad filters or any other media?

if you play other media, like dnxhd/r, prores, or cineform, does the computer work ok? or does all media struggle for simple playback?

[site_fail]

Thanks Jim and Ronin.  The footage is original BMCC, so 2.5k and the slow playback happens in both the program monitor with all effects turned off as well as in the source monitor and it pings the CPU in both.  I'm not sure why this is an issue for me and no one else seems to notice, but Resolve can play BMCC footage on my system just fine at full res with less than a 50% CPU usage so I'm pretty sure this is an Adobe engineering issue.  I can't see how it would be possible that the camera itself can playback footage with the hardware it has and this system won't.  I know there is dedicated hardware in the camera, but I don't buy the argument that this footage can't be played on this system...indeed I've proven that it can be with Resolve.  Resolve can even play graded footage just fine and I can scrub through it pretty well.  I wish I had another editing platform I could install to do some further testing but it seems to me that there are some issues with Premiere. In regards to turning off Mercury for playback, it is far worse with it off, about one frame per second at 1/2 res in the source monitor.  So what gives?

[Jim_Simon]

I don't buy the argument that this footage can't be played on this system

That's not the argument we're making, though.  We're saying it can't be easily played back on that system by Premiere Pro.  How it plays in other programs isn't relevant unless you plan to stop using PP and exclusively use the other program.  (Which might actually be an option with Resolve 12.)

[RoninEdits]

if we were to pretend for a moment that the cinemadng was that demanding in premiere and you needed a new computer, it would have to be 4x faster to get from 6fps to 24fps. no current dual xeon system is that powerful, and premiere doesn't support quad xeon systems, so basically it would be impossible. i do believe premiere should be able to handle the cinemadng 2.5k media with your computer. premiere for all its problems, is pretty efficient with system resources in my experience. with disabling cuda and playback performance dropping so bad, it suggests to me that cuda is being used and the gpu may not be the issue.

i think the problem is with premiere working properly, but i haven't heard of any recent cinemadng problems or fixes to your situation.

do you have other media types like prores/dnxhd/cineform that work properly or does all media have major performance issues?

does media encoder and prelude have similar poor performance with cinemadng media (not projects from premiere)?

if you can install some older versions of premiere, you could test if its just a new issue with cc2015 or not.

[Jim_Simon]

if we were to pretend for a moment that the cinemadng was that demanding in premiere and you needed a new computer, it would have to be 4x faster to get from 6fps to 24fps.

I'm not sure the math on this one is quite that simplistic.  But I'm still willing to test the media on my two systems to see what's up, if one cares to upload a clip.

[RoninEdits]

jim, it was just to make a point against how bad the performance was at 6fps. even if it required a computer 2x more powerful, the current i7 x99 cpu's wouldn't cut it.

there is this old footage to download if you or anyone else wants to test it.

http://video.blackmagicdesign.com/Shot_1.zip

http://video.blackmagicdesign.com/Shot_2.zip

http://video.blackmagicdesign.com/Shot_3.zip

http://video.blackmagicdesign.com/Shot_4.zip

http://video.blackmagicdesign.com/Shot_5.zip

[Jim_Simon]

I downloaded one of the older test clips.  It played back without any dropped frames on my i5 2500K system for about 2 seconds, but then started dropping frames.  However, this was due to my single disk drive which just couldn't keep up.  The CPU only hit about 10% load during playback.

[RoninEdits]

your cpu and bills laptop cpu are somewhat close in performance, and about as powerful as one of the xeon's in site fails dual xeon machine. for your machine to only be using 10% cpu before the drive bottlenecked the playback, suggests site fail's machine is plenty more than powerful enough. we still have the possibility of the new cinemadng format being an issue, as those were the old/original format in that link.

[Jim_Simon]

we still have the possibility of the new cinemadng format being an issue

I'm still happy to test those, should they be uploaded.

[site_fail]

Thanks guys, I'm running the benchmark now and after that I'll download one of the orig files and report back.  I do have the latest firmware on the camera but, as I mentioned before, this performance drop is pretty univeral against all formats.  Later, when I report back, I'll include the results of some other tests.

[Bill_Gehrke]

Hey, I just noticed from your Task Manager images that you are only running your CPU's at half power.  You do not have hyperthreading enabled--why?