Media Encoder – Impossibly Slow and Cannot Edit will Exporting?

[Tim Kolb]

Yes, Media Encoder will pause when you’re using Premiere Pro if it’s exporting a Premiere Pro sequence…it’s designed to prioritize system resources to your editing and only use the system for encoding when you’re not editing.

You don’t have to have the system gather all that XML data…that speeds it up.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

[Errol Lazare] “Is this normal behaviour?”

Nope! The transfer over to AME can take a little while sometimes and the reading XMP always takes way longer then it seems it should, but the times you’re reporting are quite excessive, and once you’re switched over to AME nothing you do in Premiere should be affecting AME.

So yes, something’s very wrong. The question is what.

Have you tired restarting, trashing prefs, reinstalling, all those good things? Also try loading the Premiere sequence from AME. Save your project in Premiere and then go over to AME and select File > Add Premiere Pro Sequence… and see if that renders properly. You might also want to try that with Premiere closed then after AME’s going open up premiere and see if you can edit.

You didn’t say which version of Premiere you’re using. Also what kind of footage are you editing?

JM

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

Well, hold on. Yes, AME pauses when you’re Scrubbing or Playing back in premiere, but from reading Errol’s description I took it to mean he couldn’t do anything in Premiere without AME pausing.

And anyway, the time to link over to dynamic link over to AME and start encoding shouldn’t be taking 15 minutes…..unless it’s a really really complex project.

[Errol Lazare]

Hey John,

Good points. I will try this.
The footage is h264 on premiere CS6.

Yeah, not sure why AME is pausing, you’d think on an 8-core that it could render and edit at the same time, otherwise what is point of having 8 cores…or 12 cores for that matter. To be honest, I am pretty disappointed with the slowness I am experience. Feels like hauling a big semi-truck up a hill to do anything, especially with dynamic link.

Errol X. Lazare
EXL Films
http://www.exlfilms.com

[Errol Lazare]

To clarify, AME will only stop when I start editing, but isn’t there a way to edit while AME is encoding.? There must be. It’s hard for me to believe that in this day and with the software and hardware available that an editor would have to wait for something to finish encoding. Interesting how compressor could export while editing in final cut but not in premiere and AME. Even my Quadro 4000 installed didn’t make a difference to this.

Errol X. Lazare
EXL Films
http://www.exlfilms.com

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

[Errol Lazare] “To clarify, AME will only stop when I start editing,”

You mean when you hit play in Premiere correct? AME will stop encoding when you hit play in Premiere and restart the moment you stop playback. I hardly see this as making it imposible to edit… At the most I’m only playing back the timeline 50% of the time. Yes, AME will finish slower then if I waited and let it do it’s thing, but I’m also getting work done so in the end I come out ahead.

You’re right though, There should be an option to disable this behavior. It would depend on the footage you were cutting and the computer but it is possible to encode and playback at the same time. Go try it. hit play in Premiere and then un-pause AME. Unfortunately the next time you hit play in Premiere it will pause again. I understand why this is the default behavior, but you’re right, it should be an option. This was also a big complaint with FCPX when it came out… that the “background rendering” wasn’t really background rendering because it would stop during playback.

Yes, FCP7 and Compressor will run at the same time, but on the other hand, nether program is using the full power of the computer. Compared to AME, Compresser is very slow. AME will probably finish faster even if it’s pausing all the time. I think it’s time for a race!

All that being said, it still shouldn’t take 15 minutes for the encode to start.

JM

[John-michael Seng-wheeler]

So I did a little digging, and it turns out my original suggestion does in fact work.

Dynamic link your project over to AME, start it rendering, Close and then re-open Premiere.

Done! AME will no longer pause. No guarantees that playback with H.264 while AME’s running will be smooth though. I don’t edit H.264 so I can’t test. ProRes plays fine though, even on my 5 year old MBP.

I’m still interested in how long it takes to start the encode. Does it vary by how many clips you have in your project?

[Errol Lazare]

Great,

I will try this,

By the way, my timelines are around 2 hours long and I have about 4 of them. As you can image, this would take a long time to export between pauses!

Errol X. Lazare
EXL Films
http://www.exlfilms.com

[Tim Kolb]

When you are processing a Premiere Pro sequence, you are using CUDA to process effects, etc. just like PPro did when you were editing.

An application starts up in the background that is basically another instance of Premiere Pro to act as a frame server to AME. That is why the two applications are designed to try to avoid stepping on each other if the export was launched from Premiere Pro. A Quadro 4000 is a nice card and all, but it isn’t like it’s a powerhouse with infinite capability either…

With 2 hour sequences and many clips, depending on the system and the type of media (and how metadata rich it is), it can take a very long time to gather XML information before an export. Go to AME’s preferences and under “metadata” set Metadata Export to “None” and set “Preservation Rules” to “Exclude All” and that should help the start up lag.

TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,

Adobe Certified Instructor

[Errol Lazare]

All of these suggestions were helpful. Thanks everyone for your input.

Errol X. Lazare
EXL Films
http://www.exlfilms.com