Mercury Playback Engine 101

[Peter Garaway]

Hi Jonathan,

Have you checked out this blog yet? It was posted a while back but the core of the information is still on point.

https://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/cuda-mercury-playback-engine-and-adobe-premiere-pro/?segment=dva

Let us know if you have any additional questions.

Best,

Peter Garaway
Adobe
Premiere Pro

[Jonathan Ramsey]

Thank you, Peter! That is extremely helpful. At one point I think I had 8 tabs with various links open to get through all this. The only two remaining questions I have then, are:

1. Why would you ever want to have the software only preference selected and not one of the other GPU options selected?

2. Why is this preference setting a project preference and not a universal Preference setting? I only ask because I have a feeling I’m missing the benefit to that obviously intentional decision by Adobe to place it where it is.

Thanks much,
Ramsey

Ramsey Productions, Ltd.
Design | Create | Produce
Complete Video Production & Marketing Services

[Peter Garaway]

[Jonathan Ramsey] “1. Why would you ever want to have the software only preference selected and not one of the other GPU options selected?
“

Not often, but there are times when CUDA and/or OpenCl doesn’t behave the way it should. It may be a bug in Premiere or it could be a driver issue from the graphic card maker or the graphic card could simply break and stop working. In these cases, you can switch to Software mode and still get the job done.

[Jonathan Ramsey] “2. Why is this preference setting a project preference and not a universal Preference setting? I only ask because I have a feeling I’m missing the benefit to that obviously intentional decision by Adobe to place it where it is.
“

As long as you have a supported graphics cards, GPU rendering will always be selected by default. So as long as you don’t manually turn it off, it should always be enabled. The reason it’s a project setting rather than a global settings falls under the answer from your first question.

Hope that’s helpful!

Peter Garaway
Adobe
Premiere Pro