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The Adobe Encoder
I know I’ve posted about this before, but I need to get a good perspective from other users about this. Using Premiere Pro CS4, I’m forced to render my project through the Adobe Encoder. Problem is this thing is agonizingly slow.
I just rendered a standard def 12 sec DV clip, and it took 2:33 to render. This clip consists of nothing more than one 16-bit 44k audio file and two medium res stills (3488×2616 & 3020×1706), scaled and moved across the live area.
The system is based on an Athlon X2 64 4000+ with two gigs of ram, separate system and data drives running XP Pro SP3. I don’t consider this system to be underpowered for this task. As a matter of fact, I get faster renders from an old Prescott machine with one gig running Avid Xpress 3.5!
So is anyone else having these rendering speed problems? I’m also considering getting After Effects, but it too will be forced to work through this slug, making me think I should consider some other compositor (as well as an editor).
I’m also considering earlier versions as well. What are the last versions of Premiere and AE that DON’T rely on the Adobe Encoder to get their work done?
Thanks for taking a moment to read this.
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7 Replies
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This really doesn’t have much to do with the encoder, I actually find it to be about as fast as the previous one.
Your problem has to do with the scaling. Anything scaled down over 50% will kill your render. There really isn’t any way around it unless you are familiar with Photoshop automation, with which you could scale all your pics down in one batch. But if you are doing extended pans, that may not be the solution anyway.
All version of Premiere (and After Effects) will give you similar render times in that case.
Vince Becquiot
Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area -
I don’t think the images have anything to do with it. Something’s up here
I don’t remember Premiere being this slow. Last time I worked with Premiere was with about the time it went “Pro” on an old Socket A Athlon system, and it never felt like this. That was six years ago!
I also presently made another project with standard SD video and screen res stills and got similar results with a short uncompressed video render, and as I said I had faster results on my old Prescott system using Xpress DV.
So I have to disagree with you that this is normal. This is definitely not normal.
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Well, I don’t think I ever said it was “normal”, I said I didn’t know of a way around it inside Premiere. Try scaling down the images before hand, and you’ll see what I mean.
I am no engineer, so I don’t know if it has to do with the way Premiere processes images, but heavy scaling, everyone here will tell you, will get you in render hell unless you have a pretty fast machine.
That being said, there could be other issues affecting your render, 2 gigs of RAM is the minimum requirement for CS4, and that usually means you won’t be happy with the results at that amount. I find the RAM often going over 3 Gigs with Premiere alone running on our workstations, so it may be using your drives as RAM, which may be causing an additional slow down.
Again, renders haven’t slowed down with the new media encoder in our case.
After Effects may be even slower, but the scaling quality is night and day.
Vince Becquiot
Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area -
Well, I’d still like to know which were the last versions of both these programs to NOT use the Adobe Encoder. I’ll track down a version of Premiere and create the same project in it. I’m convinced the problem is the encoder. As a matter of fact, I get realtime playback on the timeline! All roads point to the encoder.
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Have you tried to untick the XML option from the Encoder settings interface? That will help.
Animated stuff does take time to calculate, effects also need calculating, the XML function will be slowing you down the most.
– Jon 🙂
PS: CS3 didn’t have Encoder as a separate app.
If you have AE you would use the Render Queue, it’s a little quicker in my experience, but using Dynamic Link is another show slower. Import your PPro Project into AE and render using AE’s Render Queue is another option.Jon Barrie
aJBprods
http://www.jonbarrie.net -
I have to agree with Vince on this one.
If I want to pan photos I use AE then export as a quicktime. In AE you can animate the anchor point rather than just position which gives a better result in my opinion. Doing it this way should speed up your render in premiere as well.
I’m afraid premiere isn’t the best with the way it handles graphics/photos but then maybe that goes for other nle’s as well.
Lance
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>>I’m afraid premiere isn’t the best with the way it handles graphics/photos but then maybe that goes for other nle’s as well.<< That hasn't been my experience. However, all of you are getting thrown off-base by the fact that I'm using higher-than-project res stills in this particular project. I did an earlier project with SD DV video and SD res stills, the stills were not scaled or panned, and that render was just as choked. The problem, as far as I can tell, is the encoder. As I've said earlier, I've done similar projects on much slower machines using earlier versions of Premiere and other NLEs and I have never seen such system choke. Ever. I will check out that XML setting to see if it makes a difference. I'm not exactly sure where it is, but I dig around. Thanks for the tip.
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