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GPU Accelerated Rendering & Hardware Encoding/Decoding

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  1. Adobe Premiere Pro User Guide
  2. Beta releases
    1. Beta Program Overview
    2. Premiere Pro Beta Home
    3. Features in Beta
      1. New import & export in Premiere Pro (Beta)
      2. FAQ | New import and export in Premiere Pro (Beta)
  3. Getting started
    1. Get started with Adobe Premiere Pro
    2. What's new in Premiere Pro
    3. Release Notes | Premiere Pro
    4. Keyboard shortcuts in Premiere Pro
    5. Accessibility in Premiere Pro
  4. Hardware and operating system requirements
    1. Hardware recommendations
    2. System requirements
    3. GPU and GPU Driver requirements
    4. GPU Accelerated Rendering & Hardware Encoding/Decoding
  5. Creating projects
    1. Creating projects
    2. Open projects
    3. Move and delete projects
    4. Work with multiple open projects
    5. Work with Project Shortcuts
    6. Backward compatibility of Premiere Pro projects
    7. Open and edit Premiere Rush projects in Premiere Pro
    8. Best Practices: Create your own project templates
  6. Workspaces and workflows
    1. Workspaces
    2. Working with Panels
    3. Windows touch and gesture controls
    4. Use Premiere Pro in a dual-monitor setup
  7. Capturing and importing
    1. Capturing
      1. Capturing and digitizing footage
      2. Capturing HD, DV, or HDV video
      3. Batch capturing and recapturing
      4. Setting up your system for HD, DV, or HDV capture
    2. Importing
      1. Transferring and importing files
      2. Importing still images
      3. Importing digital audio
    3. Importing from Avid or Final Cut
      1. Importing AAF project files from Avid Media Composer
      2. Importing XML project files from Final Cut Pro 7 and Final Cut Pro X
    4. Supported file formats
    5. Digitizing analog video
    6. Working with timecode
  8. Editing
    1. Sequences
      1. Create and change sequences
      2. Add clips to sequences
      3. Rearrange clips in a sequence
      4. Find, select, and group clips in a sequence
      5. Edit from sequences loaded into the Source Monitor
      6. Simplify sequences
      7. Rendering and previewing sequences
      8. Working with markers
      9. Scene edit detection
    2. Video
      1. Create and play clips
      2. Trimming clips
      3. Synchronizing audio and video with Merge Clips
      4. Render and replace media
      5. Undo, history, and events
      6. Freeze and hold frames
      7. Working with aspect ratios
    3. Audio
      1. Overview of audio in Premiere Pro
      2. Audio Track Mixer
      3. Adjusting volume levels
      4. Editing, repairing and improving audio using Essential Sound panel
      5. Monitor clip volume and pan using Audio Clip Mixer
      6. Audio balancing and panning
      7. Advanced Audio - Submixes, downmixing, and routing
      8. Audio effects and transitions
      9. Working with audio transitions
      10. Apply effects to audio
      11. Measure audio using the Loudness Radar effect
      12. Recording audio mixes
      13. Editing audio in the timeline
      14. Audio channel mapping in Premiere Pro
      15. Use Adobe Stock audio in Premiere Pro
    4. Advanced editing
      1. Multi-camera editing workflow
      2. Editing workflows for feature films
      3. Set up and use Head Mounted Display for immersive video in Premiere Pro
      4. Editing VR
    5. Best Practices
      1. Best Practices: Mix audio faster
      2. Best Practices: Editing efficiently
  9. Video Effects and Transitions
    1. Overview of video effects and transitions
    2. Effects
      1. Types of effects in Premiere Pro
      2. Apply and remove effects
      3. Effect presets
      4. Automatically reframe video for different social media channels
      5. Color correction effects
      6. Change duration and speed of clips
      7. Adjustment Layers
      8. Stabilize footage
    3. Transitions
      1. Applying transitions in Premiere Pro
      2. Modifying and customizing transitions
      3. Morph Cut
  10. Graphics, Titles, and Animation
    1. Graphics and titles
      1. Create titles and motion graphics
      2. Apply text gradients in Premiere Pro
      3. Spell check and Find and Replace
      4. Use Motion Graphics templates for titles
      5. Add Responsive Design features to your graphics
      6. Replace images or videos in Motion Graphics templates
      7. Use data-driven Motion Graphics templates
      8. Best Practices: Faster graphics workflows
      9. Working with captions
      10. Speech to Text
      11. Speech to Text in Premiere Pro | FAQ
      12. Upgrade Legacy titles to Source Graphics
    2. Animation and Keyframing
      1. Adding, navigating, and setting keyframes
      2. Animating effects
      3. Use Motion effect to edit and animate clips
      4. Optimize keyframe automation
      5. Moving and copying keyframes
      6. Viewing and adjusting effects and keyframes
  11. Compositing
    1. Compositing, alpha channels, and adjusting clip opacity
    2. Masking and tracking
    3. Blending modes
  12. Color Correction and Grading
    1. Overview: Color workflows in Premiere Pro
    2. Get creative with color using Lumetri looks
    3. Adjust color using RBG and Hue Saturation Curves
    4. Correct and match colors between shots
    5. Using HSL Secondary controls in the Lumetri Color panel
    6. Create vignettes
    7. Looks and LUTs
    8. Lumetri scopes
    9. Display Color Management
    10. HDR for broadcasters
    11. Enable DirectX HDR support
  13. Exporting media
    1. Workflow and overview for exporting
    2. Quick export
    3. Exporting for the Web and mobile devices
    4. Export a still image
    5. Exporting projects for other applications
    6. Exporting OMF files for Pro Tools
    7. Export to Panasonic P2 format
    8. Exporting to DVD or Blu-ray Disc
    9. Best Practices: Export faster
  14. Working with other Adobe applications
    1. After Effects and Photoshop
    2. Dynamic Link
    3. Audition
    4. Prelude
  15. Organizing and Managing Assets
    1. Working in the Project panel
    2. Organize assets in the Project panel
    3. Playing assets
    4. Search assets
    5. Creative Cloud Libraries
    6. Sync Settings in Premiere Pro
    7. Using Productions
    8. How clips work across projects in a Production
    9. Consolidate, transcode, and archive projects
    10. Managing metadata
    11. Best Practices
      1. Best Practices: Working with Productions
      2. Best Practices: Learning from broadcast production
      3. Best Practices: Working with native formats
  16. Improving Performance and Troubleshooting
    1. Set preferences
    2. Reset preferences
    3. Working with Proxies
      1. Proxy overview
      2. Ingest and Proxy Workflow
    4. Check if your system is compatible with Premiere Pro
    5. Premiere Pro for Apple silicon
    6. Eliminate flicker
    7. Interlacing and field order
    8. Smart rendering
    9. Control surface support
    10. Best Practices: Working with native formats
    11. Knowledge Base
      1. Green and pink video in Premiere Pro or Premiere Rush
      2. How do I manage the Media Cache in Premiere Pro?
      3. Fix errors when rendering or exporting
      4. Troubleshoot issues related to playback and performance in Premiere Pro
  17. Monitoring Assets and Offline Media
    1. Monitoring assets
      1. Using the Source Monitor and Program Monitor
      2. Using the Reference Monitor
    2. Offline media
      1. Working with offline clips
      2. Creating clips for offline editing
      3. Relinking offline media

 

This article provides Adobe Insight into Mercury Playback Engine (GPU Accelerated) and Hardware Decoding/Encoding (Intel® Quick Sync) in Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder.

Mercury Playback Engine (GPU Accelerated) renderer

Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Media Encoder can take advantage of available GPUs on your system to distribute the processing load between the CPU and the GPU to get better performance. Currently, most of the processing is done by CPU and GPU assists in processing certain tasks and features.

The Mercury Playback Engine (GPU Accelerated) renderer is used to render GPU accelerated effects and features.
Here is the list of GPU accelerated effects in Adobe Premiere Pro. To identify the GPU accelerated effects, navigate to the Effects panel and look for the Accelerated Effects icon.

GPU Accelerated effects icon
GPU Accelerated effects icon

Apart from processing these effects, the Mercury Playback Engine (GPU Accelerated) is used for image processing, resizes, color space conversions, recoloring and more. It is also used for timeline playback/scrubbing and full-screen playback using Mercury Transmit.

Here is the list of recommended graphics card for Adobe Premiere Pro.
It is recommended to have GPUs with 4GB of VRAM but this may vary depending on the type of work you are doing in Adobe Premiere Pro.

A general guideline to VRAM requirements:

  • 1080p - 4GB VRAM
  • 4K – 6GB VRAM 
  • 6K or higher – 8GB or higher VRAM

For VR, 6GB of VRAM would be a good starting point. In case you are working with higher resolution stereoscopic frames (like 8K x 8K) you may need more VRAM. While using NVIDIA GPUs, ensure that you have the latest driver installed and it supports CUDA 9.2. 

Note:

An important aspect to keep in mind is that purchasing an older graphics card means driver support will end sooner than a newer card.

  • For Adobe Premiere Pro, go to File > Project Settings > General > Video Rendering and Playback, set the Renderer to Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (OpenCL/CUDA/Metal).
Renderer in Premiere Pro
Set Renderer in Adobe Premiere Pro

  • For Adobe Media Encoder, go to Preferences > General and set the Renderer to Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (OpenCL/CUDA/Metal) under the Video Rendering section.
Renderer in Adobe Media Encoder
Set Renderer in Adobe Media Encoder

In Adobe Media Encoder you can also set the Renderer at the lower-right corner of the Queue panel.

 

If the Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration is not available as an option after updating or reinstalling Adobe Premiere Pro, then perform a clean installation of GPU drivers to solve the issue.

  • Clean Installation of NVIDIA drivers.
  • Clean Installation of AMD® drivers.

Adobe Premiere Pro uses a single GPU during playback and multiple GPUs for other tasks such as Render In to Out and for export. CrossFire can be set up to present multiple GPUs as a single logical GPU and for that case, Adobe Premiere Pro treats it as a single GPU.

In case multi-GPU (non-SLI or non-CrossFire) configuration is used, it's recommended to disable system or driver-based automated GPU/graphics switching functionality.

The Mercury Playback Engine running on the dedicated GPU isn't used to process everything related to the GPU. The integrated GPU can be used for specific tasks such as encoding/decoding certain codecs and User Interface (UI) activity which can show up while monitoring the GPU usage.

GPU utilization depends on several factors. GPU usage while editing or rendering may or may not be maxed out depending on the number of GPU accelerated effects/features used and the GPU's computational capability. So, a powerful GPU like NVIDIA RTX 2080 may perform faster than NVIDIA GTX 1060 but it may show a lower usage because it is more powerful and may require lesser percentage of hardware resources to process the same information as compared to NVIDIA GTX 1060 or other mid-range GPUs. In case a few GPU accelerated effects are used, then the GPU usage may not be high and it might increase when more GPU accelerated effects are used.

This only applies to VR effects. This message shows up when the GPU does not have sufficient VRAM to process the effect.

Hardware-accelerated encoding

Intel® Quick Sync is a technology by Intel® which utilizes the dedicated media processing capabilities of Intel® Graphics Technology to decode/encode fast, enabling the processor to complete other task and improve performance. Currently, this only supports encoding h.264 and HEVC (h.265) codecs. This feature is only available if an Intel® CPU with Intel® Quick Sync support is used.

Here are the system requirements for Hardware-accelerated encoding.

Enabling/disabling hardware encoding is dependent on the type of Intel® CPU used. If a supported CPU is not used or if Intel® Quick Sync is disabled from BIOS, then the option might be unavailable.

To enable this option, select H.264/HEVC from the Format drop-down under Export Settings. Then under the Video tab, go to Encoding Settings and set the Performance to Hardware Encoding. Setting it to Software Encoding will disable hardware encoding and Adobe Premiere Pro won't use Intel® Quick Sync to encode the media (this may increase the rendering time).

Enable Hardware Encoding
Enable Hardware Encoding

Note:

While using Hardware Encoding you may see a higher GPU usage on the integrated Intel® GPU and not the dedicated GPU.

Supported codec platforms

Encode: H.264/AVC, HEVC 4:2:0, up to 4096x4096. With 10th-generation and later Intel® Core™ processors, HEVC encode support goes up to 8192x8192.

Decode: H.264/AVC, HEVC 4:2:0, up to 4096x4096 (some 8K HEVC content works on 7th-generation and later Intel® Core™ processors)

For this feature to work, an Intel® CPU with Intel® Quick Sync support is required. Check if your Intel® CPU meets the requirements for Hardware Encoding . If your system's BIOS supports enabling/disabling the Intel® GPU, ensure that it's always enabled for hardware encoding to work. Some systems like the Surface Studio may not enable the Intel® GPU which may cause the Hardware Encoding option to be dimmed.

If you have a supported Intel® CPU with Intel® GPU enabled but can't utilise Hardware Encoding, ensure that the Intel® GPU is listed in the Performance tab of Task Manager (Windows® only). If the Intel® GPU isn't listed, check if it's enabled in the Device Manager and update the Intel® graphics drivers to the latest version.

GPU in the Task Manager and the Device Manager
Intel® GPU listed in the Task Manager and the Device Manager

Hardware-accelerated Decoding

Like Hardware-accelerated Encoding, Adobe Premiere Pro also supports Hardware-accelerated Decoding to provide better playback performance while working with the H.264/AVC, HEVC media in the timeline.

Note:

Adobe Premiere Pro may drop frames while playing back the sequence if intensive effects are added to the clips and the system is unable to process the frames in real-time

Steps to enable Hardware-accelerated Decoding:

  • Navigate to Preferences > Media 
  • Select Enable hardware accelerated decoding (requires restart)
  • Restart Adobe Premiere Pro
Enable Hardware Accelerated Decoding
Enable Hardware Accelerated Decoding

Note:

If the option is dimmed in the Preferences panel, it means that either the CPU doesn’t support Intel® Quick Sync or the Integrated GPU is not enabled or the Intel® graphics drivers may need an update.

Supported codec platforms

The feature works with MP4 media specifically H.264/AVC and HEVC codecs. Premiere Pro, Adobe Media Encoder, and After Effects version 22.0 and later support HEVC 4:2:2 10-bit Hardware-accelerated Decoding on Intel platforms.

The M2TS(MPEG-2 Transport Stream) is not supported. If using 4K M2TS media, transcoding it to a supported MP4 codec may help in getting better playback performance as the transcoded MP4 media can take advantage of Hardware-accelerated Decoding (Performance gain might not be substantial if transcoding HD M2TS media).

The processing for Hardware-accelerated Decoding on an Integrated Intel® GPU on systems with 8GB or lesser RAM can be limited and might result in the CPU taking over the processing as the Integrated GPU uses the RAM as shared GPU memory. It's recommended to have 16GB of RAM or more for better performance.

For best performance, Adobe recommends the following driver and processor versions:

  • Driver xx.x.100.9126 or later for 11th Generation Intel® Core™ with Iris® Xe Graphics, with UHD Graphics, and with Iris® Xe Max Graphics
  • Driver xx.x.100.9894 or later for 10th Generation Intel® Core™  (see the list below):
    • Intel® Core™ i7-1068NG7 Processor
    • Intel® Core™ i7-1065G7 Processor
    • Intel® Core™ i7-1060G7 Processor
    • Intel® Core™ i5-1035G4 Processor
    • Intel® Core™ i5-1035G7 Processor
    • Intel® Core™ i5-1038NG7 Processor
    • Intel® Core™ i5-1035G1 Processor
    • Intel® Core™ i5-1030G7 Processor
    • Intel® Core™ i5-1030G4 Processor
    • Intel® Core™ i3-1005G1 Processor
    • Intel® Core™ i3-1000G1 Processor
    • Intel® Core™ i3-1000G4 Processor
    • Intel® Pentium® Processor 6805

Difference between Hardware-accelerated Decoding, Mercury Playback Engine (GPU Acceleration), and Hardware-accelerated Encoding

  • Mercury Playback Engine (GPU Accelerated) is a renderer used to process GPU-accelerated effects and enhances playback.
  • Hardware-accelerated Encoding is used to accelerate the encoding performance while exporting the timeline in H.264/AVC and HEVC codecs.
  • Hardware-accelerated Decoding is a process which is used to accelerate decoding H.264/AVC and HEVC media while playing back the timeline. 

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