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GPU Accelerated Rendering & Hardware Encoding/Decoding

This article provides insight into Mercury Playback Engine (GPU Accelerated) and Hardware Decoding/Encoding 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.

Hardware-accelerated Decoding and Encoding

Premiere Pro supports Hardware accelerated encoding to accelerate the encoding (export) performance and reduce the time to export H.264 and H.265 (HEVC) formats. Premiere Pro can also improve the timeline playback performance with Hardware accelerated decoding support for H.264 and H.265 formats.

A GPU with hardware-accelerated encoding and decoding capabilities is required to use these features.
Check from the information if your GPU supports Hardware accelerated Decoding and Encoding.

Apple silicon (M1 and higher) supports hardware-accelerated decoding and encoding of H.264 and H.265 formats, including 10-bit 4:2:2 decoding support. HEVC HLG 4:2:0 10-bit encoding still encodes via software. 

Here are the system requirements for Hardware-accelerated decoding and encoding.

Hardware-accelerated Encoding support

Select H.264/HEVC from the Format drop-down under Export Settings to activate this option. Then under the Video tab, go to Encoding Settings and set the Performance to Hardware Encoding.

Enable Hardware Encoding
Enable Hardware Encoding

Supported codec platforms

Encode: H.264/AVC (8-bit), HEVC 4:2:0 (8-bit and 10-bit) up to 4096x4096. With 10th-generation and later Intel® Core™ processors, HEVC encode support goes up to 8192x8192.

Hardware-accelerated Decoding support

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.

Steps to enable Hardware-accelerated Decoding:

  1. Navigate to Preferences > Media

  2. Select Enable hardware accelerated decoding (requires restart).

  3. Restart Adobe Premiere Pro.

Enable Hardware Accelerated Decoding
Enable Hardware Accelerated Decoding

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.

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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