PPRO CS5 Media Encoder takes forever!

[Azadul Haq]

I have a 35min (1440x1080, 30P, NTSC) timeline that I am traying to export using Media Encoder with the following setting:

H.264, 640x480, 1 pass CBR, 10Mbit/sec, 44KHz audio.

It is taking me more than 11 hours to render this!!! Is this normal?

The rendered file becomes larger than 1.5GB.

If anyone has similar setup, can you please share your experience?

Thanks.

[Randall Leong]

Hello Azadul,

What are the specs (CPU, memory, hard drive, graphics card) of the computer system in question?

Also, is your computer system running a lot of background programs (such as antivirus programs) that automatically load when you start Windows?

[John Wiley]

There's alot of variables at play so we need to know more to say whether or not it is normal.

What kind of footage have you got on the timeline? How many effect are applied? What are your computers specs. What hard drive set-up do you have? Do you have any nested sequences of AE Dynamic Links?

Answer those questions and we'll be able to give you an answer!

[Azadul Haq]

I have a Matrox RTX2 based NLE that runs fine and I can edit HD or SD footage in real time. My system is based on a ASUS P5K board, with Intel Duo E6700 (2.66GHz) CPU, 8GB RAM, ATI Radeon X1950 Pro graphics card, Windows 7 Professional (64 bit), 500GB system drive, 2TB A/V Drive, 500GB graphics drive.

I don't see any performance issues in other application.

@Randall: Yes, I do have Microsoft Security Essentials running on the background. No other programs are running in the background. I did the rendering at night, so no browsing is down either. The timeline doesn't have any special effects. The transitions are only dissolve. The timeline is pre-rendered.

@John: I didn't understand what you meant by nested sequences in AE Dynamic link.

Thanks Randall and John for your response.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Azadul Haq

I have a Matrox RTX2 based NLE that runs fine and I can edit HD or SD footage in real time. My system is based on a ASUS P5K board, with Intel Duo E6700 (2.66GHz) CPU, 8GB RAM, ATI Radeon X1950 Pro graphics card, Windows 7 Professional (64 bit), 500GB system drive, 2TB A/V Drive, 500GB graphics drive.

I don't see any performance issues in other application.

@Randall: Yes, I do have Microsoft Security Essentials running on the background. No other programs are running in the background. I did the rendering at night, so no browsing is down either. The timeline doesn't have any special effects. The transitions are only dissolve. The timeline is pre-rendered.

@John: I didn't understand what you meant by nested sequences in AE Dynamic link.

Thanks Randall and John for your response.

Looking at the specs, the CPU is the weakest link. The Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 just barely surpasses the minimum system requirements of Premiere CS5. A quad-core processor, such as an i7, with 12GB or more RAM is strongly recommended. A CPU with only two cores and two threads will certainly kill the transcoding performance compared to something newer and more up to date. And the Matrox card will not help transcoding performance at all. Plus, the P5K is limited in maximum RAM support to 8GB because the P35 chipset's memory controller does not support more than 1GB per rank (2GB per DIMM).

And the old-generation ATi card is also a weak link: Get a newer graphics card right away! The only Windows 7 drivers that are available for any ATi card earlier than the HD 2xxx series is the Microsoft Windows 7-supplied drivers, which do not properly support OpenGL. The software-only mode would be even slower than if the card had properly functioning drivers to begin with. Unfortunately, AMD discontinued further support for all ATi graphics cards earlier than the HD 2xxx series, putting them in "Legacy" support mode. The most recent driver available for the X1950 Pro is the Catalyst 9.3 (Vista), which came out more than six months prior to the release of Windows 7.

[Azadul Haq]

Great suggestion Randall. Now tell that to my wife -:) I just bought a Sony HVR Z7U. You can imagine what I will hear from her!

[Harm Millaard]

Your current setup it around 20 - 25 times slower than a fast machine. So if your machine takes around 11 hours, that means a fast machine will do the same job in about RT or better. That does sound about right.

As Randall said, your hardware is not fast enough. Time to upgrade.

Ask your wife what she prefers, you spending hours and hours behind your machine, or getting the job done about 20 times faster and having the time to spend with her and doing nice things together.

[Azadul Haq]

Uh, you are making me feel bad -:) It is time to start looking for a good deal on CPU, Motherboard and Graphics card.

[Azadul Haq]

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

Your current setup it around 20 - 25 times slower than a fast machine. So if your machine takes around 11 hours, that means a fast machine will do the same job in about RT or better. That does sound about right.

As Randall said, your hardware is not fast enough. Time to upgrade.

Ask your wife what she prefers, you spending hours and hours behind your machine, or getting the job done about 20 times faster and having the time to spend with her and doing nice things together.

What is your opinion on Matrox ComressHD? Would you consider that versus replacing the system?

[Adam Gold]

Oh, don't get Harm started on anything Matrox...

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Azadul Haq

Uh, you are making me feel bad -:) It is time to start looking for a good deal on CPU, Motherboard and Graphics card.

RAM also. Your existing DDR2 RAM will not work on any of the newer Intel platforms, which require DDR3 memory. Fortunately, 16GB of DDR3 memory can be purchased for the newer platforms for less than $200 these days.

[Azadul Haq]

Do you have any recommendation for motherboard and video card that works well with CS5? My estimate is around $1000.00. $300.00 for the CPU, $300.00 for motherboard, $200.00 for RAM and $200.00 for video card.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Azadul Haq

Do you have any recommendation for motherboard and video card that works well with CS5? My estimate is around $1000.00. $300.00 for the CPU, $300.00 for motherboard, $200.00 for RAM and $200.00 for video card.

For $200 for a graphics card the choice is simple: Get a 1GB GTX 460 (not the GTX 460 SE version). However, the SE version of the GTX 460 or even a regular GTS 450 is still viable if you want to (or must) spend less. The key is to get an Nvidia-based graphics card with at least 1GB of graphics RAM (preferably DDR5 memory).

For $300 or slightly above for the CPU you can get either a new Sandy Bridge i7-2600K (Socket LGA 1155) or an old-and-tried (note that "old-and-tried" simply means "proven", not "old and worn") i7-950 (LGA 1366). A good P67 chipset-based motherboard for the i7-2600K (if you don't mind the limited 20 available PCIe 2.0 lanes) costs about $180 to $190 (these "good" $180 P67 motherboards allow you to get very close to, but not quite reach, 5.0 GHz stably with the proper $30 aftermarket cooler such as a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus). If you go the older i7-950 route, you can get a $200 X58 chipset-based motherboard that's good to about 3.8 GHz in overclocked CPU speed, or you can buy a $300 X58 mobo that allows you to blow just past 4.0 GHz with the proper CPU cooling. Skip the i7-870 series CPUs (LGA 1156) and P55 motherboards; those have only 16 PCIe 2.0 full-bandwidth lanes while any additional PCIe lanes the P55 offers are restricted to half-duplex operations (and thus half-bandwidth).

And as the PPBM5 benchmark results with triple-channel i7-9xx platforms have shown, systems with 16GB of RAM in a Flex triple/single-channel configuration can outperform (and have outperformed) otherwise identical systems with 12GB of RAM in a standard triple-channel memory configuration (in CS5).

[Andy Wason]

Hi Azadul, your hardware is a bit outdated, but I ran as similar system untill recently with decent results.
What are your objectives? If it's to burn a dvd, I'd try export to encore in the adobe dynamic link dialog. Could be quite a bit faster.

[Azadul Haq]

Hi Andy,

At this time I just want to encode them for You Yube.