is there a fast frameserver for premiere pro CC for x264 encoding?

[link626]

I am transcoding 4k video to a smaller resolution.
I have a core i7-6700hq. 4 core 8 thread.

My settings...
ffmpeg.exe -i d:\encode\frameserver.avs -c:v libx264 -crf 20.5 -x264-params level=4.1:ref=5:mixed-refs=1:b-adapt=2:bframes=5:weightb=1:me=umh:subq=9:analyse=all:8x8dct=1:trellis=2:no-fast-pskip=1:psy-rd=1,0:merange=28:rc-lookahead=100:aq-strength=1.5:b-pyramid=1 -vf format=yuv420p -s 1024x576 d:\output.mp4


ffmpeg only uses 20% cpu when frame served, and encoding frame rate is slow as hell.

I am using premiere pro cc, frameserving through Advanced Frameserver.

Because I made a lot of edits in PPro, I can only frameserve to output file.



If I transcode the unedited 4k source directly in ffmpeg with the same encode settings, rather than frameserving to ffmpeg, like so....

ffmpeg.exe -i d:\encode\unedited_source.mp4 -c:v libx264 -crf 20.5 -x264-params level=4.1:ref=5:mixed-refs=1:b-adapt=2:bframes=5:weightb=1:me=umh:subq=9:analyse=all:8x8dct=1:trellis=2:no-fast-pskip=1:psy-rd=1,0:merange=28:rc-lookahead=100:aq-strength=1.5:b-pyramid=1 -vf format=yuv420p -s 1024x576 d:\output.mp4

the encoding speed is 4x faster.


How do I make my frameserving encode job faster?

Or is PPro just rendering slow?


I also tried to export an uncompressed avi, and it takes 18 minutes to export 4 minutes of 4k footage.
This is also too slow for the purpose of transcoding.

[poisondeathray]

I am transcoding 4k video to a smaller resolution.
I have a core i7-6700hq. 4 core 8 thread.

My settings...
ffmpeg.exe -i d:\encode\frameserver.avs -c:v libx264 -crf 20.5 -x264-params level=4.1:ref=5:mixed-refs=1:b-adapt=2:bframes=5:weightb=1:me=umh:subq=9:analyse=all:8x8dct=1:trellis=2:no-fast-pskip=1:psy-rd=1,0:merange=28:rc-lookahead=100:aq-strength=1.5:b-pyramid=1 -vf format=yuv420p -s 1024x576 d:\output.mp4


ffmpeg only uses 20% cpu when frame served, and encoding frame rate is slow as hell.

I am using premiere pro cc, frameserving through Advanced Frameserver.

Because I made a lot of edits in PPro, I can only frameserve to output file.



If I transcode the unedited 4k source directly in ffmpeg with the same encode settings, rather than frameserving to ffmpeg, like so....

ffmpeg.exe -i d:\encode\unedited_source.mp4 -c:v libx264 -crf 20.5 -x264-params level=4.1:ref=5:mixed-refs=1:b-adapt=2:bframes=5:weightb=1:me=umh:subq=9:analyse=all:8x8dct=1:trellis=2:no-fast-pskip=1:psy-rd=1,0:merange=28:rc-lookahead=100:aq-strength=1.5:b-pyramid=1 -vf format=yuv420p -s 1024x576 d:\output.mp4

the encoding speed is 4x faster.


How do I make my frameserving encode job faster?

Or is PPro just rendering slow?



Yes, PP is slow, and AFS makes it even slower with added overhead. It's even worse when using something like x264/x265 using typical settings at the end of the pipe, because they usually need to be able to see a range of frames (temporal compression, not just intra)


I also tried to export an uncompressed avi, and it takes 18 minutes to export 4 minutes of 4k footage.
This is also too slow for the purpose of transcoding.

Unless you are using a large RAID-0 array or some fast SSD's , the bottleneck will be I/O throughput when using UHD/4K uncompressed. Data rates are about 400-450MB/s . Your original MP4 source was probably using AVC or HEVC compression. The data rates were probably ~10-20MB/s (~80-160 megabits/s), so no throughput bottleneck. It will usually be faster when using compressed (lossy or lossless) rather than uncompressed, but then you lose some CPU% for decoding - But it will still be faster than physical uncompressed if you have a large I/O bottleneck.

[link626]

uncompressed avi turned out to be the worst method. Slow, and not enough hard drive space.

I tried using PP built-in h264 encoder, and it was very fast, pinning my cpu at 100%.

But freeze frame comparison, PP h264 eats more bitrate and is lower image quality than x264 with custom options.

[poisondeathray]

Is there a reason why you are frameserving or encoding UHD, when your final encode is to be 1024x576 ?

Another way would be to scale in PP then export if you're only encoding 1 version, either afs or physical intermediate. It will be faster than exporting UHD with either method.

(Unless you "dislike" scaling in PP (you can't dislike it that much, because you're using ffmpeg bicubic scaling) , or need several different resolution output final versions)

[link626]

Frameserving was due to ignorance about other methods.

I just discovered tmpgenc movie plugin and x264vfw both allow me to encode directly from PP without frameserving.

tmpgenc is 3x faster, and x264vfw is even faster still.