Premiere CS6 anything but smooth (6.0.1 made it worse!)

[Petri Teittinen]

Discovered something quite interesting!

I first noticed that when Rocket was enabled, a clip in Source Monitor played very smoothly (using Rocket and CUDA), but when attempting playback in Program Monitor the image remained in freeze frame while timecode advanced. And this happened even when the smoothly playing clip from Source Monitor was on the timeline and tried to play in Program Monitor. Disabling Rocket in Source Settings resulted in poor playback in Source Monitor, but smooth playback in Program Monitor.

I got to thinking what could be the cause of this -- and noticed that I had set Source Monitor playback resolution to Full, while Program Monitor playback was set to 1/2. So I set both to 1/2 playback resolution and enabled Rocket. Playback in both monitors was abysmal.

Next I set both monitors for Full playback resolution... and Hey Presto! Smooth playback in both monitors, using Rocket and CUDA!

So for some odd reason, my Premiere installation only uses Rocket when playback resolution is set to Full.

[Petri Teittinen]

Just me, then?

[Wes Howell]

Not seeing this on my Mac. However, I believe we are using different firmwares on our RR's.

[Petri Teittinen]

Not seeing this on my Mac. However, I believe we are using different firmwares on our RR's.

Not to mention entirely different computers!

Wes, I'm not doing anything "serious" (i.e. commercial in nature) with my setup at the moment. I would be happy to help Adobe improve their software by testing software patches, editing Windows registry keys or what-have-you. Just as long as Adobe is not sweeping all this under the rug by blaming a second GPU, OK? :)

[Wes Howell]

Not to mention entirely different computers!

Wes, I'm not doing anything "serious" (i.e. commercial in nature) with my setup at the moment. I would be happy to help Adobe improve their software by testing software patches, editing Windows registry keys or what-have-you. Just as long as Adobe is not sweeping all this under the rug by blaming a second GPU, OK? :)

Hi Petri,

Often times, breaking the issue into simpler chunks (or simplifying) is the best way to isolate the issue. That's what we did when we got your RR working again.

I didn't blame your problems on the 2nd GPU, but there have been issues reported when using multiple GPUs and Premiere does not use more than one GPU for CUDA anyway. I just asked for you to try it so we could isolate the issue. Nobody is trying to sweep anything under the rug. After all, I have been trying to help you. :) Many people are using the Rocket with Adobe tools without issue.

There are many things that could contribute to your issue. I don't feel it's fair for you make the assumption that the issues are 100% due to Adobe software at this point - we haven't been able to determine that yet. However, if that's the case I'm more than happy to log a bug and help get the issue resolved.

In order to figure out what's going on we need to be methodical and break this down bit by bit. I'm willing to help you do that.

[Wes Howell]

Petri,

Would you please let me know what formats or RED files you're working with. I was able to repro the RED Rocket issue with 5k HD content. (unable to repro when not using the card)
I will log a bug on this tomorrow morning and any information that you may have available would be useful.

Also, it makes me wonder if there's a chance that some of the other performance issues are related to particular resolutions / frame sizes?

LMK,
Wes

[Petri Teittinen]

I didn't blame your problems on the 2nd GPU, but there have been issues reported when using multiple GPUs and Premiere does not use more than one GPU for CUDA anyway. I just asked for you to try it so we could isolate the issue. Nobody is trying to sweep anything under the rug. After all, I have been trying to help you. :) (snip) There are many things that could contribute to your issue. I don't feel it's fair for you make the assumption that the issues are 100% due to Adobe software at this point - we haven't been able to determine that yet.

Wes, I want you to know I really appreciate all your help. The time you spend on Reduser speaks well of you and Adobe. I also understand why you brought up the 2nd GPU; I do quality assurance for a living and debugging stuff is an integral part of it. But I also happen to have a degree of some sort in IT and some of the coursework included programming in C+ and Cobol (I know!). The old saying, "There's a bug in your program", still applies :)

The point I was trying to make was that there's inherently nothing in a dual-GPU + RR setup that would prohibit it from working. Case in point: Resolve. BMD managed the trick and I'm 100% sure Adobe will too.

In fact, Adobe already has: Premiere uses one GPU for display, another GPU for CUDA and RR for debayering -- exactly like Resolve does. I only need to set playback resolution to Full and Robert's your father's brother! In other words, Premiere is very nearly there.

I live in hope that the solution also solves the issue of very slow direct exports. I'm pretty certain these two issues are very much related. Export module can't access CUDA and/or RR resources, much the same way Premiere can't access those resources for playback.

[Petri Teittinen]

Would you please let me know what formats or RED files you're working with.

The 2-minute sequence I've been using to test Premiere contains the following R3D formats/files:

4800x2700 @ 96 fps (24fps baseline), REDcode 12:1
2880x1620 @ 150 fps (24 fps baseline), REDcode 10:1

BTW, I noticed that clip Properties in Premiere does not list actual fps; it only shows the baseline fps (24 in this case). It would be nice to see actual fps listed in Properties.

Also, it makes me wonder if there's a chance that some of the other performance issues are related to particular resolutions / frame sizes?

That occurred to me too. Great minds drink alike :) I just haven't had time to shoot a wide variety of footage to test the theory out yet.

[Wes Howell]

Petri,

I've done a bit more testing on my end and I have a bit more info.
It appears that at least part of this problem is format specific and also specific to the RED rocket card. (the 16:9 formats that we've been discussing)

You've noticed that you get better response at 100% resolution - you may find this interesting.

I tested 2 20 minute exports this morning from PR on my machine that has a Rocket configured (mac)
The first 20 minute section was 5k FF and I was exporting (and downscaling) to 2 pass SD DVD. Export was faster than Real time. 15 minutes. Woohoo! That's what we like to see, yes? :)

Then I tried with the 5k, 4800x2700 16:9 source material and it exhibited many of the same symptoms you've seen. It didn't seem to use the CPUs all that well and was on track to take 3 hrs and 30 minutes to render.

The good news here is that I'm hopeful this may explain most of your performance issues and it appears to be specific to shooting in 16:9 formats. There is also a reasonable workaround as well. (shoot at 5k FF and crop in post) This would allow you to render / export at speed around realtime until the bug is resolved.

I have reported this issue as a bug and will follow up on it.

Let me know if you have a chance to try other formats or if you have other observations or questions.

[Petri Teittinen]

Hi Wes,

I'm very happy to see there's been considerable progress. Also great to see you've managed to replicate some of the issues I'm experiencing. And yeah, "faster than Realtime" is music to my ears :)

I'll go through the footage I've managed to shoot with the Epic so far, although I think I've been sticking to 16x9 formats most of the time. Actually, it might be quicker to point the camera at trees swaying in the wind and shoot 10 seconds of footage in every available resolution & frame size, in a variety of frame rates. That'll be a nice project for next weekend.