Mercury Engine Renderer in Premiere Pro CC 2017, CC 2018 and 2020
Follow these instructions to switch the technology used by Premiere Pro to render your project:
1) Select the "General…" menu command under the "File > Project Settings" menu.
2) When the Project Settings window appears, set the "Renderer" option as follows:
- Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (OpenCL) will switch to OpenCL for all GPU acceleration. Please note that OpenCL does not provide the same performance benefits as Metal, but it may be useful if other plugins on your timeline only support OpenCL. Adobe discourages the use of OpenCL on Premiere Pro 2020. Sections of your timeline may still appear in red if any effect within that section does not support OpenGL acceleration.
- Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (Metal) will use Apple’s newest and best-supported GPU graphics technology to accelerate all plugins on your timeline. While the majority of FxFactory plugins support Metal, please be advised that some plug-ins may not. Sections of your timeline may appear in red if any effect within that section does not support Metal GPU acceleration.
- Mercury Playback Engine Software Only: disable GPU acceleration entirely. This will disable GPU acceleration in Premiere Pro. Individual effects may still render through the GPU, albeit more slowly. Please use this option only if you encounter fatal errors when rendering with OpenCL or Metal GPU acceleration.
When exporting your timeline through Adobe Media Encoder, please note that you will be able override this setting from the AME configuration window on a per-job basis.
When switching the Mercury Engine Renderer, Premiere Pro may prompt you to delete any pre-rendered content on your timeline. It is advisable to do so if the output produced under the previous setting was incorrect.
Re-render your timeline in Software Only to eliminate the possibility that any issue you are running into is linked to the graphics hardware and software installed on your system.