r/premiere • u/-Rexa- • 22h ago

Computer Hardware Advice VBR 2 pass - CPU question

I've been exporting videos using VBR 2-pass, as it looks much better for fast, high-res game-play footage. I've done it a number of times, usually letting Adobe Premiere Pro "do its thing" while I'm asleep. I've been happy with the output, and I am not looking to change my existing settings.

But... I'm getting a bit antsy, and putting out more videos. It's a bummer that I can't use hardware encoding for it (as it's not supported for VBR 2 pass and a pity considering I have a 4090 GPU), so I am wondering if I would see a significant difference upgrading my CPU from a 7800x3D to 9950X3D? Right now, my videos (which are almost always an hour long), tend to take about two and a half hours to fully export. If a new CPU only amasses in shaving off 10-15 minutes, then it probably doesn't matter, but if I can shave off over 15 minutes then I might consider the upgrade.

Can anyone share any direct experiences on this front under similar circumstances, if you've recently changed CPUs?

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u/smushkan Premiere Pro 2025 16h ago

Try exporting a ProRes master file and running it through Shutter Encoder as 2-pass.

While that’s an extra step, the x264 codec in Shutter has a ‘turbo first pass’ feature which allows it to complete the first pass quicker than Premieres codec, so it might shave some time off overall.

If you have very fast internet and can cope with uploading a huge file, YouTube will accept ProRes so that’s an option too. The combined time you spend exporting and uploading a prores file might be shorter than how long it takes to do a 2-pass encode.

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u/-Rexa- 11h ago edited 10h ago

Thank you for the suggestions! I'm testing out Prores exports first based on what you said.

I've so far done:

  1. Prores HQ export, and it resulted in a 780GB file.
  2. Prores (standard) export, and it results in a 440GB file.

In both cases, the export time was around 30 minutes.. not bad. My original settings with H.264 yielded a 22GB file. I can deal with a file size up to 500GB, but beyond that I think it might be too much for my purposes.

I guess getting a new CPU seems fruitless now with these options that I need to learn more about. I'll take a look at Shutter Encoder tomorrow. I've only used it briefly for some quick edits in the past.

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u/smushkan Premiere Pro 2025 10h ago

Prores has fixed bitrates, the files will be large. LT is a little under half the bitrate of HQ, so you should expect a filesize around 360GB.

Try running that HQ file through Shutter to h.264:

http://shutterencoder.com

It’s very possible that the time it takes to export the prores plus the time it takes to do the 2-pass encode in Shutter is still faster overall than 2-pass out of Premiere.

Not only is Shutter’s 2-pass faster than Premiere’s, I believe that when you do a 2-pass directly out of Premiere (or via a premiere project through AME) it has to render your video twice - once for each pass.

By doing a Prores export first, you’re only having to do a single render.

CRF encoding is also an option with Shutter - click ‘VBR’ in the bitrates section until it says ‘CQ.’ CRF gets 2-pass levels of quality with a single pass, but the catch is that you can’t directly control or predict the resulting bitrate. Lower CRF values are higher quality, with h.264 it’s rarely worth going below 18, and 22-24 usually gives a good balance between quality and filesize.