Premiere Pro CS6: Add GPU Support

I discovered a cool workaround that can speed up Adobe Premiere running on a Mac.

Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 takes full advantage of your graphics card. However, while there is extensive graphics card support from Premiere on PCs, it is very limited on the Mac. Specifically, Adobe has only announced support for the graphics cards in MacBook Pros.

Which doesn’t do me any good, because my editing system of choice is one of the new iMacs.

NOTE: I fully expect Adobe to add support for the new iMacs in a future dot release, but, for now, the iMac graphics card is not supported.

However, there is a cool workaround you can add to your iMac to make Premiere Pro think your graphics card is qualified. This requires a minimum of 768 MB of VRAM and, if you don’t like the results, you can easily revert your system.)

WHAT THIS DOES

This changes a text file to make Premiere Pro think it supports your graphics card. This means Premiere will use the GPU for tasks like rendering, transcoding, and exporting; thus speeding up your system. In other words, this unlocks the potential for a huge performance boost.

NOTE: This won’t work on all Macs, and won’t work if you have less than 512 MB of VRAM. If experimenting with editing system files makes you nervous, don’t do this.

For the original post, visit here. But there is a MUCH simpler way to do this.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO

We are going to change the contents of the text file Premiere uses to determine which graphics cards are supported.

Go to the Apple logo and select About This Mac

Click More Info.

On the list at the left, click Graphics/Displays

Either copy or write down the Chipset Model. In this example, it’s “ATI Readeon HD 4870” Capitalization, spelling and spaces are all very important. (Your graphics card will almost certainly be different.)

Open your application folder and find the Abobe Premiere Pro CS6 folder. Open the folder.

Right-click on the Premiere Pro CS6 application and select Show Package Contents.

NOTE: Many Mac applications are actually collections of many different elements, all of which are normally hidden from view. Opening the package contents displays them.

Open the Contents folder and select the cuda_supported_cards.txt file.

Select File > Duplicate. This is VERY IMPORTANT, otherwise you won’t have an original file to revert to in the event something goes wrong.

Once you have a duplicate file, double-click the original text file. This opens the text file in Text Edit.

At the bottom of the list, copy or type the name of your graphics card, then Save the file.

TESTING

At this point, close everything.

Start Premiere Pro CS6. If there is no problem, it will read the file and work faster because Premiere is now using your graphics card.

If there IS a problem, immediately quit Premiere, go back and delete the cuda_supported_cards.txt file you modified and rename the backup file you created to cuda_supported_cards.txt

IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS IS A HACK. While making this change should not harm your computer in any way, it runs the risk of making Premiere Pro inoperable. So, always make a backup of your original cuda file so you can revert to the original if necessary.

Let me know if this improves the speed of your system.

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