ProVideo Coalition.com: Bruce's Blog by Bruce A. Johnson

Sorry about dropping from sight for the last couple of weeks, but when the day-job calls, it calls with a vengeance. I also apologize for the lack of photos, but I just didn’t think to do screengrabs at all the right times. Bad editor! No doughnut!

Once I got the nVidia Quadro 4800 card and all of Adobe Creative Suite CS5 installed, it was time to edit. Let me say right up front here that one of the unconsidered disadvantages of review software (and, truly, of most software these days) is the appalling lack of documentation. Yeah, I know you are supposed to look into the online Help apps, but when I did I got the strong sense that the CS5 Help is not finished – in fact, not nearly finished.

But anyway, I fired up Premiere Pro and loaded a sample hi-def project provided by nVidia, using four streams of P2 footage. All four shots were color-corrected, and three were squeezed and/or in motion over the fourth. I don’t suppose I have to tell you that they played flawlessly – no jittering or stuttering on playback at all. I figured I would raise the stakes by adding two graphic titles, both in motion (provided by Premiere Pro’s built-in Motion menu.) Again, played fine. I decided to place an SD cutout of a toaster (don’t ask why I have that) on top of all this, zooming it in and out and rotating it several times. Not a wimper. In fact, when I opened up the Windows 7 task manager and clicked the Performance tab, I was very surprised to see the eight cores were only operating in the 30% range, with plenty of overhead.

Of course, this could be a setup, right? Maybe the demo was optimized in some way. To check, I took the four separate clips and dropped them into a multi-camera timeline, a mode I work in often. Played great – I could switch from camera to camera as fast as I liked with no stuttering at all. Maybe it’s the P2 footage. Is the system optimized for P2? Well, one of the first real projects I had to do on the nVidia/CS5 combo was a four-camera choir concert video. It was shot in HDV, with one camera recording to tape, two others recording to Focus Enhancements Firestore drives, and a fourth accent shot of a piano keyboard recorded on a GoPro Hero camera, recording to MP4 files. Again, once all the shots were on the timeline, they all played back easily, even with some really aggressive color correction on the GoPro. Using the Multi-Camera window was perfect, with no lag at all. In fact, the lack of lag has been one of the nicest surprises of this switch. When I was editing with the Matrox RT.X2, there was always a tiny yet perceptible lag between hitting the space bar and playback start – and even worse, a similar 12-frame lag when you tried to stop the timeline. I get no sense of this with the nVidia/CS5 combo.

The Editing of “Courageous” Part One

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The off-line edit of a RED feature film

Last October, I had the rare opportunity to edit a feature film called “Courageous,” which is in theaters now. “Courageous” was the number one new movie the weekend it opened (September…

Check out a Number of Hardware and Software Options from B&H

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Everything you need in one place

We grabbed Jerry Zorek, Manager of Business Development at B&H, to learn about what B&H was showing off at their studio booth. He shows us a Resolve system with the…

Final Cut Pro X Multicam Editing webinar now available on-demand

Scott Simmons | 05/15

Plus a little screencast in this blog post on a topic we didn’t get to cover.

I had great fun last week presenting the Final Cut Pro X multicam editing webinar…

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Instead of tearing the Program Monitor window out of your current layout, you can try this

1) Click the “flyout” or wing menu of the Program Monitor (the upper right button)
2) On the drop down or menu, click the “Playback Settings’ option all the way on the bottom
3) In the Playback Settings window, under “Realtime Playback”, click External Device, then select your 2nd or 3rd or 4th LCD monitor or Plasma that’s hooked to a DVI or HDMI port of your PC/laptop

So now on the 2nd or whatever monitor, you’ll see the output of the Program Monitor (or Source Monitor as well)

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/31 at 10:47 PM

Adam makes those cool blue boxes with the <blockquote> tag!

Posted by Adam Wilt on 05/31 at 11:26 PM

I’m using the Quadro fx 3800 with CS5, Win 7, and
I’m getting excellent quality full frame 1920 output to HDTV via a DP/HDMI cable.
It was a no brainer to set up nVidea control panel, and PPro playback settings (as described in the above post) for this.
I’d be amazed if the 4800 would not do this as well, but stranger things have happened.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 06/01 at 12:57 AM

I’d love to read a review of CS5 Premiere without an nVidea/CUDA compatible video card. That is, how much performance is the $1000+ FX 4800 adding?

If I understand correctly, the Mercury engine is only accelerating Premiere. Does it do anything for After Effects or any of the other Adobe apps?

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 06/01 at 09:44 AM

Rob, it is possible to turn off the hardware CUDA acceleration in Premiere. Thanks for the tweak - I’ll try that soon and post the results.

As to AE, I’m not sure whether CUDA works in it, but making movies from a comp “feels” faster…

BAJ

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 06/01 at 09:53 AM

@Rob - I’m currently using PPro CS5 w/out one of the cards, and I see better playback then CS4. A lot (I feel) depends on your computer, but on a newer and faster system you should see some really good results. On my i7 1.6 Ghz laptop, I can playback XDCAM EX footage with the Ultra Keyer effect and a BG plate added in realtime. I’ve animated stills and done some PIP with really smooth playback.

As for Mercury Playback in AE, it’s not there - only in PPro. But AE is 64 bit now, so you do get better performance.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 06/01 at 11:41 AM

@Rob -

I’m also running CS5 PPro in software mode only - The performance increase is remarkable - as said above - AE in 64bit is also much more responsive - I have an i7 .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) - and 12 GB Ram - windows 7 64bit

Thanks Bruce for the update.

Posted by Jim Hines on 06/02 at 07:03 AM

Hi Bruce,

I posted a response to part 1 of this referring to the Matrox MXO2 monitor output. For my part, I didn’t get that from reports on the web, inferring it. I got it directly from Matrox.

Matrox is still busy completing certification for MXO2 with CS5 but they’ve had certification with C4 and, if I’m not mistaken, with CS3 too. Monitoring output been one of the selling points of the MXO2 technology, along with the Matrox codecs of course.

Now, though, as I said in my post, as of NAB, Matrox is touting the fact that MXO2 now also accelerates Mercury! Without a Cuda GPU!

I also mentioned that the MXO2 devices also output a true progressive RGB signal, providing complete compatibility with HP’s Dreamcolor monitor and engine (proper scaling included).

I hope you do a review of whole MXO2 option even if you don’t include the Dreamcolor in the mix.

I’ve had a call into Matrox (two actually) trying to get some confirmation re MXO2’s compatiblity with CS5’s multicam functionality. They have not deigned to get the answers I want and get back to me. The people I spoke with couldn’t say because they were not sure and because Matrox is (or was) still certifying.

I’ve been a happy user of the Cineform codec in terms of smooth realtime editing. However, Cineform isn’t compatible with multicam. Cineform informed me that Adobe had closed that section of the API to third-party developers. Ditto from Blackmagic and their codec. It seems to me that a good codec and a fast system would have addressed much of what mercury fixes. But Adobe obviously knew they had Mercury up their sleeve and thus could trump third-party codecs in favor of supporting native editing.

Matrox has told me this: even if you don’t use a MXO2 device to ingest (converting a source into a Matrox codec in the process) you can still playback and externally monitor anything playable from an Adobe timeline.

I have to wonder whether the MXO2 devices can really accelerate Mercury well unless working in a Matrox codec.

And, can we have acceleration of Mercury by way of a Matrox codec AND multicam editing with a MXO2 device?

Thanks again for your analysis thus far.

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Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/13 at 11:47 PM

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Adobe CS5 and nVidia: First Impressions Part 2