ProVideo Coalition.com: the EDITBLOG on PVC by Scott Simmons

Another post-production application using NVIDIA CUDA technology is Sorenson Squeeze 7. This took me by surprise when I installed the Squeezer 7 update. Check the preferences in version 7 and you’ll see a tab for GPU settings. Squeeze 7 will use a supported NVIDIA GPU to accelerate H.264 encoding by up to three times.

Sorenson has designed the GPU preference very well as it looks at the installed card and all the software drivers and identifies exactly what they are. If certain versions aren’t up to snuff for Squeeze 7 it will note exactly what those are in the preferences.

To get accelerated H.264 encoding there’s certain codecs that must be used. If you’re using the CUDA acceleration and you go to apply a preset that can use the acceleration Squeeze will alert you that you can speed that up with the GPU.

These alerts settings can be tweaked in the Squeeze preferences where Squeeze 7 will always use the GPU when it’s available.

I took a 4:36 music video and these were the encode times using a default iPhone preset:

That’s a huge difference for Squeeze. By using the GPU, Squeeze 7 also takes less passes through the clip overall as it did only two passes using the GPU and four passes when not using the GPU.

The Foundry Kronos

While researching for this article I came across a plug-in from The Foundry called Kronos. It’s used for “retiming, speed-ramping, time-remapping and slow-motion effects” and uses technology from the Foundry called Blink. From The Foundry’s website:

That seems right up the 4000’s alley. I downloaded the Kronos trial and it is indeed very fast. I would say stunningly fast when using the GPU. I was wanting to slow down a piece of a three second shifter cart clip. After Effects 5.0 RAM Preview times were around 8 seconds without GPU and 2 seconds with it! That would really pay off if you were using Kronos on long clips.

The GPU is selected in the Kronos Effect Controls tab

I was thinking the best way to illustrate this was a screen grab of the actual RAM preview. Click the play button to watch AE render the RAM preview and then playback the clip at 30 fps:

Kronos After Effects CS5 RAM preview using only the CPU

Kronos After Effects CS5 RAM preview using the GPU

Even on longer uses of Kronos it really screams when using GPU accelerations. Imagine that kind of acceleration in all of the post applications you might use and the future looks quite bright if your application gets some kind of CUDA acceleration ... and you have a CUDA video card.

GenArts Sapphire

One very popular high-end effects package that supports GPU acceleration is GenArts Sapphire. It’s the “gold standard for the silver screen” but also sports a gold standard price (at least in the Final Cut Pro world) at $1,699 for a non-floating license. I downloaded the FCP demo and performed a render test.

When you apply a Sapphire plugin there’s a Help button available in the Filters tab for each effect that describes the effects and has an Enable GPU toggle switch:

I took a 22 second ProRes LT clip and applied both a Warp Fish Eye and a Lens Flare and rendered with and without the GPU acceleration:

GPU accelerated Sapphire render - 2:15

No CUDA GPU accelerated Sapphire render - 2:53

While that isn’t a super dramatic improvement in FCP render speed it could really add up over the long haul.

Digital Anarchy Beauty Box

Not every GPU accelerated tool was wine and roses. The amazingly cool skin smoothing plug-in Beauty Box gave me rendering issues in both Final Cut Pro and After Effects. There was a recent update that took Beauty Box to version 1.2.2 and after the update the apps did recognize the 4000 card:

But when I turned on the Use GPU setting in After Effects, Beauty Box rendered a strange noise pattern in stripes across parts of the image:

But turn off GPU acceleration and it did its usual amazing job of smoothing out the subject’s skin:

This is probably just a bug with the 4000 card that needs updating. I remember Beauty Box getting a minor update last year that really improved render speeds by offloading some of that to the GPU and will be even better if you’re rendering a job that had a lot of skin smoothing.

Magic Bullet Colorista II

Finally there’s the old favorite Colorista II. It’s GPU enabled so I wanted to give it a render test as well.

I tried it in Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro and After Effects on a 22 second ProRes LT clip.

That’s a very nice render speedemup with Colorista II’s GPU acceleration. Imagine if you’re doing a whole show that had been color corrected with Colorista II and not just a 22 second clip. Also imagine how much faster something like Colorista II might be able to render if Apple’s OpenGL drivers were current. Maybe that will be fixed in the next OS upgrade.

Wrap Up

Overall the NVIDIA Quadro 4000 for Mac could be a nice timesaving tool depending on the post-production applications you are using. By far the biggest performance advantages come from applications that are specifically written to take advantage of NVIDIA’s CUDA technology. It seems that the hope is that the next version of the Mac OS (10.7 Lion) will allow for better GPU acceleration no matter which graphics card you use. With the street price of the Quadro 4000 beating the previous Mac NVIDIA card, the FX 4800, by over $500 the 4000 is some relatively affordable speed, again for the right application. While I’ve seen reports that the FX 4800 might be a bit faster overall running Resolve I did a few (quite unscientific) side-by-side tests (as side-by-side as they can be when the cards were installed in different machines) with a Squeeze encode and a Colorista II render and the 4000 card beat the FX 4800 quite handily. That’s a topic that might be worth exploring further.

In the meantime, the Quadro 4000 for Mac is a good, affordable option for getting the most out of your CUDA supported applications. It’s currently not a build-to-order option in the Apple store so if you’re buying a new Mac Pro shop for it away from the Apple store as you’ll definitely be able to find a better price than Apple is offering.

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No I think you’re talking CUDA drivers and the discussion in the article is the OpenGL drivers. This is from the NVIDIA page:

“¹ OpenGL 3.1 on Mac OSX, OpenGL 4.1 on Windows using Bootcamp”

That’s different from the NVIDIA drivers. My current CUDA driver is showing 4.0.14 with no updates anyway.

Posted by Scott Simmons on 05/13 at 01:23 PM

After numerous stressful dealings with installing this card into a new Mac Pro 12core, the last driver Retail.256.01.00f03v7 downloaded from Nvidia solved some of my problems. I was an early adopter with card. I was warned by PNY that they were having issues but glad most are taken care off.
If you want to run this card with CS5, Maya, REDCineX, etc.. but in a simple set-up e.g. single 30” and a Mac Pro, you should be fine. However I have mine in a Dual 30 mixed in with a Gefen DVIDL switcher.
The nightmare of black screens and unsuported res pops up time to time

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/17 at 05:15 AM

Ok - now I am really confused.

There are only 2 drivers with this card:

The base driver that must be installed PRIOR to physically installing this graphics card. The Retail.256.01.00f03v7 is the driver that comes on the driver CD with the new card as of last week.

Then there is the Cuda driver that must be installed AFTER the physical installation of this graphics card. The driver that ships on the CD with the card is Cuda 3.2. After you load this, the Cuda panel come up with telling you there is an update for Cuda - it suggests updating to Cuda 4.0.14. And within this Cuda.

I apologize for my confusion, but I am having serious issues with this entire change over from 32bit to 64bit op sys, 32Gb ram, and this highly recommended graphic card for use with CS5.5.
Cannot play a single track of any HD video without dropping frames - even a 1/4 resolution. The whole new mess runs far worse than our old 32bit. The Mac definitely meets all the specs and exceeds them - and just trying to eliminate my having made an error with the Quadro 4000 for the Mac driver install. Thanks for bearing with me.

So which is the right

Posted by lightprismtv on 05/17 at 04:50 PM

And just to add to the confusion, this is a copy/paste moments ago from the nVidia website for the most up to date Cuda driver for their “Quadro 4000 for the Mac” card:

CUDA Mac Driver
Latest Version: CUDA 3.2.17 driver for MAC
Release Date: 11/16/2010

So unless nVidia has not updated their website, then Cuda 4.0.14 is not for their Mac card???

Hoping someone can unlock the key(s) to my problems with my changeover. Hopefully I have done something wrong with this graphics card that makes the video play like butter like I saw at NAB on far lesser powered laptops.

Posted by lightprismtv on 05/17 at 05:05 PM

That’s a good question lightprismtv .... it appears that a CUDA update is available (via the software update pref) but the website doesn’t reflect the info. I’m not sure what exactly is recommended in that case. Maybe they are just behind on the website update since it’s probably easier to push an update through the Software Update method.

Posted by Scott Simmons on 05/18 at 10:41 AM

Well this debacle just gets better and better ..,

http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/faq.html

You will now notice that Adobe NO LONGER LISTS THE “QUADRO 4000 for the Mac” as an approved card for CS5.5.

Adobe still approves the Windows version of the Quadro 4000 for CS5.5 on Windows.

This card for the Mac was on their approved list for over a month at least. And it was there yesterday when I was re-checking all their specs required.

Well this is sweet! Now I am stuck with a $750 card and untold hours of work for nothing? The card is pulled without a peep from Adobe - just silently disappears off the approved list.

Either it was an error on the website ... or something much more sinister - if people are telling you they are having problems after following specs - you should own up to the problem so people don’t keep beating their heads against the wall.

Off to the nVidia site to see if they have pulled their touting of this card for CS5.5 - if it’s also suddenly missing from their site as well that would certainly answer some questions as to whether this is just a website error or an intentional removal.

Scott - could you tell us something about the spec on the Mac you have been able to use this card for - it could be that the CPU in a 3,1 MacPro just isn’t up to the task - maybe your MacPro is a beefier CPU.

Posted by lightprismtv on 05/18 at 03:09 PM

False alarm - Adobe responded that this webpage is just very outdated and this card should be listed there - they referred to another of their web pages where this card is still listed.

And nVidia also still shows it as a card for CS5.5 on the Mac.

Going onto their developer’s forum for Cuda, there are lots of posts noting what Scott is talking about in his article in reference to the lack of Apple support for OpenCL in this card.

Maybe when Lion comes out. There is an odd recent reference at the end of the developers forum thread on this issue about some way to open up OpenCL on this card - but nothing a yockall like me could use.

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=196112

Posted 08 May 2011 - 10:52 PM
OpenCL now works on the Quadro4000 series. Please do not sent me e-mails about this search the web instead. Safely buy this card. You will have OpenCL and CUDA. You just need to inject some kexts.

Cheers,
Alexander.
Dr. Alexander Agathos
Degree in Maths, PhD in Computer Science (specialization in Computer Graphics)”

And this is all waaaay too much work to move to CS5.5 Mac system
——————————

Posted by lightprismtv on 05/18 at 03:39 PM

Ok - another piece of the puzzle that seems to indicate a problem with the Quadro 4000 for the Mac or it’s drivers.

Imported a nanoFlash XDCAMHD 422 1080p 30fps file into a matching Sequence in Premiere CS5.5. Dropped the video only - no audio onto timeline.
Mercury with GPU acceleration set for Project Settings.

Glitchy-stuttering-dropped frame playback at any playback resolution.

Rendered the entire work area - get green bar above clip on timeline.
STILL GET GLITCHY-STUTTERING-DROPPED FRAME PLAYBACK!!!

Tried the same experiment by going to Mercury software only for the project settings. Get the green bar on timeline again. Same stuttering dropped frame playback.

Posted by lightprismtv on 05/19 at 07:40 AM

On the driver question, the word I got back from NVIDIA was the correct driver for the Quadro 4000 for Mac is 256.01.00f03v7

http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-macosx-256.01.00f03v7-driver.html

The 4.0.14 CUDA driver is listed as a “release candidate” which means it hasn’t been fully vetted yet so I’m not sure why it pops up in the update preferences. Seems it shouldn’t be pushed out in Software Update until it is fully recommended and supported.

The current release driver for CUDA is 3.2:

http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-toolkit-32-downloads

Posted by Scott Simmons on 05/21 at 05:26 AM

Thanks so much Scott for your followup and effort.

BUT ......

It’s time for me to eat some major crow.

Problem was a very stupid one - installed wrong ram.

Had 800Mhz ram originally in this early 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 model.

Upgrade for CS5.5 installed 32 Gb of 667Mhz ram.

Doh!

Installed original 8Gb of 800Mhz ram and Adoble CS5.5 runs sweet!!!
Mixed XDCAMHD422 clip with an h.264 Canon clip - added Fast Color Correction, added Gaussian Blur, stacked 2ea XDCAMHD422 clips overlapping picture in picture on top of an Artbeats HD MJPEG clip for backround and directionally blurred it.
It all runs smooth as a hot knife through butter at Full Res Playback. CPU’s - all 8 just churn along at about 15% to 50%.

Really stupid mistake. Sorry for the trouble and thanks to all who tried to help me solve what was clearly not a CS5.5 problem nor an nVidia Quadro 4000 for the Mac problem. Both look to be a fine system in an Intel Mac starting at 3,1 and later.

I hang by red-faced head in shame.

Posted by lightprismtv on 05/21 at 04:07 PM

OK - W A R N I N G !!!

Apples recent 10.6.8 breaks this card’s GPU acceleration in Premiere.

It also totally broke FCP7 and X temporarily until nVidia released a new driver the same day this OS update came out. New driver fixed the Apple Apps but it has not fixed whatever it did to Premiere. Hmmmmm…. Apple put out a “security” recommended update that broke their competitor’s apps.

Posted by lightprismtv on 06/25 at 08:42 AM

I’m eager to install my recently acquired nVidia Quadro 4000 for Mac, but the lack of solid and consistent information on installation makes me cautious. Engaging folks at nVidia via chat yields some contradictory advice.

Are the following steps for hardware and software installation correct?

1.) Install the “retail” driver
2) Shut down MacPro. Insert card in slot, connect power cable (the vNvidia people said this was not necessary)
3) Power up MacPro. Install CUDA driver.
4) Pray it works.

If it doesn’t work, any mojo involved in reinstalling my older ATI card?

Thanks,

Tom

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/29 at 07:40 AM

Tom, that’s a good question as to the exact order of install. Looking back I don’t remember exactly the order I installed. I see now and I’m sorry I don’t as that’s a flaw in this article I wrote since it is important.

Kinda weird your advice from NVIDIA isn’t perfect. I think they are having a hard time dealing with Apple these days (just my observation).

One thing I did do is clone my system onto a clone drive (I always keep one around) before I did this in case there were boot issues. Easy to pop it in and keep working. I think I did do that same order, installing the driver first then installing the card. Good luck and report back if you can.

Posted by Scott Simmons on 08/29 at 09:37 AM

Scott,

Thanks for the feedback. I’ll definitely make a clone drive before beginning the install. I’ve got a couple of projects due in the next week and I can’t afford a goof-up.

In my chat session/e-mail exchanges with NVIDIA people, I couldn’t help but think they were talking PC when I was asking Mac. Matters such their suggestion that a power cable not being needed for the 4000, when the product ships with it. Not confidence inspiring. Regardless, I’ve transitioned from FCP to PP, and need all the speed I an get.

Will report back on the install.

Thanks,

Tom

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/29 at 09:49 AM

Tried the Quadro 4000 for Mac. Short version: I’ve gone back to the ATI card.

The Quadro was bliss and then heartbreak at the same time. Indeed, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 seems unleashed. But alas, funky things happen in my After Effects comps added to the PP sequence. Somehow, fade ins and outs, created in the AE comps, simply don’t work. What appears in the video channel below flashes in abruptly. Bummer.

Maybe someday, but not today.

BTW, the installation worked fine:
1) Install the “retail” driver before leaving the ATI setup.
2) Power down. Swap cards. Install the power cable.
3) Power up, install the CUDA driver. BTW there’s a newer version, but it made no difference regarding the performance of AE comps.

Sometimes when I’m not on a deadline, I may revisit the PP/AE problem, starting from a new sequence.

Tom

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/30 at 07:33 AM

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