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New Beast System, Failing Speeds!
The company I work for has recently purchased a new windows 7, Dell precision workstation PC with following specs:
x64-based operating
Intel Xeon CPU X5660 @ 2.8 Ghz 6 Core X 2 (12core, 24 virtual)
12GB Ram
NVidia Quadro 2000 X 2
Solid state OS drive
Raid 0 drive configuration (for data) (I’m unsure of their rotational speed)I need to be able to playback AVCHD 1080i50 (non-anamorphic 1920×1080) in real time, without having to render. The great selling tool Adobe used during their roadshow in Aus last year was the functionality of 9 separate HD tracks with simple effects playing real time with no need to render, no drop frames or stuttering.
Where are the Mercury engine settings?
Ideas? Could it be that my system is actually running 32bit? Could it be that AVCHD has much too high a data rate for real time HD playback? I don’t know, but I cannot even play 1 HD clip realtime with two effects without drop frames or lag.
Please help!
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10 Replies
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AVCHD even works on a Mac Mini with Final Cut Express/iMovie.
Are your cards supported CUDA cards?
Did you do a clean install?
Are your drivers up to date?
You gotta love Windows. -
The Quadro 2000 is approved for Mercury Playback, and it should automatically be recognized by CS5.5 without any additional input from you. In Premiere, go to Project Settings > General, and look under “Video Rendering and Playback” – it should say “Mercury GPU” if it recognizes the Nvidia card. If it says “software” try changing it in the drop-down.
I see you have TWO of the Quadro cards – I don’t believe there is any benefit with Premiere – it will just use one – but on the other hand, I don’t know if having dual cards creates any issues for Adobe.
You didn’t say what effects you’ve applied – not all Adobe effects are going to be realtime. Does the clip play smoothly without any effects on it?
Right-click in the Program Monitor window and change the Playback Resolution settings and see if that helps. The default is HALF, but I’ve seen AVCHD footage look poor this way, and changing to FULL solves the issue.
Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers -
“The Quadro 2000 is approved for Mercury Playback, and it should automatically be recognized by CS5.5”
We’ve only installed CS5. Will 5.5 change anything?
“In Premiere, go to Project Settings > General, and look under “Video Rendering and Playback” – it should say “Mercury GPU” if it recognizes the Nvidia card. If it says “software” try changing it in the drop-down.”
Although I’m not on site in the office today I know for sure that the mercury engine is not showing. I’ll double check the drop down menu and get back to you.
“You didn’t say what effects you’ve applied – not all Adobe effects are going to be realtime. Does the clip play smoothly without any effects on it?”
Fast color corrector and RGB curves. Yes, it does play rather smoothly with no effects, however I have notice the lag a bit even there.
“Right-click in the Program Monitor window and change the Playback Resolution settings and see if that helps. The default is HALF, but I’ve seen AVCHD footage look poor this way, and changing to FULL solves the issue.”
I remember changing the res not actually having an effect on the drop frames or lag. Furthermore, the clips still lag when rendered!
Mathew
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“AVCHD even works on a Mac Mini with Final Cut Express/iMovie.
Are your cards supported CUDA cards?
Did you do a clean install?
Are your drivers up to date?
You gotta love Windows.”Cards are supported.
Clean install? Please divulge. I did not do the install, we had our IT systems manager do it. Fail?I’ll need to check the drivers, could be the source of my woes.
Mathew
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[Mathew Haycock]Could it be that my system is actually running 32bit?
Not really. You couldn’t run CS5 at all under Windows if it was the 32bit version. Unlike OSX, there are two separate installs for Windows, one 32bit and one 64bit, and never the twain shall meet.
You did mention that you couldn’t find the Mercury Engine settings. Are you absolutely sure you are running CS5 and not CS4? Is your splash screen (the logo that pops up when you first launch) light purple or dark purple?
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“Not really. You couldn’t run CS5 at all under Windows if it was the 32bit version. Unlike OSX, there are two separate installs for Windows, one 32bit and one 64bit, and never the twain shall meet.”
So I know my system is 64bit based, and I’ve just found out the installed version of CS5 (5.03) is an educational or ‘Academic’ version for windows 32bit. Does that matter? I noticed in the image below that i do have mercury engine enabled.
I also re-installed a newer NVidia Quadro 2000 CUDA driver that didn’t change anything.
Thoughts?
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So I know my system is 64bit based, and I’ve just found out the installed version of CS5 (5.03) is an educational or ‘Academic’ version for windows 32bit. Does that matter?
That’s not possible. Premiere CS5 is only 64bit. There is no 32bit version.
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Are you using the AVCHD/Canon DSLR sequence settings when you create a new sequence? Should be in the list when you first create one.
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“Are you using the AVCHD/Canon DSLR sequence settings when you create a new sequence? Should be in the list when you first create one…”
The following: ‘>’ denotes folder
I am using AVCHD>1080i>AVCHD 1080i25 (50i)
I’m using a Sony HDV (tapeless, card recording) camera (ask for model if required)
Other folders are: >AVC-Intra, >Canon XF MPEG2, >Digital SLR…
The DSLR folder has not interlaced frames support, which makes sense as most DSLR’s are sold or firmware upgraded to progressive recording. (eg. 1080p24fps, rather than my 1080i25 as above)
I am getting lost as to why a brand new computer can’t perform above our last old beast machine, especially when advertised otherwise. Are we sure academic version of cs5 isn’t causing hiccups?
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I noticed in your Project Settings that Video Rendering and Playback shows “Mercury Playback Engine Software Only”, which means that Adobe has not recognized your video card, and you aren’t getting GPU/hardware acceleration at all.
One possible cause…CS5 will only utilize a single GPU, and if your two Quadro 2000s are linked (SLI), Adobe will fail to recognize them as supported hardware. Also, you must choose a specific card to use for GPU/hardware acceleration, and since yours are identical, you might have to force Adobe to “choose” one of them. You can do this by physically uninstalling one of the cards, set up GPU/hardware Mercury Playback in your Project Settings, then re-install the second card if you still want to use it for other purposes. You just can’t have them in SLI configuration with CS5.
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