CS6 big dissappointment

[Nevin Styre]

It’s my understanding that Mercury optimized effects are only accelerated by the GPU when you playback in realtime without rendering. When you go for the render the effect is actually handled by the CPU.

If your GPU can’t handle realtime playback in the mercury engine & you are relying on rendering effects before playback then you really aren’t benefiting from “GPU acceleration” in that case.

The BCC keyer may actually be faster than the ultrakeyer when it comes to CPU rendering. The real benefit would be if your MBP GPU had the performance of a CUDA card(which is what we were all hoping), then rendering while editing wouldn’t be necessary. Though the final render out when you export your sequence would still likely be faster with BCC if it is true that it is more efficient with CPU rendering than the ultrakeyer.

[Steve Brame]

Erik….how long was your footage?

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“98% of all computer issues can be solved by simply pressing ‘F1’.”
Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions

[Erik Mickelson]

Sequence is Prores 422 720p 29.97, first clip is 18:29, second clip is 38:29.

CrippleBook Pro 2.3Ghz i7, 16GB ram, Lion 10.7.3, FCPStudio 3, QT 7

[Steve Brame]

OK…certainly not a scientific comparison of Apples(pun intended) to oranges, but I just did a test. Since I’m PC-based, I couldn’t used ProRes, but we transcode to Cineform, and I happened to have a green screen talking head clip handy. The clip is 1080P 29.97, keyed with Ultra, a garbage matte and a simple color matte for the BG. While I’d normally never need to render this timeline(it plays smoothly without), it rendered in 10 minutes. Just for fun I re-rendered without the garbage matte, and that added about 2 minutes to the render.

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“98% of all computer issues can be solved by simply pressing ‘F1’.”
Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions

[Steve Brame]

Forgot to mention that the clip was 18:29.

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“98% of all computer issues can be solved by simply pressing ‘F1’.”
Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions

[Erik Mickelson]

I’m sorry Steve, I don’t understand your comparison. What are your results comparing? You are on a PC, does it have a CUDA card? What is your CPU? How much ram? Was your test done with Hardware enabled? Do you have another keyer to try? What do you mean you usually do not render? Is your resolution set to full, 1/2, 1/4? Sorry for the questions, we just do not have a baseline for our results to compare.

CrippleBook Pro 2.3Ghz i7, 16GB ram, Lion 10.7.3, FCPStudio 3, QT 7

[Steve Brame]

I didn’t offer it as a scientific comparison. Sorry, thought I made that clear in my post. My specs are listed in my profile, but I’ll copy them here.

Asus P6X58D Premium
Core i7 950
24GB RAM
nVidia Quadro 4000
Windows 7 Premium 64bit
System Drive – WD Caviar Black 500GB SATA
2nd Drive(Pagefile, Previews) – WD Velociraptor 10K drive(600GB)
Media Drive – 1TB RAID5 (4 – WD Caviar Black 500GB drive)
Matrox MX02 Mini
CS5.5 Production Premium

A Cineform encoded file on a compatible timeline with Ultra Key and a garbage matte applied does not require rendering for realtime playback on my machine, even with playback res set to full.

My point is, as was with a previous post, is that it more than likely isn’t a factor of CS6, but your system itself that is causing the slow render, or even the actual need to render. We typically don’t use BCC’s Keyer, opting instead for Keylight or Ultra Key. we’ve found that certain times one will achieve better results that the other, and you cannot beat that Ultra eliminates going out to AE – a huge time saver.

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“98% of all computer issues can be solved by simply pressing ‘F1’.”
Steve Brame
creative illusions Productions

[Erik Mickelson]

Thanks for the specs. It appears that you are on an older system. My i7 quad core should handily whoop your 950(unless you have it overclocked). I have “8” cores at my disposal and an approved Open CL hardware accelerated graphics card. This is just a shortcoming of being on the Mac system. Adobe products are known to be much less robust on Macs. I’ll see if I can return my Mac CS6 upgrade for a PC version. Apple is getting ridiculous these days.

CrippleBook Pro 2.3Ghz i7, 16GB ram, Lion 10.7.3, FCPStudio 3, QT 7