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FCP X GPU acceleration?
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[Andy Mees] “Heee … we say this stuff just to annoy you Dennis :-)”
HA! 😉 In all truthfulness, I’m interested to know just like everybody else!
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Its all speculation Dennis, none of us are privy to the code base … and if anyone is then they’re under NDA .. but we can still have a bash at a bit of well informed and educated guesswork. We do know for sure that its an ultra modern ground up rewrite designed at its core to milk all the most modern foundations of the OS and the host hardware , and crucially its been done by a dev team who have unparalleled access to the Mac’s hardware and OS teams … I think one can readily expect they’ll have milked that advantage. That said, I don’t think anyone would dispute how astonishingly good the Mercury Playback Engine is in PPro.
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[Dennis Radeke] “What do you base this on?”
The GPU/multicore stuff Apple is doing looks far more sophisticated than anything Avid has so far. Hell, Media Composer is still a 32-bit app — we’ve been hearing about lack of GPU/multicore or 64-bit with respect to FCP 7 for a couple of years now as proof that Apple doesn’t care about pro users, but somehow people cut Avid tons of slack on the exact same issues.
Compared with Avid, Adobe is doing a lot better on the GPU/multicore front. Their Mercury engine already has capabilities similar to what Apple seems to be introducing… the catch is that Adobe is using CUDA, not OpenCL, so Mercury only works on a handful of NVIDIA GPUs, whereas FCP X should be able to take significant advantage of GPU acceleration on most modern systems. If you’re running FCP X vs. Premiere Pro on a current-generation MacBook Pro, for instance, it’s going to be day and night.
As far as I know, the ColorSync support in FCP X is not a feature found in either Media Composer or Premiere, and it’s a fairly big deal. Standard desktop displays have been able to accurately reproduce video color spaces for years now, but editors have been stuck buying video I/O interfaces and monitoring on external displays set up off of color bars, which provide less accurate color than you can get get with a $200 calibration device and a desktop display, if you only have the right software support. If Apple’s implementation of ColorSync support lives up to what’s technically possible, they’ll have made external monitoring unnecessary for probably 80 or 90% of the users who currently need it.
And then of course there’s ProRes, where Apple was already well ahead of the competition. Adobe has no answer to ProRes (surprised they let Cineform get acquired by GoPro; it would have solved all of their problems), and Avid’s DNxHD has neither the range (offline through 4:4:4) nor the third-party device support that ProRes has. You can now shoot, edit, color grade, and in some cases even deliver a feature film (an indie, anyway) without ever leaving the ProRes format.
People can fight all day about whether the UI looks too much like iMovie’s or whatever. From a technical perspective, Apple has its ducks in a row.
Digital Workflow/Colorist
You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read First thoughts on Final Cut Pro X on our blog. -
[Chris Kenny] “Yes. It uses OpenCL.”
Anything specific? For example, Vegas Pro 10 does use GPU acceleration in some encoding tasks, but it’s insignificant compared to Adobe’s use of it.
To put it in perspective, I could maybe probably drive an F1 car but my use of it will be insignificant to that of, say, Lewis Hamilton.
If there is nothing specific – then it’s pure speculation – and then we’ll just have to wait for it.
Alex (DV411)
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[Alex Geroulaitis] “Anything specific? For example, Vegas Pro 10 does use GPU acceleration in some encoding tasks, but it’s insignificant compared to Adobe’s use of it.”
This is an entirely new engine. There’s no reason they wouldn’t be using it essentially everywhere it’s possible to use it.
Digital Workflow/Colorist
You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read First thoughts on Final Cut Pro X on our blog. -
[Jerry Hofmann] “The technology foundation in FCP X is second to nobody’s. It’s stunning what they are doing under the hood IMHO. “
Jerry, I could say the same thing about Adobe apps, MC, Vegas Pro, Speed Razor, Incite, Liquid and many other apps – and it may be less speculative. After all, background rendering was introduced in Incite and Liquid more than 5 years ago if not earlier.
Alex (DV411)
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[Chris Kenny] “Their Mercury engine already has capabilities similar to what Apple seems to be introducing…”
Maybe this: “we can only speculate that Apple will be introducing GPU acceleration that is similar to Adobe’s implementation” – will be less of a stretch?
Adobe’s GPU acceleration works in AE, AME and Pr – on fairly specific tasks that have been proven to be a significant productivity boost. Apple can’t say anything of the sort yet – so how about we don’t resort to rampant speculation?
Alex (DV411)
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[Chris Kenny] “This is an entirely new engine. There’s no reason they wouldn’t be using it essentially everywhere it’s possible to use it.”
The precision and clarity of this logic brings tears of joy to my eyes.
Alex (DV411)
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Judge it, then use it.
Or was it the other way around? -
[Alex Geroulaitis] “Adobe’s GPU acceleration works in AE, AME and Pr – on fairly specific tasks that have been proven to be a significant productivity boost. Apple can’t say anything of the sort yet – so how about we don’t resort to rampant speculation?
I wouldn’t characterize it as “rampant speculation” to say that an entirely new rendering engine probably uses recent technologies in the places where it’s appropriate to use them.
Digital Workflow/Colorist
You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read First thoughts on Final Cut Pro X on our blog.
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