NVIDIA Card with Yosemite and Premiere causing major graphics failure

[Jason Guerra]

Uninstalling CUDA doesn’t mean having to use CPU only. An Nvidia card can still use OpenCL for GPU accelerated Mercury Playback. CUDA is generally considered faster then OpenCL, but either option will significantly out perform the software only setting.

[Rob Davis]

That’s a good point. Would you say that’s the best option at the moment?

I didn’t really notice a performance dropoff with OpenCL until I started dealing with some AVCHD clips or something like that, which required more rendering.

[Jason Guerra]

At least for me, I noticed the bugs actually got worse with the 7.x CUDA update, compared to the 6.5.x updates. So, that was the line for me, I uninstalled, and figure any lost time due to the performance difference is more then made up for by not needed to constantly work around the glitch or restart. My workflows also tend to be light on any rendering, so milage may very.

I’ve been happy and bug free sense uninstalling CUDA. So, I am going CUDA free until this is 100% fixed.

[Levi Davis]

I too had the EXACT SAME issue. I was so confident that Apple doesn’t know what they are doing that I bought the latest 2014 Macbook Pro with a discreet graphic card just to prove to them that they don’t know what they are doing. Then, I went and bought a Dell XPS 8947 with the exact same graphic cards as the Macbook Pro Retina to solve the problem. In fact, every single issue you are dealing with on the Mac will automatically be accounted for on Windows. For example, “Do you want to use Cuda?” Of course you do! What is the default for editing in Premiere Pro with Windows? Of course it’s Cuda. Want to render using Cuda? Cuda is the default render setting.

Guess what new computer didn’t come out with the latest version of Macbooks? The 15″ Macbook Pro with discreet graphic cards. What does it mean? We are all becoming aware that Mac and Cuda does not add up to a professional user experience.

To continue with the original discussion, Apple replaced my Early 2013 2.7 I7 motherboard in late December 2014. When I got the computer back, the problem was significantly worse. In my near 20 Apple store visits, the best help I had was to go into the statup Daemons and delete anything that wasn’t up to date (Old Blackmagic Design configurations, Old Snow Leopard daemons…). That seemed to help significantly with random PR crashes! However, when editing with Cuda, a near 15% increase in performance, I always lost my Project Monitor and would get a black screen. Is it really a Pro? No. It’s a Macbook. Did you pay for the Pro? WE ALL DID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I made the switch to Windows. Windows is not great for video editors. You’re stuck in 32 bit world for viewing ProRes. There’s no option to export ProRes. My new ProRes is CineForm, if you’re interested. What do you do as an Apple owner? I’ve looked into buying the non-discreet Macbook Pro 15″ and buying into Thunderbolt expansion and running a GTX970 or something along those lines… But, I still think there are issues with shader values and Cuda in general because of APPLE. As a windows user, coming from an Apple background, I’m thinking I need to start using Adobe an App that can show you video files in an explorer/finder type environment without having to open QT 7 or Windows Media Player? Believe it or not, I have serious issues playing video in real time on Windows, but can render it faster than on a Mac. That being said, the Apple OS is far superior.

I spent over a 100 hours talking to Apple to resolve the problem. In the end, they offered me a discount on a new computer. Two weeks of waiting around for Apple’s consumer affairs department to find out what the discount was, I went to the Apple store and learned that it was the same discount as the educational discount, which I already qualified for. Consumer Affairs told me the best solution was to sell the Macbook Pro used and buy a new computer. Unfortunately, they don’t make a better computer and they don’t know it. Consumer Affairs responded to 2 emails over a total of 10 attempts to reach them. I can’t say enough that when your computer doesn’t work you need to find a solution. Apple took 2 months of my time trying to find a solution. They failed.

My suggestion for Apple is to stop supporting NVIDIA because they clearly have no understanding of how to implement it. That being said, perhaps their Coffee Can Pro, iMac Retina, and Macbook Pro Retina without discreet graphics (I don’t think they should be called Pro) is the best machine to use in combination with a Thunderbolt expansion graphic card chassis. Then again, it’s ridiculous to invest that kind of money when Windows is rendering videos far, far faster. I’ve gotten exact same results from a late 2013 Dell XPS 9530 2.2 i7 as I have with the late 2014 Apple 2.5 i7. They both have the NVIDIA GT 750M cards.

Anyway, this is a seriously frustrating conversation because we’ve probably all put a ton of time into working with Apple’s OS and have a ton more time into formatting external in a Journaled, not EXFAT, format. Where are we? Where is the consumer? We’re into May and we’ve probably all had this issue ever since we first had our computers. We’re talking years on end here.

[Andrew Johnstone]

OK, I am going to bow out of this discussion.

I have finally nailed the problem that has been causing all the issues on my Premiere Pro time line. I bought a plugin to fix a problem with some strobing/flickering footage and this is the source of the grief. The plugin demands too much horse power from my system and causes the flickering images and blocky play back/rendering issue that I have seen. When in combination with other effects added to the time line (simple colour grades from the ‘Fast Colour Corrector” built into PP), this plugin causes all the havoc.

I have notified the plugin producer and I am now hoping for a refund.

from what I can see, PP requires a significant amount of system resources to render effects in real time and clearly my system is not up to it. I will need to find someone with a much more powerful set up for colour grading in PP.

Interestingly though I do not have similar issues in FCP7. My colour grade has worked fine through the entire timeline in FCP7.

Andy Johnstone
Wild Dog Limited
film & multimedia production
http://www.wilddogworld.com

[Brian Cooney]

OK.. this weekend I wiped everything and did a fresh Mavericks install with the latest CC app updates and CUDA 6.5.51. Everything is working like a dream again. 🙂

Head of Post Production, Coca-Cola Studios Atlanta, GA. Telly Award Winning Editor and Motion Gfx Artist.

[David Roth weiss]

Of course! I posted that solution here ages ago… 🙂

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.

[Brian Cooney]

I’m stubborn sometimes! 😀

Head of Post Production, Coca-Cola Studios Atlanta, GA. Telly Award Winning Editor and Motion Gfx Artist.

[Bob Pierce]

Has there been any progress on solving this issue? It’s coming up on 6 months since the thread began! It’s still very much a daily struggle for me.

_____________
Robert Pierce
Director of Photography • Editor
http://www.robertpiercemedia.com

[Joe Rusnak]

Just an update…I was previously getting graphics errors in many different apps. It seemed like when you open a big project that tapped into the extreme limits of your system (CPU, RAM, GPU, GPU RAM) even when a Premiere project was closed the nVidia card was still burping up pixels. Other programs were not redrawing properly. Here are my system specs:

OSX Yosemite 10.10.3 (14D136)
iMac (27-inch, Late 2012)
3.4 GHz Intel Core i7
32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2048 MB

I followed these instructions to uninstall CUDA completely:
DELETE the following files:
/Library/Frameworks/CUDA.framework
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.nvidia.CUDASoftwareUpdate.plist
/Library/PreferencePanes/CUDA Preferences.prefPane
/System/Library/Extensions/CUDA
/System/Library/StartupItems/CUDA
/usr/local/cuda/lib/libcuda.dylib
REBOOT

I am happy to report that deleting these files has so far resulted in OpenCL taking over and working fine. What was curious was that my huge project actually opened faster! And the rendering wasn’t that bad either. In my opinion nVidia is purely a GPU with no special powers as a result of the lack of driver support. So…its conspiracy theory time!

Maybe Apple isn’t that interesting in fixing the problems with nVidia drivers? or not that interesting in cooperating with them to fix the green chip I have in my system that is supposed to make it go very very fast because? What’s in Coffee Can Pro? ATI dual GPU solution! If you are a Mac purist and just can’t fathom working on a PC Coffee Can Pro has to be something that looks tempting even at that exorbitant price! If Apple is counting on users that have buyers remorse for getting anything that has nVidia they can and will sell a lot more Pro machines. Just a thought.

In the meantime OpenCL is plenty fast. No more graphics errors. Screen previews work great. Element 3D previews are very snappy. It just seems like there is a psycological block when it comes to having the latest and greatest drivers to match the hardware. I know I suffered before deleting the crap that wasn’t working (CUDA). Thank goodness OpenCL is available on the Mac side.

At home I have a PC with an nVidia GeForce 670 and it is plenty fast using CUDA. No errors. I doubt it is any faster than this Mac with no CUDA drivers I have here at work. I just can’t see every buying a Mac personally…especially when the iMac which is the only thing I would every be able to afford doesn’t have CUDA which should be a selling feature!! Hard to believe it doesn’t work!!

Delete your CUDA. You will be glad you did!