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NVIDIA cards and Premiere Pro
Okay, so the NVIDIA card uses GPU technology and Premiere Pro, CS4 & CS5 Mercury Playback engine have GPU-accelerated technology. BUT how do you know your system is using it?
I have a 64-bit Windows Vista SP2; 8 GB; Intel Core2 Quad Q8400 2.66 GHz. When I first built this system I swear CS4 Premiere Pro was rendering HDV (MPEG2, with color correction and opacity and sizing, 10 times faster than it is now – a year later). I only have a NVIDIA GeForce250 but it is OpenGL 3.0. It just isn’t as fast as the GeForce 285 (certified) or the Quadros.
I have searched, high and low and I cannot figure out how to confirm that CS4 PP is indeed using the card. I was able to confirm that Photoshop 64-bit seems to recognize it, so I feel confident that all of the right drivers and registry entries are there. I have done extensive research on that.
HOW DO YOU VERIFY IN THE ADOBE PP application that the Mercury playback engine is indeed using the GPU-accelerated capabilities on your graphics card rather than doing all of the rendering in SOFTWARE? I think that would be the correct question to ask.
Here are some references to the what, but not the how…
My latest project is a 30 minute timeline that is taking 6 to 10 hours to render. And I can no longer watch a single video track realtime while editing – it is stuttering, etc.
Any help would be appreciated. I do not have the money to upgrade both cards and software… I have a PNY FX580 (Quardo technology) card a friend picked up for me, but I am loath to break the seal until I know how to confirm that PP is even using the darn thing.
https://audiovideoproducer.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=901597
QuadroFX and Elemental Accelerator Offloading video encoding tasks to the host GPU By John Virata
High definition video editing and HD video encoding are two of the hardware intensive tasks that can be done with a computer. It takes a lot of power to complete these types of jobs, oftentimes rendering your computer limited in functionality while it encodes video. NVIDIA’s Quadro line of graphics cards can help to speed up H.264/AVC encoding in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 with an assist from Elemental Technologies’ Elemental Accelerator.
The combo offloads HD video encoding from the host system’s CPU to the Quadro’s CUDA parallel processors, giving the Quadro FX graphics cards an added encoding boost. The plug-in works with NVIDIA’s family of Quadro FX graphics cards (QuadroFX 1800, QuadroFX 3800, QuadroFX 4800 (Windows and Mac), QuadroFX 5800, and Quadro FX 2700M). While the solution currently only works with a limited number of encoding presets, H.264/AVC and MPEG-2 specifically, the combo does accelerate the encoding process by offloading the task to the Quadro’s GPUs. And this is a big positive especially for those who are encoding large jobs on a daily basis.
https://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/production/pdfs/cs5_production_premium_64bit_wp.pdf
Breakthrough performance with the new Mercury Playback Engine in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5
The ability to edit HD and higher resolution footage in real time without having to first render it or lower its resolution by transcoding or rewrapping it with an intermediate codec is a post-production dream come true. Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 brings that dream to the desktop with the revolutionary Mercury Playback Engine.
The Mercury Playback Engine provides native 64-bit, GPU-accelerated support for Mac and Windows, yielding dramatic improvements in performance and stability. You can open projects faster, scrub through HD and higher resolution projects fluidly, and handle long-form content and effects-heavy sequences more reliably.Barbara Lloyd
Cinematographer & Producer
Stella Luna Productions
https://www.StellaLunaProductions.com
https://www.vimeo.com/StellaLunaProd -
5 Replies
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Hi Barbara,
You may be misunderstanding the technology. With CS4, the appropriate Quadro FX card WITH the optional Elemental Accelerator software would speed up EXPORT to MPEG-2 and H.264. This does not mean the rendering of the timeline (effects filters) would necessarily be any faster, just the actual encoding to MPEG-2 or H.264. I don’t believe your GeForce 250 qualifies at all in this area, nor would the FX580.
The Mercury Playback Engine, which is completely new to CS5, is something different than the “Elemental Accelerator” used with CS4. The Mercury Engine uses the GTX285 or Quadro FX 3800/4800/5800/CX cards to provide realtime editing on the timeline, no red bars for effects filters. This is different than Export, though export should also be faster.
If you don’t feel your system is running as fast as it once did, I would look at your hard drives. Are they nearing capacity? Have they been defragmented? Hard drive fragmentation can KILL performance. This seems likely as you said you can’t even play a single video stream smoothly at this time.
Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers -
I guess this the right mix for fluid editing of HD, 2k, 4K –
PP / AE CS5
Nvidia Quadro (cuda)
core i7
large amount of ddr3 ram (8 – 16 GB)
win 7 64 bit -
And yes, raid 0 eSata HDD
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** If anyone has any experience with they PNY cards using QUADRO chipsets, please post…
AND
Thanks for the excellent information. I must be out of my mind. My hard-drives are all internal eSATA. No they are not nearing capacity. Yes they are defraged regularly. I have done different things with my caching and rendering files. sigh.
I remember seeing demo videos, showing realtime HD workflow with multi-cam, but maybe that is just it. Adobe saying what was going to be there, and for some reason, a change here or there and my config worked better. So I thought it was working. So why did I throw away $600 18 months ago, when I should have waited for CS5?
I feel like I was duped by Adobe.
Oh, and don’t forget that CS4 was originally billed as a 64-bit suite of applications and then we found that many of the apps, like PP weren’t 64-bit. Photoshop and a few lucky apps were, but not PP.
So now I can throw away another $600 on an upgrade, go out and buy yet another graphics card that is 6x more costly and then I can actually edit?
Guess I should have listened to the FCP folks after-all. Guess the are ROFLTAO!
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Hi Jeff,
I’m not new to CC, but only joined now and need urgent advise.
I was lucky enough to trade a ASUS HD6870 gaming card for a brand new Quadro FX 5800, believe it or not. I’ve been editing on Vegas pro 9/10, but with the new card I immediatly switched over to Premiere Pro & AE cs5.
I have two questions.
1. How do I configure my system optimally for PPr?
2. I have a Quadro fx 1700, how(if possible) can I use it in my setup for a third monitor?
My System:
Windows 7 Pro 64bit
Intel Core i7 860
Intel DP55KG extreme series Mobo
8Gb Kingston RAM
Quadro FX 5800
Raid 0 Render drive
Rai 5 Capture/HD Footage “read” drive
1TB primary driveAny advise will be greatly appriciated.
Many thanks
Billa Pansegrouw
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