Why do we even need a video card?

[Nicky Van der walt]

If you only have the video card for external monitoring then you clearly wasted your money, but we use our video I/O cards to capture video from different sources over different connections (SDI, component, composite, digital audio, analog audio etc etc) and to play video out to a variety of VTR’s and monitoring equipment.

If you can also give solutions to do that without a video card, then yes, you’re probably right, but otherwise there is definitely a need for video I/O cards, and will be until everything goes completely digital and file based.

[Zvi Twersky]

Thanks for the respond.

Here we use SD and HD video. SD can be captured via firewire and HD has ssd cards. we don’t need RCA connections for we don’t have monitoring systems. We edit events mainly. So your saying that editing with just software can be just fine.

[Nicky Van der walt]

Hi,

Most Video I/O cards I have installed have been purely for video input/output. I have not actually experienced a card that gives you a performance boost, yes they might promise that, but in theory… not so much.

In SD we only work with uncompressed video captured via SDI or Component Video as we mainly do broadcast work, so we stay faaaaar away from anything firewire. We use Blackmagic video cards in our facility.

Our HD work is also file based though.

And yes, you’ve proven that editing with software only works just fine 🙂 Computers are getting more powerful by the day.

[Mark Hollis]

By “video card” do you mean an I/O subsystem, like the AJA or the Blackmagic card that will control a VCR?

There are obvious reasons for those — anyone who is ingesting video from tape will need such a card.

But Zvi specifically talks about disabling the driver for his computer’s video card, designed to drive his computer monitors. And he’s noticing that a “generic” display works better and produces better results.

Obviously you need a video card to drive your computer monitors. But the more expensive video cards are designed around creating and shading polygons in 3D space. As such, they’re pretty powerful but you don’t usually use this ability for video.

Where these cards will help you and increase your ability to get your job done is in the area of effects that may take advantage of their power. If you use the simple 3D effect in Premiere (and I use a really old version) it will take advantage of your graphics card to render that material. Additionally, there are other 3D effects you can apply to video that will benefit from a high-end graphics card. But normal video playback does not benefit from these cards.

The problem Zvi is having here is with the driver for that adapter. And it is, apparently, so poorly-written that it is actually slowing down performance.

In a case like that, your first move ought to be to go out and get a driver update, if there is one. You should also complain (loudly) to the card manufacturer and/or computer manufacturer if they installed that card in a stock system. Zvi’s description of how he solved his problem is an outstanding way of complaining. A graphics card (or GPU) ought not function better using a “generic” driver than it does with the driver designed for it.

But we also ought to consider what “generic” means.

Does “generic” mean a generic Open-GL graphics adapter? Because if it does, you are getting a serious benefit from the card’s hardware for any 3D work you are doing and the card itself is helping you as the driver software is hindering you.

Nvidia uses a proprietary model, called CUDA for controlling its cards and ATI uses DirectX (developed by Microsoft). But Open-GL tends to work with just about everyones graphics cards and if “generic” means Open GL, you’re harnessing the technology that lots of Linux propellerheads have created and refined for a number of years.

I would like Zvi to try a 3D render using the proprietary driver for his GPU and then try the same render using “generic.” If “generic” is faster, I’ll bet it’s using Open GL calls and points to some serious stupidity on the part of the GPU programmers who are supporting his graphics card.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

[Nicky Van der walt]

I was under the impression he referred to the HDSTORM card. He mentions removing that card and then getting improved performance. Not sure he mentions removing drivers for the his graphics card…

[Zvi Twersky]

Mark, thank you so much for the detailed reply. but Nicky is right. I was not talking about the graphic card. That I am actually VERY happy with. On my old system I rendered something 2 weeks ago in 3dsMax that took 17 hours and on my new system took only 4.5 hours! Wow!

I actually was talking about a VIDEO card like Matrox or Canopus. Specifically I just upgraded to HDStorm but in my post I was asking about ANY video card.

If I just need to get a view on an external monitor I can just get a third HD computer screen for that (which is much cheaper then a video card). But people seem to say that video cards are also meant to boost performance and rendering times in NLE systems like Premiere and Edius etc… which I think I proved in my original post that with our powerful CPUs, motherborads and graphic cards, get the same, if not better results without using the Video card. So why the card?

The generic setting I mentioned is in the Edius program, where I disconnect my project from communicating with my video card, thus using the project as if I had no video card installed.

[Brian Louis]

I think you should have done some more investigation about the card before you bought it, particularly on the GV factory forum to determine if its workflow would suit yours, the card comes in two flavors, one with just HDMI I/O and the other with A/V + HDMI I/O, the whole purpose of the input part of both is the hardware encoding to the Canopus/GV HQ intermediate codec, the apparent acceleration is achieved by the use of the codec itself, as it removes the processer load that is presented by highly compressed video in its native format, the HDMI out gives a good way to judge and CC the video on a external monitor of your choice, also you have the A/V outputs for non HDMI monitors and other I/O requirements, the whole thing comes down to “Caveat Emptor” as they tell you what the card does with some puffery as do other manufs.

[Mark Hollis]

I would agree with Brian. What threw me off was your comment about going “generic.”

But I should caution you: The more displays you run on your computer, the more you tax the resources of that computer and that includes a monitor that is just mirroring another.

As everyone transitions to 64-bit (including Adobe applications) this may be less of a problem, save in computers that don’t have a lot of RAM.

What if there were no hypothetical questions?