will the iMac 5K Retina’s AMD Radeon graphics card be a problem for Premiere Pro CC and AE???

[Nicholas Natteau]

Hi Tero,

So long as the new iMac Retina isn’t any slower than my current 2012 iMac i7 in Premiere Pro and AE, then I’m good to go. My fear would be that I invest in this system only to discover that PP and AE would choke on the same tasks they have no problem with on my 2012 iMac. I’m really thinking of this in terms of the work I do in Photoshop, Illustrator, In Design, etc, just so long as PP and AE performance aren’t compromised.

[Walter Soyka]

[Nicholas Natteau] “Doing any video editing at all on the iMac Retina 5K via Premiere Pro sounds like a pretty bleak prospect if that fellow is correct. Is he? Would it be really that bad?”

You have gotten a mix of advice in that post. He’s right to point out that you’d want the i7 instead of the i5, and at least 16 GB of RAM instead of 8 GB — but he’s just wrong about the Premiere requiring an NVIDIA card for GPU acceleration.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Nicholas Natteau]

Thanks Walter. Quick question regarding third party OWC DDR3 RAM memory sticks. Back in 2012, I ordered those sticks for my 2012 iMac i7, can I simply take those sticks out and put them in the new iMac Retina?

[Bob Wills]

I have a 2011 iMac i7 with 32 GB of RAM. I have edited a few commercials with 4k Red Epic footage using Premiere WITHOUT the Mercury Engine. It works fine but you have to drop the res to 1/8th the quality to playback okay. I imagine the 5K will edit 4k footage okay.

The current problem with the iMacs (which has ALWAYS been a problem) is that they use mobile graphics cards. The AMD cards used in the new iMacs are mobile class graphics cards. Apple uses mobile graphics cards because they are cheaper, generate less heat and they can cram them into a smaller enclosure. The svelte thinness of those iMacs come at a cost.

That being said, I’ve always been able to make things work and I still edit 4k Red Epic footage on my 2011 17″ Macbook Pro hooked up to a USB 2 drive.

[Douglas Morse]

As others have pointed out, Premiere supports hardware OpenCL acceleration — both on Nvidia AND AMD Cards. CUDA acceleration is an option INSTEAD of Open CL on Nvidia cards only. How much better CUDA is than OpenCL is debatable and probably not anything to worry about. With the AMD card you get hardware acceleration (which is only one part of the Mercury engine). Wait for real world reports, but my guess is that this is a monster. The 295X looks like a strong card. (but of course the next generation will be even better). The posts you are copying and pasting here have some misinformation.

[John Vargo]

I’ve done some research on this topic.

What’s being said above is mostly true. The Mercury Playback Engine can use Cuda (NVIDIA) or OpenCL (AMD) for hardware acceleration.

However, the card in the 5K iMac is NOT on the supported list of cards. I know a bit about this because the card in my 21.5″ iMac was dropped from the supported card list with CC.

Since the card is not on the supported list, you will not be able to use hardware acceleration. Premiere checks your video card model against a text file when you start the application. When you create a new project, the hardware acceleration option is greyed out.

My guess is a new product with this kind of popularity will quickly make its way into the supported cards list, but you’ll have to wait until Adobe pushes a software update to enable hardware acceleration. Until then, it should still perform fairly well using software (I edit everyday like this), and when the hardware acceleration comes it will be even faster.

[Walter Soyka]

[John Vargo] “However, the card in the 5K iMac is NOT on the supported list of cards. I know a bit about this because the card in my 21.5″ iMac was dropped from the supported card list with CC.”

Certified cards are no longer necessary for GPU acceleration. As long as your card supports CUDA or OpenCL and has 1 GB of VRAM or more, you can enable it Project Settings:

https://blogs.adobe.com/premierepro/2013/06/adobe-premiere-pro-cc-and-gpu-support.html

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Jp Pelc]

4k through USB 2.0?? God bless your soul..

[Tero Ahlfors]

[Walter Soyka] “Certified cards are no longer necessary for GPU acceleration. As long as your card supports CUDA or OpenCL and has 1 GB of VRAM or more, you can enable it Project Settings”

Just prepare for glitches and crashing. Hell, I’ve got an older iMac that has a supported card and it’s crashing all the time with the GPU acceleration on.

[Nicholas Natteau]

I know that text and photos will look twice as sharp on a Retina iMac than they are on a non-retina iMac.

But does that also mean that all video (4K, 1080p, 720p footage) on an iMac Retina will display at half the size they do on a non-Retina iMac?

And if that is the case, and you’re working in 1080p timelines, and you wanted to keep the same 1080p size you’re used to seeing on non-retina iMacs, isn’t it just a simple question of downscaling the iMac Retina’s display resolution to 2560 x 1440? And wouldn’t that also be easier on Premiere Pro and AE?