[Michael j Toffan]

Hi Ralph,

I am using Spyder4 Elite by Datacolor and I am happy with the capability. Datacolor has several levels of product each with different levels of capability. More capability obviously also costs more. I have found it fairly easy to use and the results are consistent. One set can be used to calibrate all your monitors. After calibration, you can compare the results to RGB, ADOBE RGB, NTSC and full color gamut. The results of the calibration will be dependent on the quality and capability of each monitor. For instance some lower level laptops will not be able to resolve even the RGB color space and while some high end desktop monitors can resolve most of the ADOBE RGB color space. No matter what quality of monitor you have, or what calibration product you end up using, your product will be much improved and more consistent if you keep your monitor calibrated.

[Michael j Toffan]

David, you could be right on the rarity of the card. When I started looking for the GPU card last year, I was looking for a 570 and was having a hard time finding it. I eventually stumbled on the 680 from an Amazon vendor and purchased it. It did not really work well with my old system and my early experience with it made me think I made a bad purchase. However, when I built the new system, I thought why not try it again and I was quite surprised at how well it worked with the new system. It is possible that something in my new system is enabling or enhancing that functionality or as you say, maybe the card I got last year was an early model and was not disabled…if they are really doing that. In any case I am very happy with it. I would hope to hear some other folks are having similar good experience with their 600 series cards. BTW, the GPU is rendering very fast in Resolve while doing a SVP to Resolve color grade and return.

[Michael j Toffan]

With all the negative discussions regarding GPU rendering with Sony Vegas Pro, I wanted to add my own personal positive experience with GPU rendering.

I am using SONY VEGAS PRO 12 and I am having good success using my ASUS NIVIDIA GTX 680 GPU during rendering of AVCHD with the Main Concept AVC Internet HD 1080 template.

My current system has a Hex-core i7-3930K 2011 processor on a ASUS P9X79 motherboard with the 680 GPU and 64 GB of RAM. I can run it in both CUDA and OPEN CL as long as I set my Dynamic RAM preview to zero. If I have any Dynamic RAM preview set above zero it will usually crash before completing the render. I usually run it OPEN CL mode which seems to work well.

On my previous system, i7-960 quad core on a P7X58 Premium motherboard the 680 was not very stable so I did not use the 680 GPU while rendering. When I built my new system (described in the paragraph above) I used a test case video with 8 layers of composting, 4 layers of parent/child track motion enable and Neat Video de-noising to validate the speed improvement between my old system and my new system.

For that video I measured the following results:

Old System: i7-960 CPU, P6X58D Premium MB, ASUS NIVIDIA 680 GPU, 24 MB RAM, CPU render only, took 168 minutes render

New System: i7-3930K CPU, P7X79 Deluxe MB, ASUS NIVIDIA 680 GPU, 64 MB RAM, CPU render only, render time improved by about 30% over the i7-960 CPU

New System: i7-3930K CPU, P7X79 Deluxe MB, ASUS NIVIDIA 680 GPU, 64 MB RAM, CPU and GPU rendering, rendering time took only 27 minutes, or a 6X improvement

While I cannot speak for all 600 series GPUs or how they work with different systems, I am quite pleased with the results on my new system. The CPU, MB and RAM, all seem to be very compatible with the 680 series GPU.

For some simple videos with limited plug-ins applied (i.e., no stabilization or de-noising plug-ins applied) I have encountered render times not much longer than double the real time of the track.

[Michael j Toffan]

You’re welcome Frank!

I also had a couple of back and forth discussions with SCS and they just responded with “this is now a know issue that will be addressed in a future update”.

I am still working with version 12 486, so my work around for now is to use the trimmer window for comparisons as needed. Of course it will be nice to regain the normal function of this feature.

Mike

[Michael j Toffan]

Frank, I also encountered the same issue you mention with “split screen” using Vegas 12, build 486. I reported it Sony several days ago.