[Michael Mccune]

Addison; As Michael Phillips says, all the available resolution will help, it seems to me, especially if Pan and Zoom is contemplated.

Most available scanners are limited in resolution, unless one goes to a virtual drum scan using a Hasselblad Flex-Tight, at about 8,000 dpi. At $25,000 each, there aren’t many around, but Pro Film Archiving in Walnut Creek, CA (925-280-1010 profilmarchiving.com) does this work. I believe it will handle 35mm up to 8″ x 10″ prints or negatives.

I have happily used Avid FX for importing stills as there is a little more control over P&Z; then adding slight sharpening, say, 4-30-4 in unsharp mark. And as you know, the FX monitor window pane allows zooming so one can easily see changes down to the pixel level.

Best,
Mike

[Michael Mccune]

Thanks, Erik; yes, I have heard from veteran programmers that parallel processing really is difficult and, in his opinion, the use of cores in CPUs or GPUs was in its infancy.

Nevertheless, they make super-computers using GPUs and Premiere seems to have some success.

So, tomorrow, tomorrow, …

Mike

[Michael Mccune]

Razvan; This video tutorial, https://c2.avid.com/forums/p/86781/492177.aspx, by Douglas “drgaijin” might give a little useful information.

He exported the same test footage many times in succession, varying the settings you mentioned, RGB and 709, and others, and produced an HD output that showed the differences.

This Scottish fellow, Douglas, is a well-spring of endless–it seems–information about Media Composer and editing technique, offered with a very broad perspective of the process. He has dozens of tutorials but the one more on point for your question is the citation above.

Mike

[Michael Mccune]

Erik; Thanks; please clarify: “… GPU acceleration is decided by the specs …”

True enough for most applications that can take advantage of those cores, notably Premiere Pro, I understand.

But true for MC?

That is, running MC and watching a GPU widget, such as GPU Monitor, why do I see *no* GPU activity?

I have seen charts (somewhere) listing a GPU CUDA advantage, with ranges from about 1.5x speedup to 5-7x speedup.

If so, why can’t we see it in a simple GPU monitor app?

Of course we would all love to KNOW that MC employs the GTX cards cards’ CUDA cores: many more cores costing much less money.

Thanks,
Mike

[Michael Mccune]

Daniel; first, you might like to check out this previous Creative Cow post, as it lists articles–there are not many–that try to address the consumer and gamer cards, such as GTX, with the workstation series cards, such as Quadro: https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/45/893790

More directly to your question, I have a GTX 570 and it works without problems (on an Asus P6TV2-Deluxe mb, Media Composer 7, Win7 Pro). (12Gig RAM and it uses it all most of the time)

FWIW, I tweaked the “acceptable” Avid graphics card list within this config file: C:Program FilesAvidAvid Media ComposerSupportingFilesConfigQualifiedGPUBoards.txt I just make a copy of the original file, modify the file to show the card, GTX 570 and its driver version, and then MC will, in its startup process show that a qualified board is installed. I don’t use the latest driver, which seemed to relate to spontaneous MC crashes. This may not really help, but it’s the thought that counts.

You will no doubt be inclined to consider a “bigger” and current GTX card, e.g. 700 series, as one’s budget might allow.

Ebay has the previous generation of Quadro 4000 series cards for about $400.

BUT, what I would like to know, is: what cards will show *any* GPU usage during rendering???

I realize that parallel processing is in its infancy, but other applications can utilize GPUs in processing.

I would like to see a head-to-head comparison of a GTX card and a Quadro card. Use any hardware platform that is reasonable; just highlight basic rendering speed and GPU utilization.

That, my friends, would immediately side-step the endlessly repeated excuse: “But GTX and Quadro are for different markets.”

I don’t care about “markets” because, like you, I suppose, I am not a professional with a company to buy it.

Just go head-to-head and let’s see how they compare.

Even one of Creative Cows forum readers with both cards might do us the favor ??? 🙂

Good luck!
Mike

[Michael Mccune]

Yes, little mention of scopes in MC7 but they are where they were previously: in the source/record monitor window title bar’s drop-down menu.

The Avid Learning Series, three volumes, has a section on media management, as does the book, Avid Agility, by Steven Cohen.

Regarding media management, one very interesting view–and it includes a detailed tutorial–is at Douglas at Gaijin-Eyes, https://www.gaijin-eyes.com/2014/2014_MediaManagement.html.

These tutorials, and his many others on MC, are not free but the cost is very reasonable–coffee at Starbucks for a couple of days– for a detailed, expert perspective. The site also approaches many other facets of MC and FX. With a Scottish accent! And the visual presentation is expert as well; they are much better than any other tutorials I have seen.

Good luck!
Mike

[Michael Mccune]

The same “core consistency” error also visited my happy home. Successfully found and fixed the problem.

While exporting segments from the timeline MC errored-out in varous ways: that is, it would simply quit the export process, no message; or, it would pop up the message box with the error you indicated: “Core consistency error,” terminating the export.

Short story: the export process came to a corrupted frame and had to quit. Yes, one frame.

How to find that frame? Divide and conquer. In my case, I had 10-12 minute segments within an hour-long show. BTW, the segments played properly from the timeline.

I chose about half the timeline and tried to export. No problem. Tried the other half. Got the “core consistency” error.

Tried exporting individual 10-minute segments. Number 1 went OK, number 2 went OK, number 3, … oops. Failed.

Divided that segment in half. OK. Second half. Problem. Divided that piece in half, … and so on.

When the timeline segment is small enough, tried zooming in to get down to the frame level. Stepped through the frames.

Bingo. A black frame appeared and MC had very helpfully already annotated it with a text message within that frame saying that it is corrupted and had a “core consistency” problem.

I am not sure if the MC “Find Black Holes” menu option would have identified this frame.

MC is actually a very smart program. Of course one could wish for a list of error messages in a tech note.

Good luck! Mike

[Michael Mccune]

This topic of “workstation” gpu card versus gaming card performance comparisons sees relatively few resources online that make direct comparisons. Even calls to Nvidia get very general responses claiming there is no comparison because the markets or use of workstation versus gaming cards is different.

So where’s the beef? Where are comparisons that put numbers to these (deliberately?) vague responses?

But there are a few articles that seem to give some actual information on gpu performance expectations.

Doesn’t it drive you nuts when a long render is in progress and the GPU monitor sits at zero??? And you have a gaming card with twice the number of CUDA cores as a workstation (Quadro) variant?

So here is a lot to read and think about, the best articles I have seen on the subject:

1. https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/workstation-graphics-card-gaming,3425.html
2. https://www.tomshardware.com/forum/386333-33-quadro-geforce-autocad-solidworks-sketchup
3. https://www.tomshardware.com/t/graphics-cards/articles/page-2.html
4. https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-workstation-graphics-card,3493.html
5. https://nvidia.com/docs/IO/123576/nv-applications-catalog-lowres.pdf

The dilemma seems to be that gaming cards sport more CUDA cores at far less money: is there really a meaningful GPU performance improvement realized with workstation (Quadro and Tesla) cards?

Some Tom’s Hardware info suggests that the new (for example) GTX-590 can hold it’s own. But in one of the other articles a significant boost is claimed going to a Quadro 4000 card (and he suggests checking eBay for used Quadros).

Lots of luck.
Mike

[Michael Mccune]

Yes, that clarifies it nicely: AE is used so widely for good reason, resolution options being one which I didn’t know about.

Thank you, John.

FWIW, I did find some documentation on AE compositing which I found to be well written and it went into greater depth on the various aspects, which bests Boris’ documentation, IMHO — while Boris does have very helpful libraries of video tutorials.

For someone trying to learn, documentation of various kinds — tutorials, user guides, reference manuals, cook books, video show-and-tell — each has their particular benefit.

So it is worth exploring AE just — yes, just — for the quality and quantity of documentation. And now it is subscription-based, so short-term use is reasonable.

Thanks again, John.

[Michael Mccune]

Perhaps. Thank you. FX exports to mov but seems to be standard 1080.

Also experimenting with the potential of the mask layer within P&Z.

Some success. Lots to learn in FX.

Thanks again,
Mike