CS5 x64 and Mercury Playback Engine

[Floris van Eck]

I totally agree with Rob. Althought I do believe 64-bit is the future.

[Rob Johnson]

I 100% agree with that, Floris. And more software manufacturers need to get onboard with 64 bit.

[Kyle Root]

I'm still using CS2 on my 4 year old Dell system.

Anxiously awaiting CS5, so I can upgrade to a new computer system, which hopefully will last me another 4 years (or longer!)

That MPE feature looks pretty cool. I am impressed.

[David Dwyer]

Is anyone else getting excited about CS5? I am counting down the days and looking to buy a new GTX 275 card to put it through some testing

[Roger Averdahl]

Originally Posted by David Dwyer

Is anyone else getting excited about CS5? I am counting down the days and looking to buy a new GTX 275 card to put it through some testing

FYI, you want the GTX 285 if you are interested to use CUDA acceleration in CS5. The GTX 275 is not certified and will not give you any CUDA goodness in CS5.

You may have made a typo, but if not, dont waste your money on the GTX 275. :)

[David Dwyer]

Originally Posted by Roger Averdahl

FYI, you want the GTX 285 if you are interested to use CUDA acceleration in CS5. The GTX 275 is not certified and will not give you any CUDA goodness in CS5.

You may have made a typo, but if not, dont waste your money on the GTX 275. :)

Yeah meant the 285 - Though probably will purchase one second hand and wait for the new GFX fermi to come out.

[Matthew Longbottom]

Just read this comment:

"I will point out that there has been no mention of the Mercury Playback engine will be a part of the next version of Premiere Pro."

here

The Genesis Project: Technology Sneek Peek: Adobe® Mercury Playback Engine

[Brant Gajda]

Originally Posted by Roger Averdahl

FYI, you want the GTX 285 if you are interested to use CUDA acceleration in CS5. The GTX 275 is not certified and will not give you any CUDA goodness in CS5.

You may have made a typo, but if not, dont waste your money on the GTX 275. :)

I'd be curious as to the support. If you check nVidia's website, you will see that most of the 200 series have CUDA support. I would think that CUDA is CUDA, I would be surprised if they are only targeting a select card. I'm curious if this list was just a "ok we tried these cards and these definitely meet our requirements. No guarantees on the CUDA supported cards." You have to figure that if the 300 series comes out they will also be CUDA supported and should be a bit better than the 285 will they not be supported?

[Tim Kolb]

Originally Posted by Rob Johnson

My files (HD) are playing back about that smoothly now. No bullsh*t. Even with some of the simpler dissolves. I guess I'm supposed to be impressed but, er, unless I'm just not seeing it, where's the colossal advantage? Granted it plays smoother with 900 layers of video. The smooth real-time playback was one of the new (and realized) selling points of CS4. The perpetual Technology Trap™ raises the bar yet again.

You don't need 900 layers of RED footage to choke even a big machine. Also consider that color correction done on the edit timeline is moving more and more down-budget. When every clip on the timeline has a color correction filter on it before you even start with anything specific, it can be tough to get decent playback for any substantial period of time without a preview render.

The idea behind Mercury is to make non-rendered playback available to pretty much all formats. Now the limiting factor for many will be the harddrive's ability to keep up.

[Roger Averdahl]

Originally Posted by Brant Gajda

...You have to figure that if the 300 series comes out they will also be CUDA supported and should be a bit better than the 285 will they not be supported?

I dont know, but it sounds reasonable. I guess we have to wait until the 300-series and CS5 is released. :)

[Harm Millaard]

Originally Posted by Brant Gajda

I'd be curious as to the support. If you check nVidia's website, you will see that most of the 200 series have CUDA support. I would think that CUDA is CUDA, I would be surprised if they are only targeting a select card. I'm curious if this list was just a "ok we tried these cards and these definitely meet our requirements. No guarantees on the CUDA supported cards." You have to figure that if the 300 series comes out they will also be CUDA supported and should be a bit better than the 285 will they not be supported?

You are absolutely correct in this. Adobe has only tested the 285 and a couple of Quadro's. Additional cards will be added in due time, whenever that may be, but it is completely reasonable that the new 4xx series (it is not called the 3xx series) will be supported as well.

[Paul Newman]

I wonder if the Mercury Playback Engine coupled with a Cuda GTX285 will suddenly produce acceptable video output in realtime from the timeline? Currently ALL Nvidia cards have slicing or tearing errors on output via HDMI or DVI or whatever you connect to them and cannot be considered suitable for broadcast output. If you wished to record to tape from these sources I'm afraid you would be saddly disappointed.

The tearing issues mostly seen on fast moving horizontal movement, appear as offset blocks which vary in position on the monitor, and are a result of the graphics card refreshing during active scan, and although there is a V Sync button in the Nvidia control panel which is supposed to syncronise the refresh to the vertical blanking period, it doesn't work.

I've tested this on older cards from the 6600 through FX1700 Quadro to 8800 and 285 - all have the same issue, and Nvidia are mute regarding this issue - I wonder if maybe Adobe and Nvidia have fixed this issue with the "accepted" cards that they list?

... and do you still find this problem if you buy a £6000 Quadro FX5800 HD SDI card, anyone using one who could confirm this ??

all best

Paul

[Brant Gajda]

^^
If you watch some of the videos floating around, everything was in real time. I can't remember if they were using a 285 card or not, but if it's on the supported list, I would think it should function just the same.

Personally I hope it pans out, cause I'm tired of rendering after adding a single filter.

[Tim Kolb]

Originally Posted by Paul Newman

Currently ALL Nvidia cards have slicing or tearing errors on output via HDMI or DVI or whatever you connect to them and cannot be considered suitable for broadcast output. If you wished to record to tape from these sources I'm afraid you would be saddly disappointed.
...

I've tested this on older cards from the 6600 through FX1700 Quadro to 8800 and 285 - all have the same issue, and Nvidia are mute regarding this issue - I wonder if maybe Adobe and Nvidia have fixed this issue with the "accepted" cards that they list?
l

Hmmm... While I don't record the output of the graphics card, and I have no NVIDIA gamer cards, I've not seen this on any Quadro cards, and I've had a bunch. Have you tested all these cards on the same system?

It can't be on all cards...every Autodesk, Avid (turnkey workstation), NuCoda, etc, etc system runs on the Quadro cards...I would think we'd have heard something about this by now...

Is there any other factor involved?

[Tyson Persall]

I just last week bought a new Custom Laptop with a GTX285M "Mobile" version of the 285. I heard CS5 needed the 285 as the Minimum card for the Mercury playback engine.

The GTX285M is currently the Fastest Laptop Geforce Card Nvidia makes. --And i had to buy a new laptop now so i got the best that there seemed to be.

Altho i realized mobile versions are not as powerful as Desktop versions I was hoping that the GTX285M would work for future CS5 and MPE. Maybe/ maybe not???