MPE GTX470 question

[John Strickland]

Hey guys I just installed a GTX 470 and something's not quite right.
I verified that the card is on the compatible list for the Mercury Playback Engine.
When I playback video from my NX5 the CPU goes to 100% while the GPU stays at around 11%.

Any advice?

Q6600 processor, 8GB of RAM, RAID 0, GTX 470 video card.

Running drivers up to date as of 10-23-10 on all devices.

[Randall Leong]

Hello,

Not all effects in Premiere are GPU-accelerated, for starters. In fact, if you did not apply any effects at all, the playback will be mostly CPU-based.

[John Strickland]

So just normal everyday playback in Premiere CS5 is not concentrated on the GPU rather than the CPU.

I'm not adding any effects to my clips, I'm talking importing and playing from the timeline.

Thanks for the reply.

[Pete Bauer]

Yes, the CPU still has to decode the frames, then not all effects are GPU accelerated. There are about 40 effects in PPro CS5 that are. There is an icon behind the effect name in the Video Effects panel if it uses the GPU, and fortunately, most of the commonly used ones do. No icon, no acceleration and you'll see a red bar in the sequence timeline.

If you do need to use an effect that's not accelerated, tweak it and then disable it in the Effects Control panel so it doesn't bog down the system while editing.

[John Strickland]

So the GPU is only used for effects?
I thought the whole idea was that it is able to play back just about any resolution of any file type in real time.

I'm rendering out a little video from my NX5 right now and have included a screen shot that shows both the render screen, the CPU usage screen and the GPU usage screen.

I could be completely wrong here but it just seems like something isn't right.

And thanks for the tip on editing with non-accelerated effects. That's good information.

[Harm Millaard]

John,

See the answer I gave on the Adobe forums.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by John Strickland

So the GPU is only used for effects?
I thought the whole idea was that it is able to play back just about any resolution of any file type in real time.

My very first impression when I saw that demo from adobe where they trew all kind of footage on a timeline was also that the gpu did all that. If I remember right (if not pls correct me) that demo system they used for this online presentation was a dual 6 core pc meaning 12 real or 24 cores if you count the virtual ones" as well and it had 24gb of memory and a 4800 nvidia card. No wonder it flew. I think it surprised some users with older systems thinking a approved graphics card would speed everything up, especially because in that presentation was not mentioned you still needed sufficient cpu power as well (and lots of memory)

[John Strickland]

Agreed.
I'm somehwat disappointed.

Harm, you're everywhere!

[Harm Millaard]

Noa, you are correct with the specs of that demo machine.

John, did you solve the script problem you had? Contact me by PM if you still have problems or have the results ready.

[Pete Bauer]

Originally Posted by Pete Bauer

If you do need to use an effect that's not accelerated, tweak it and then disable it in the Effects Control panel so it doesn't bog down the system while editing.

And I guess I should add, "Re-enable the effect before rendering the final product!"

Well, I can understand getting caught up in the pre-release marketing buzz; I've certainly fallen victim to such disappointment in previous releases. But a couple of comments that I hope will temper your feelings:

- it was publically known and discussed that Adobe was demo'ing on high end machines (no surprise -- even if it wasn't known, it would certainly be assumed!)

- the simple fact is that when processing HD, over sixty million pixels have to be processed for every second of video, for each stream. If you're laying complex math on many or all of those pixels (eg effects), a slower system is just not going to be able to handle the data load in real time or faster.

- also widely discussed was the assumption -- which turned out to be wrong -- that CS5 minimum system requirements would be on the extreme high end. Well, as always "the faster, the better" but as you all are showing, an old quad core is useable. Happy me, like many folks I built a new machine just for CS5 and almost everything I do is in realtime or near to it. Yet, if you're using an older system, at least you CAN still use CS5 and its many new features, even if it doesn't sprint. It still is more efficient than previous versions.

- We're at the beginning of the GPU acceleration epoch. Even though CS5 was a huge leap forward, I'm sure we'll see a great deal more optimization in the future.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by John Strickland

Q6600 processor, 8GB of RAM, RAID 0, GTX 470 video card.

I have the same q6600 processor, just curious John; did you have the opportunity to play native dslr 1080p footage straight from the timeline? I just wonder if cs5 is able to handle one layer in realtime on a Q6600 processor. (only for preview, i guess that scrolling the timeline without stutter is not possible on that processor)

[John Strickland]

I was running a Geforce 9800 before I changed it out with the GTX 470.

And yes I was able to play a full resolution 1080P timeline without problems.

I mainly bought the card so I can have the best most capable system I can. And because I thought it would help with the export process.

And no Harm I did not get the VBS problem resolved. All the steps in the text file work perfectly until I get to the running the script part. Then it gives an error, but it does make the Output.txt file. The file is blank however.

I'll try it again and pass along what the error is.

Even with all this new clarified information I still couldn't grasp the idea of moving to an NLE other than Premiere.

Thanks again fellas.

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Pete Bauer

- also widely discussed was the assumption -- which turned out to be wrong -- that CS5 minimum system requirements would be on the extreme high end. Well, as always "the faster, the better" but as you all are showing, an old quad core is useable. Happy me, like many folks I built a new machine just for CS5 and almost everything I do is in realtime or near to it. Yet, if you're using an older system, at least you CAN still use CS5 and its many new features, even if it doesn't sprint. It still is more efficient than previous versions.

Agreed. I was one of those skeptics when CS5 was in development, that a dual-CPU system with 24GB or more RAM was "required" just to use the program at all. But later in the development stage, I have migrated to the belief that a typical consumer dual- or quad-core system with the proper GPU (please note: no IGPs; they run like you-know-what and steals too much RAM from the system) with 4GB to 8GB of RAM is usable with CS5 but an i7-9xx or better system with 12GB or more RAM is better.

[John Strickland]

Hello Mr. Harm.
Here are my results from the benchmark.
I've attached both the GPU accelerated results and the software accelerated results.

Thanks.

[Todd Kopriva]

I just wanted to clear up some confusion that I noticed on this thread:

CUDA acceleration isn't just for effects. Some other things are processed on the GPU and accelerated by CUDA processing, too. Deinterlacing and scaling are among them.

But, as has been said on this thread, encoding is just done on the CPU.