ATI or Quadro for Prospect (the facts)

Just one of many factors: do you want to use Magic Bullet Looks, Colorista, or other software that makes use of Nvidia GPU acceleration ?

If so, definitely Quadro (or GeForce if you want to save money).

That's an open end question....
I won't even bother trying to decrypt it.........

But if it's of any interest. The Quadro CX is having a promotion, in where they offer their card and Premiere CS4 as package deal...The biggest selling point is its' H.264 on board encoder.
It's an accelerator card..

Looks great, but pretty pricey.

If you want to use a second monitor for full-screen playback with Cineform products (not just a stretched workspace) then there's no question. ATI. No Nvidia card will do this anymore.

That's just plain misleading, Adam.

How so? I've printed -- as a direct quote from their explanation to me, not a paraphrase -- nVidia's position in the other threads on this issue, and they flatly state that none of their current drivers support this, they have no plans to change it, and there are no Vista drivers at all that ever did or will support this. So in what way is it misleading?

If you've found a workaround there are a lot of us that would like to hear it.

You can of course continue to use your older drivers if you don't plan to upgrade to Vista at any point. But for someone building a new system this is somewhat academic.

If you can't find the other threads, here's NVidia's unedited official position on this issue again:

Thank you for contacting NVIDIA Customer Care

NVIDIA has discontinued Full Screen Video Mirror support from drivers after 162.65

XP Driver version 162.65 can be found at the following site:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_162.65.html

This feature is no longer available in the NVIDIA Control Panel with current NVIDIA Drivers and will need to be implemented by the application developer.

The reasons for this are as follows:

1) Newer GPU’s support dual hardware overlays making software overlays redundant and difficult to maintain.
Application Developers would have to redevelop their software to support this function in their movie player.

2) Copy protection issues and potential liability from copyright holders. Not allowed by Protected Video Path Output Content Protection (PVP-OPM)

3) WinXP is being deprecated in favor of WinVista which is no longer supported due to the new Protected Video Path Output Content Protection (PVP-OPM) in Windows Vista

If you plan on upgrading to Vista, this feature is not available


Best regards
NVIDIA Customer Care

Ended up going with the Asus Radeon HD 4870 1G

NVIDIA has discontinued Full Screen Video Mirror support from drivers after 162.65



Hello.
I dont know if this is the same, but I have a Geforce 8600GT with driver 163.75 (november 2007) in WinXP 64, and I can to use my second monitor for video preview fullscreen with Premiere Pro CS3. In Nvidia control panel I use nView Dualview and in PremierePro I set monitor 2 output in custom tab (Playback Settings) when I create a new proyect.

I've used the Quadro 1500 and am now using the ATI Raedon 4870. I'm, so far, very happy with the ATI and have seen no downside to it. (WinXP, Intel Quad, Premiere CS3)
I do use Magic Bullet Looks occasionally, and it seems to work as well as it did with the Quadro. Someone had implied that you need the nVidea to get GPU acceleration with MBL, but according to Red Giant:
"Blazing Speeds:
GPU acceleration (using your ATI or NVIDIA card) delivers real-time playback
with many Looks"

Interesting. When I tried a Radeon HD2600XT and HD4850 with MB Looks and Coloista (with XP32 and XP64) a few months ago, neither provided noticeable acceleration and in fact both were ridiculously slow compared with my GeForce cards.

At the time, The Red Giant website said that while both ATi and Nvidia cards were 'supported', Nvidia was 'recommended'.

So .... either this was a peculiarity of my system, or else something has changed with the newer cards and/or software.

Graham
I have to say that my use of MBL is occasional, and usually for treatment of a single clip or two. It sounds like you have more regular experience with MBL than I do.
I am using the Jan, 2009 ATI drivers, but I don't recall any mention of MBL in the ATI update notes.

I'm using a Quadro 1500 and it works for the most part. The only problems I encounter are glitches during playback startup and scrubbing--which everyone tells me is because of the whole enable overlay issue. Once the timeline starts playing, the video looks fine.

If I 'roll-back' my driver to the link that Adam posted, will the 'enable overlay' thing work on this card?

I've been editing in Premieres Native HD modes and exporting clips to CIneform at the end for a while. I recently updated to PRospect for better color depth and found that when using the Cineform accelerated mode in Premiere I have all kinds of liitle quirks with previews and overlays to second monitor with an NVIDIA 7950 card. None of these are gamekillers but they are annoying as heck. When I am on the timline and can see my clip displayed on external HD monitor, and I apply a Cineform effect to the clip, the diplay on the external monitor goes away. Then I grab the cursor and drag iton the timeline and it reappears again.

This seems like a little thing, and I know it is, but.....when I have 30 or 40 clips on the timeline and I am having to constantly do this over and over to get the display to reappear on the external monitor it becomes a serious slowdown. I know Cineform is a professional codec but how it behaves with regards to overlay makes it seem cheap. Hopefully this behavior is not present when using a Decklink card with HDMI out on it which I cannot move into at this time anyway.

Still, if Adobe can show me a realtime rock solid preview on second monitor without using hardware overlay, why not Cineform? I get practically realtime playback in a HDV preset using Cineform filters anyway and render time for preview is flat out fast too. When in Prospect preset the preview build only use 1 core of my quad processor, making it about 4 times slower than HDV.

I love the Codec but I am questioning the editing mode a bit. Oh well....rant over.


I'm using a Quadro 1500 and it works for the most part. The only problems I encounter are glitches during playback startup and scrubbing--which everyone tells me is because of the whole enable overlay issue. Once the timeline starts playing, the video looks fine.

If I 'roll-back' my driver to the link that Adam posted, will the 'enable overlay' thing work on this card?

Does any one know which ATI or nVidia cards support multiple hardware-accelerated overlays? It's mentioned earlier in this thread that some nVidia cards support two overlays, which would be fine, but the more the merrier!

They would be used for realtime preview of five incoming HD sources. We've got CPU-driven alternatives that barely affect performance, but the more CPU time I have for CineForm encoding, the better.

Photoshop CS4 acceleration works on ATI - Graphic Cards - TechEnclave (http://www.techenclave.com/graphic-cards/photoshop-cs4-acceleration-works-on-ati-120237.html)

Not sure about magic bullet, but Adobe products are accelerated by ATI's consumer line. 4000 and 3000 series only.

Adobe CS4 To Be Accelerated By NVIDIA GPUs - HotHardware (http://hothardware.com/News/Adobe-CS4-To-Be-Accelerated-By-NVIDIA-GPUs/)

An article on NVIDIA GPU acceleration for Adobe CS4

more...

Adobe Creative Suite Users Get Nvidia Present - Tom's Guide (http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Adobe-Creative-Suite-Nvidia,news-2778.html)

If you want to use a second monitor for full-screen playback with Cineform products (not just a stretched workspace) then there's no question. ATI. No Nvidia card will do this anymore.

HI Adam.
I am using the Quadro NVS 450 and have four monitors running full screen.

HI Adam.
I am using the Quadro NVS 450 and have four monitors running full screen.What drivers, date, OS? What playback settings on both Premiere, OS and Cineform? What Cineform product, version? Would love to know how to do this, given that both CF and NVidia say it's impossible with current drivers and OSes.

Hey Adam,

I posted this once before in another thread, but since it's come up again here I'll repost. I have full screen playback on my second monitor with an NVidia card as well. Here's my setup:

Windows 7 64-bit (build 7100)
CS4 - latest patches
ProspectHD v4.03 b212
GeForce 8800 GTX (185.85)
Dell 2007WFP as monitor #1
Dell E248WFP as monitor #2

To enable full screen preview of the Program Monitor on monitor #2, select the timeline, the select the Sequence menu, Sequence Settings, Playback Settings, and under External Device select Monitor:2...

I don't know what issues others are having, but this works great for me. If Premiere has the focus then monitor #2 goes to full screen preview mode. If I click out onto something else then monitor #2 reverts back to extended desktop.

I calibrate monitor #2 with a Spyder 3. Great for color correction.

Glenn

What drivers, date, OS? What playback settings on both Premiere, OS and Cineform? What Cineform product, version? Would love to know how to do this, given that both CF and NVidia say it's impossible with current drivers and OSes.

i7 920, 12g DDR3 1600mhz
Asus P6T SE Mother Board
Vista 64 Ultimate Service Pack 2
Quadro NVS 450 (running all HDMI) at 1920x1080 (182.46) latest is not stable for my card and doesnt give the correct refresh rates.
Acer H243H x 2
Samsung 32" LCD HDTV
ProspectHD-4.0.3.212
Prem CS4 4.1

CS4 has no problem out putting to the Samsung or the Asus monitors.
In fact neither had Vegas 8.

I edot on both Acer monitors and preview on the HDTV Display.

I am having a few problems with the OS not recognising the screens for some reason now:
I have ordered some new digital port to hdmi converters and expect that to fix the problem.

HI Glen.
Are you pleased with Spyder 3??
Is it really worth the money?

Gary,

I originally bought it for still work and now use it for video as well. A must-have if you want accurate color. No point in color correcting using an out-of-calibration monitor as your reference.

It's really something to see in action. Once you complete the calibration it gives you a before and after. There's a surprising amount of difference!

Glenn

Gary,

I originally bought it for still work and now use it for video as well. A must-have if you want accurate color. No point in color correcting using an out-of-calibration monitor as your reference.

It's really something to see in action. Once you complete the calibration it gives you a before and after. There's a surprising amount of difference!

Glenn

Well I can see Im getting that next week.
thanks for the responce.
I need it for video work.

Glenn and Gary --

Great news and interesting info. As NVidia has said there would be no-full screen support for any Vista OS, I thought the issue was dead. Will do some experimenting by re-installing my Quadro 1500 and installing the drivers you are using. Will let everyone know how it works out. Also noticed you are using Prospect v4 -- maybe the Cineform folks fixed this?

Adam,

It worked for me with PHD3.x, and also with PPCS4 without PHD.

Glenn

Hm. Interesting. Must be the driver. I'll DL and test.

Thanks.

OK, Maybe I'm missing something here, but with CS4 there is no Cineform Realtime engine in place yet, therefore, all of you saying it works are using Adobes built-in preview engine. This has never been an issue. The Cineform Realtime engine however, relies on the hardware overlay feature of video cards, which has apparently gone the way of the dodo. So in the past, if you wanted to get a full screen overlay when editing in CIneform accelerated mode, you had to have a card that supported full screen overlay to a second monitor. This was achieved outside of Premiere inside of the video card driver settings. In fact, the options you are all seeing in PRemiere to utilize a second screen disappear once you load the CIneform presets.

As I have said, these cards are becoming extinct, at least from NVidia. So our only real hope here is that Cineform pulls a rabbit out of their hat with the RT engine for CS4 and starts utilizing a non_overlay method or maybe taps into Adobe's built-in engine.

Cineform "had" a great method for accomplishing their overlay, but unfortunately hardware vendors and possibly issues with copy protection have forced this technology to go bye-bye.

Marty,

That makes sense. To be clear, I AM referring to the PPCS4 playback engine. I hadn't made the distinction, but of course (as you said) there is no PHD4 RT engine for PPCS4.

Thanks,
Glenn

Marty -- Thanks for spelling that out the way you did so I could save a lot of time and frustration trying stuff that obviously won't work for me, as I'm waiting for the RT acceleration before moving to Prospect v4. This is great info. I'll stick with my ATI card for now.