GPU acceleration in Pro 11

Ian Stark · October 20th, 2011, 03:48 PM

Early days, but so far everything I throw at it is previewing in real time. Haven't tried rendering yet (nothing to compare it with, as the 'old' system bricked literally thirty minutes after the new system arrived - how's that for timing?! Perhaps it was suicide).

Just for fun I dropped some mts clips on a track, added randomly selected fx at track level - Color Curves, Lens Flare, Levels, Mirror, Glow, Gaussian Blur, Saturation Adjust, Bump Map, and Black and White - and got real time preview at Best/Full. It was even real time on the production monitor through the Intensity Pro.

Adding a Median filter in slowed things up, as you would expect. I was surprised that Gaussian Blur didn't, to be honest. Dropping to Best/Half returned me to real time preview speeds with minimal loss of quality on the production monitor (which displays in SD).

I haven't reinstalled NewBlue, MB Looks, Neat Video etc yet, but when I do I'll give them all a good bashing and see how they perform. Similarly, I can't test it on a real life multi track project because most of them use one or more of the aforementioned plugins, which are awaiting installation.

Needless to say, overkill or not, I am outrageously happy with my new system (i980, 12GB RAM, GeForce GTX580). As Grazie said elsewhere, back in the early Vegas days (and I only go back to the tail end of V2, beginning of V3), we could only dream of this kind of performance.

Not trying to rub up the wrong way anyone who isn't having much success with GPU acceleration, but this has actually resulted in me being excited again about sitting in front of Vegas, rather than just regarding it as a means to an end. Haven't felt like that for a few years . . .

Ian Stark · October 20th, 2011, 03:57 PM

I meant to add, this is with the project set to 32 bit fp (video levels or full range). Never been able to do that before.

Jeff Harper · October 20th, 2011, 04:10 PM

Ian what type are your source files, and are you talking multicamera or single?

Ian Stark · October 20th, 2011, 04:24 PM

Jeff, they're AVCHD 1920 x 1080 clips from a lowly Panasonic HDC-SD60 (holiday stuff). All single camera.

As I say, it was just for fun with fx picked at random just to see how far I could push it. For work related editing I am working no 'higher' than HDV so I think there's some headroom still!

Bill Koehler · October 20th, 2011, 04:58 PM

I think I'm happy.

With a lowly Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz Q6600 and AMD Radeon HD6670 Card:

I've plugged in a 1 hour 2 minute project I finished not long ago.
Footage is from three Canon HF-S200 cameras.
Filters are overwhelmingly Levels, Color Correction, Color Curves, Brightness and Contrast.

Preview performance is very noticably more fluid.

Under Vegas 10 with no GPU accelleration, the 7.5 Mbps CBR DVD video render took about 1 hour 45 minutes.

Under Vegas 11 with GPU accelleration, the render to a 21 Mbps AVCHD 1920x1080i video stream is about three hours 50 minutes. I can live with that. The time required used to be come back tomarrow. Or the day after.

I'm using GPU-Z 0.5.5 to monitor the GPU. I note that the GPU Load is higher if I do NOT run the preview window while rendering. Under those conditions the card is running at 44%. And the GPU Temp goes up from a low of 40C to 44C under load.

The CPU, rather than running 100% all the time (Vegas 10) varies between 70% - 77% (Vegas 11).

Jeff Harper · October 20th, 2011, 05:07 PM

Ian, 1080 is still 1080! Congrats! Bill you have seen a huge improvement, nice.

Bill Koehler · October 21st, 2011, 12:50 AM

I may have found a problem.

I normally have my cameras set to shoot NTSC 29.97 progressive, 1920 x 1080.
1. In poor lighting this allows the camera to find more light.
2. It all but eliminates the interlace motion artifacts.
3. It allows me to pull better pictures from video to use as cover art for the DVD menus, DVD, & enclosing package.

When I render for DVD using the GPU I am seeing a lot of interlace motion artifacts.
I just got done disabling the GPU and redoing the render using only the CPU.
Yes it takes longer but the interlace motion artifacts are now gone.
Could someone else confirm or prove me wrong? I'd like to be wrong.

David Jasany · October 21st, 2011, 07:42 AM

Anyone try acceleration with an XFX - ATI Radeon HD5770? From reading the specs it does appear to support acceleration but I'll probably need to update the driver.

Sean Seah · October 21st, 2011, 11:32 AM

I had a crash when it prompted that my GPU drivers are not the latest. After updating it worked like magic.

Dell XPS studio 2010 desktop
Nvidia GTX260 (time to upgrade may be)
4min 12 tracks with CC, levels, pro titler text, sfx,
5D2 mov native, mxf, mp3
Render to avc mp4 (8,000,000 bps aver)

V11 - 5.01min
V10 - 8.51min

I'm happy! Now to test my MBP 2011...

Bruce Phung · October 21st, 2011, 12:04 PM

Sean,

Can you tell me how did you able to get GPU to enabled in V11? I am using the same old card as your GTX260. Under reference> video tap I can not not change GPU to ON. It is shown OFF only. I am uding 260.99 driver.

Edward Troxel · October 21st, 2011, 12:11 PM

Bruce, from Sony's website:

GPU-accelerated AVC rendering requires a CUDA-enabled GPU and NVIDIA driver 270.xx or later with a GeForce GTX 4xx Series or newer GPU.

GPU-accelerated video processing requires an OpenCL-enabled GPU and NVIDIA driver 270.xx or later with a GeForce GTX 4xx Series or newer GPU.

Looks like you need to update your video driver to 270.xx instead of 260.xx

Adam Stanislav · October 21st, 2011, 01:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Edward Troxel

Looks like you need to update your video driver to 270.xx instead of 260.xx

Actually, he needs a new video card. VP 11 only supports CUDA v. 2.0 and up. As listed at | NVIDIA Developer Zone, the GTX280 only supports CUDA 1.3 and below.

Andreas Neubert · October 21st, 2011, 04:26 PM

To me, it seems that GPU accelerated Rendering may work with the GT(X) 2XX cards, because it was introduced in Pro 10!

Only GPU accelerated PREVIEW doesn´t work, this is why I ordered a new Radeon 6950 yersterday and will receive it tomorrow.
The Radeons seem to boost preview and plugin perfomance most, while nvidia cards help rendering a bit more (depending on the amount of plugins).

Sean Seah · October 23rd, 2011, 08:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ian Stark

Sean, in options/preferences/video there is a drop down list. If the only option is OFF, your card is not recognised.

Yikes its off for my GTX260! But guess what, i have seen an almost 2x increment in rendering speed to mp4. Wonder how does that work!? Bruce, just do a test and you should see the difference. Anyway I'm set to upgrade to a Asus 560ti probably. Anything above is way too exp for me now.

My 2011 MBP works with the GPU. Its using a ati radeon card =) old 2009 MBP doesnt work thou. Now to pass it to my wife!

Ho-Jong Wong · October 23rd, 2011, 07:24 PM

Anybody having problems rendering with GPU acceleration but preview with GPU works fine? I'm using an ATI 5770 and the preview acceleration seems to work great, but as soon as I try to render MainConcept AVC/AAC I get the message "An error occurred while creating the media file ... The reason for the error could not be determined." If I change the encode mode to "Render using CPU only" the file renders fine. I am using Catalyst 11.9 drivers.

October 20th, 2011, 03:48 PM	#61
Ian Stark Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Hampshire, UK Posts: 2,237	Re: GPU acceleration in Pro 11 Early days, but so far everything I throw at it is previewing in real time. Haven't tried rendering yet (nothing to compare it with, as the 'old' system bricked literally thirty minutes after the new system arrived - how's that for timing?! Perhaps it was suicide). Just for fun I dropped some mts clips on a track, added randomly selected fx at track level - Color Curves, Lens Flare, Levels, Mirror, Glow, Gaussian Blur, Saturation Adjust, Bump Map, and Black and White - and got real time preview at Best/Full. It was even real time on the production monitor through the Intensity Pro. Adding a Median filter in slowed things up, as you would expect. I was surprised that Gaussian Blur didn't, to be honest. Dropping to Best/Half returned me to real time preview speeds with minimal loss of quality on the production monitor (which displays in SD). I haven't reinstalled NewBlue, MB Looks, Neat Video etc yet, but when I do I'll give them all a good bashing and see how they perform. Similarly, I can't test it on a real life multi track project because most of them use one or more of the aforementioned plugins, which are awaiting installation. Needless to say, overkill or not, I am outrageously happy with my new system (i980, 12GB RAM, GeForce GTX580). As Grazie said elsewhere, back in the early Vegas days (and I only go back to the tail end of V2, beginning of V3), we could only dream of this kind of performance. Not trying to rub up the wrong way anyone who isn't having much success with GPU acceleration, but this has actually resulted in me being excited again about sitting in front of Vegas, rather than just regarding it as a means to an end. Haven't felt like that for a few years . . . __________________ www.vit-media.com www.classicmachinefilms.co.uk

October 20th, 2011, 03:57 PM	#62
Ian Stark Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Hampshire, UK Posts: 2,237	Re: GPU acceleration in Pro 11 I meant to add, this is with the project set to 32 bit fp (video levels or full range). Never been able to do that before. __________________ www.vit-media.com www.classicmachinefilms.co.uk

October 20th, 2011, 04:10 PM	#63
Jeff Harper Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Cincinnati, OH Posts: 8,425	Re: GPU acceleration in Pro 11 Ian what type are your source files, and are you talking multicamera or single? __________________ "The horror of what I saw on the timeline cannot be described."

October 20th, 2011, 04:24 PM	#64
Ian Stark Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Hampshire, UK Posts: 2,237	Re: GPU acceleration in Pro 11 Jeff, they're AVCHD 1920 x 1080 clips from a lowly Panasonic HDC-SD60 (holiday stuff). All single camera. As I say, it was just for fun with fx picked at random just to see how far I could push it. For work related editing I am working no 'higher' than HDV so I think there's some headroom still! __________________ www.vit-media.com www.classicmachinefilms.co.uk

October 20th, 2011, 04:58 PM	#65
Bill Koehler Major Player Join Date: May 2007 Location: Alpharetta, Georgia, USA Posts: 760	Re: GPU acceleration in Pro 11 I think I'm happy. With a lowly Core 2 Quad 2.4 GHz Q6600 and AMD Radeon HD6670 Card: I've plugged in a 1 hour 2 minute project I finished not long ago. Footage is from three Canon HF-S200 cameras. Filters are overwhelmingly Levels, Color Correction, Color Curves, Brightness and Contrast. Preview performance is very noticably more fluid. Under Vegas 10 with no GPU accelleration, the 7.5 Mbps CBR DVD video render took about 1 hour 45 minutes. Under Vegas 11 with GPU accelleration, the render to a 21 Mbps AVCHD 1920x1080i video stream is about three hours 50 minutes. I can live with that. The time required used to be come back tomarrow. Or the day after. I'm using GPU-Z 0.5.5 to monitor the GPU. I note that the GPU Load is higher if I do NOT run the preview window while rendering. Under those conditions the card is running at 44%. And the GPU Temp goes up from a low of 40C to 44C under load. The CPU, rather than running 100% all the time (Vegas 10) varies between 70% - 77% (Vegas 11).

October 20th, 2011, 05:07 PM	#66
Jeff Harper Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Cincinnati, OH Posts: 8,425	Re: GPU acceleration in Pro 11 Ian, 1080 is still 1080! Congrats! Bill you have seen a huge improvement, nice. __________________ "The horror of what I saw on the timeline cannot be described."

October 21st, 2011, 12:50 AM	#67
Bill Koehler Major Player Join Date: May 2007 Location: Alpharetta, Georgia, USA Posts: 760	Re: GPU acceleration in Pro 11 I may have found a problem. I normally have my cameras set to shoot NTSC 29.97 progressive, 1920 x 1080. 1. In poor lighting this allows the camera to find more light. 2. It all but eliminates the interlace motion artifacts. 3. It allows me to pull better pictures from video to use as cover art for the DVD menus, DVD, & enclosing package. When I render for DVD using the GPU I am seeing a lot of interlace motion artifacts. I just got done disabling the GPU and redoing the render using only the CPU. Yes it takes longer but the interlace motion artifacts are now gone. Could someone else confirm or prove me wrong? I'd like to be wrong.

October 21st, 2011, 07:42 AM	#68
David Jasany Major Player Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: North Carolina Posts: 313	Re: GPU acceleration in Pro 11 Anyone try acceleration with an XFX - ATI Radeon HD5770? From reading the specs it does appear to support acceleration but I'll probably need to update the driver.

October 21st, 2011, 11:32 AM	#69
Sean Seah Trustee Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Singapore Posts: 1,498	Re: GPU acceleration in Pro 11 I had a crash when it prompted that my GPU drivers are not the latest. After updating it worked like magic. Dell XPS studio 2010 desktop Nvidia GTX260 (time to upgrade may be) 4min 12 tracks with CC, levels, pro titler text, sfx, 5D2 mov native, mxf, mp3 Render to avc mp4 (8,000,000 bps aver) V11 - 5.01min V10 - 8.51min I'm happy! Now to test my MBP 2011... __________________ Firewerkz Films SGP

October 21st, 2011, 12:04 PM	#70
Bruce Phung Major Player Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Rochester,NY USA Posts: 285	Re: GPU acceleration in Pro 11 Sean, Can you tell me how did you able to get GPU to enabled in V11? I am using the same old card as your GTX260. Under reference> video tap I can not not change GPU to ON. It is shown OFF only. I am uding 260.99 driver.

October 21st, 2011, 12:11 PM	#71
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	Re: GPU acceleration in Pro 11 Bruce, from Sony's website: GPU-accelerated AVC rendering requires a CUDA-enabled GPU and NVIDIA driver 270.xx or later with a GeForce GTX 4xx Series or newer GPU. GPU-accelerated video processing requires an OpenCL-enabled GPU and NVIDIA driver 270.xx or later with a GeForce GTX 4xx Series or newer GPU. Looks like you need to update your video driver to 270.xx instead of 260.xx __________________ Edward Troxel [SCVU] JETDV Scripts/Scripting Tutorials/Excalibur/Montage Magic/Newsletters

October 21st, 2011, 04:26 PM	#73
Andreas Neubert New Boot Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Munich, Germany Posts: 23	Re: GPU acceleration in Pro 11 To me, it seems that GPU accelerated Rendering may work with the GT(X) 2XX cards, because it was introduced in Pro 10! Only GPU accelerated PREVIEW doesn´t work, this is why I ordered a new Radeon 6950 yersterday and will receive it tomorrow. The Radeons seem to boost preview and plugin perfomance most, while nvidia cards help rendering a bit more (depending on the amount of plugins).

October 23rd, 2011, 07:24 PM	#75
Ho-Jong Wong New Boot Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Cedar Rapids, IA Posts: 6	Re: GPU acceleration in Pro 11 Anybody having problems rendering with GPU acceleration but preview with GPU works fine? I'm using an ATI 5770 and the preview acceleration seems to work great, but as soon as I try to render MainConcept AVC/AAC I get the message "An error occurred while creating the media file ... The reason for the error could not be determined." If I change the encode mode to "Render using CPU only" the file renders fine. I am using Catalyst 11.9 drivers.