Nvidia GTX480/FX5800 + Adobe Mercury Playback Engine

Adam Gold · April 23rd, 2010, 12:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Randy Johnson

... you can still have more than 3 layers just not with effects in RT. ie a 4 camera multicam switch.

Randy, this is exactly the question I had. If this is true, then it's good news indeed. Can anyone else confirm this, i.e. a four-track multicam sequence doesn't count against the 3-layer limit? I mean, while doing the multicam edit you are playing back all four layers of HD, albeit at reduced resolutions...

David Dwyer · April 24th, 2010, 10:42 AM

Okay so I'm going to try pick up a GTX 285 second hand but is the MPE that good?

I've got a slowish AMD quad core 2.1 CPU and 8GB of ram with a Nvidia Quadro 3700. Since there is no support for this card is it worth as a stop gap to improve my rendering/exporting times?

I'd also need a new PSU but is it worth spending £200/$300 for the use of MPE?

Harm Millaard · April 24th, 2010, 10:57 AM

David,

My experience with CS5 has shown performance increases around 40% across the board without hardware supported MPE. That is nice!!!.

I suggest you first get CS5 and try it. You may be pleasantly surprised by the speed increase and the stability.

In Q3 support for the GTX-480 Fermi card is expected and that may be a better investment than an end of the line GTX-285.

I would wait for the first benchmarks to appear, that show the performance gains from MPE.

David Dwyer · April 24th, 2010, 11:04 AM

Harm I think you are right. I'm also using Cineform NeoHD v4 and of course there isnt a GPU support for that so I might as well upgrade to Cineform V5 and save up for a decent i7 machine.

I'm exporting a 20 min Cineform file with some effects and what no and its took 2hours 40 mins and still 2 hours left.

If CS5 can knock of 40% of that I'd be happy!

Harm Millaard · April 24th, 2010, 12:35 PM

David,

On my system a 26 second time line with four tracks, AVCHD 29.97i, HDV 1080 25i, XDCAM-EX 1920 25i and titles, heavily loaded with 3-way CC, Gaussian blur, fast CC, echo, motion/scale/position, opacity all keyframed with bezier curves, BW, blends and similar effects, exporting to H.264 took 28 seconds without hardware MPE. That is nearly RT.

Brant Gajda · April 25th, 2010, 10:23 AM

Definitely good news Harm.

Ryan Koo · April 30th, 2010, 03:36 PM

Anyone have any experience using MPE on a Mac? Would have to be GTX 285 or Quadro 4800 as those are the only two supported...

April 24th, 2010, 10:42 AM	#17
David Dwyer Major Player Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Chester, North West Posts: 565	Okay so I'm going to try pick up a GTX 285 second hand but is the MPE that good? I've got a slowish AMD quad core 2.1 CPU and 8GB of ram with a Nvidia Quadro 3700. Since there is no support for this card is it worth as a stop gap to improve my rendering/exporting times? I'd also need a new PSU but is it worth spending £200/$300 for the use of MPE?

April 24th, 2010, 10:57 AM	#18
Harm Millaard Trustee Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands Posts: 1,832	David, My experience with CS5 has shown performance increases around 40% across the board without hardware supported MPE. That is nice!!!. I suggest you first get CS5 and try it. You may be pleasantly surprised by the speed increase and the stability. In Q3 support for the GTX-480 Fermi card is expected and that may be a better investment than an end of the line GTX-285. I would wait for the first benchmarks to appear, that show the performance gains from MPE.

April 24th, 2010, 11:04 AM	#19
David Dwyer Major Player Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Chester, North West Posts: 565	Harm I think you are right. I'm also using Cineform NeoHD v4 and of course there isnt a GPU support for that so I might as well upgrade to Cineform V5 and save up for a decent i7 machine. I'm exporting a 20 min Cineform file with some effects and what no and its took 2hours 40 mins and still 2 hours left. If CS5 can knock of 40% of that I'd be happy!

April 24th, 2010, 12:35 PM	#20
Harm Millaard Trustee Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands Posts: 1,832	David, On my system a 26 second time line with four tracks, AVCHD 29.97i, HDV 1080 25i, XDCAM-EX 1920 25i and titles, heavily loaded with 3-way CC, Gaussian blur, fast CC, echo, motion/scale/position, opacity all keyframed with bezier curves, BW, blends and similar effects, exporting to H.264 took 28 seconds without hardware MPE. That is nearly RT.

April 25th, 2010, 10:23 AM	#21
Brant Gajda Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Posts: 113	Definitely good news Harm.

April 30th, 2010, 03:36 PM	#22
Ryan Koo Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: New York, NY Posts: 92	Anyone have any experience using MPE on a Mac? Would have to be GTX 285 or Quadro 4800 as those are the only two supported...