4K Playback on an i7 X99, Dual NVIDIA Titan-X Workstation

[Octave Zangs]

Hi guys,

I was wondering what format are you exporting from Davinci Resolve or Adobe Media Encoder that allows you to playback your final cut in 4K on a 4K display? On my Windows 10 workstation (i7 X99, Dual Titan X, 64GB RAM) I can't find a way to export my videos and being able to play them back in 4K UHD smoothly. I tried h264 and DNxHR. Is HEVC/h265 the only way and if yes what software do you use for encoding and playback?

Thank you!

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Haven't been on a Windows box lately, but IIRC, current AdobeCC users on Windows can encode CineForm at UHD/4K which should playback easily from even a single HDD with anything close to the specs you have above. BTW, you may already have sussed this out, but if you're not seeing what you expect, you might want to disconnect one of the Titans and run a couple of benchmarks on things you do frequently. Connect them both and run the same tests again to check how the dual GPUs are utilized in particular software's "default" mode - check prefs to see if you need to manually enable support for SLI or maybe OpenCL, etc.

If it were me, I'd run everything pretty bog standard using one of the Titans to get a sense of screen re-draw metrics, software responsiveness, etc. Then, after scoping out a couple of forums for tips, I'd add the second Titan in whatever mode was performing well for others (presumably SLI, but not with everything).

Cheers - #19

 

[Eric Bowen]

http://www.acrok.com/video-converter/

A very nice and handy little converter tool that supports most codecs out including Pro Res last I checked and now H265. I would recommend it for anyone on PC. 4K should playback back without issues provided the player is not limited. DNxHR is not the issue. QuickTime on windows is limiting playback. H265 would be the delivery codec to use when possible for 4K. Adobe is suppose to be adding it soon to CC 2015. Cineform would be the current option. Unfortunately Adobe does not include all of the Cineform codec flavors that were available when the software was stand alone

SLI tech shares the frame draw load over multiple GPU's. It has nothing to do with GPU acceleration. The playback limitation you are running into has nothing to do with the load on the GPU even at 4K. That is relatively light on the current GPU's. The player is the limitation and 32bit players do not have the ram allocation ability to buffer 4K media correctly.

 

[Octave Zangs]

Thanks guys!

@Eric, that makes sense now! Thanks for the tip!

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

A player worth testing out is Scratch Play from Assimilate. IIRC it's 64bit, can read tons of formats and is free with ads or $5 without.

Cheers - #19