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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

CS5 Beta Testers

I'll make a comparision on the weekend and tell you here.
 
Hope all rings true got my new mac on order 8 core 16GB Ram and the GTX 285 for Mac with CS5 but l don't think it will be ready until mid late May depending upon CS5 release!
 
Thanks for all the input and all the testers/adobe guru's chiming in. Everybody is getting really excited about this, and I've been from Avid to Fcp, back to Avid, back to FCP for some time now. I'm a fan of them all really, and I think cs5 is gonna be the key to bridge everything together. I think a lot of us want to know how to best optimize our systems without breaking the bank. I probably won't be able to make the upgrade until i see how RESOLVE turns out to be, I'm a heavy apple color user, and the ATI acceleration is key. I'll need a good CC solution that's Nvidia accelerated before everything gets pushed to a cs5 workflow.

Still very exciting!
 
Sometimes two boxes can be an economical solution…

Color doesn't need many cores or heaps of RAM.
 
OK, first two numbers:

– 10 minutes of R3D Quad HD, 29.97 no filters, best debayer, sequence output to ProRes HQ 1920 by 1080 in 18 minutes
- same sequence with a 3-way CC and a Gaussian blur for each clip in 18 m 25 sec

This was a Xeon 8-core 3 GHz, 16 GB RAM and a Quadro FX4800 under OS X. I'll later test under W7, but it should be quite cloe (as it was during my tests). Anybody with similar hardware ready to test under CS4? I don't like to downgrade now…
 
Some more tests.
Since I can't encode ProRes under Windows, I tried AVC-Intra. It's considerably slower than encoding to ProRes, both on the Mac and PC side I get around 32 minutes without filters and about a minute more with them. There is no obvious speed difference with the GeForce GTX 285, it's abou the same when I stay below 4 layers.

So, I'm waiting for some results under CS4…
 
Some more tests.
Since I can't encode ProRes under Windows, I tried AVC-Intra. It's considerably slower than encoding to ProRes, both on the Mac and PC side I get around 32 minutes without filters and about a minute more with them. There is no obvious speed difference with the GeForce GTX 285, it's abou the same when I stay below 4 layers.

So, I'm waiting for some results under CS4…

I've been enconding a 20min film from a 4k sequence with CS4 to prores 720p and it would usually take over 20h to render, on 4 core mac or pc - can't wait to get CS5!
 
Did you check the activity of your cores? With CS5 they all fire at full speed. I'm asking this because R3D decoding itself is not CUDA accelerated.
 
Did you check the activity of your cores? With CS5 they all fire at full speed. I'm asking this because R3D decoding itself is not CUDA accelerated.

Activity monitor shows that not all cores are working at full. If I'm lucky I usualy get a total of 170% on 4 cores:(

What does this mean "not cuda accelerated" - for the final render out of CS5, it will make no difference what graphic card is installed?
 
No, sorry, that's a misunderstanding! Many effects are CUDA-accelerated and this is used on export. But decoding of the source itself is not yet CUDA-supported, it's strictly CPU(s) – impressive nevertheless.
 
I did a test in CS4
5 minutes of R3D 4K 16:9 25 fps to Quicktime (animation), sequence RED 720p, no effect applied, Maximum Render Quality and Maximum Bit Dept checked.. best debayer - 1 hour and 10 minutes

Vista 64, 8GB, i7 cpu 920 @2.67 GHz, Activity monitor shows that all 8 cores are working at around 60%.
 
CS5 definitely uses all the cores when rendering out R3Ds, along with the GPU for all the effects, colour corrections etc. In other words, the Mercury Playback Engine (the name for the whole system).

Here's a screencap showing it in operation, rendering out H.264 1920x816 from 4.5K timeline. Two pass VBR encoding, max quality of course (click image for full size version).



The movie itself is a short, just over 9 minutes long.

HTH

Paul
 
alright, since cs5 is built to, effects = cuda, and simple playback and rendering is CPU, i find that cpu is more important. How many people really do that much picture in picture and so on? For narrative it ends up being very basic effects, transitions, and filters. So a gtx 285 can really bring you a LONG way. that's really good to know, I"m running maxed out octo core mac, so processors should be there...

I wonder if there will be any news on 400 series cards support for mac. I hope so, they claim near equal results to the quadro's from a gtx 485.
 
OK, first two numbers:

– 10 minutes of R3D Quad HD, 29.97 no filters, best debayer, sequence output to ProRes HQ 1920 by 1080 in 18 minutes
- same sequence with a 3-way CC and a Gaussian blur for each clip in 18 m 25 sec

This was a Xeon 8-core 3 GHz, 16 GB RAM and a Quadro FX4800 under OS X. I'll later test under W7, but it should be quite cloe (as it was during my tests). Anybody with similar hardware ready to test under CS4? I don't like to downgrade now…

Are you serious? wow!!!! trans-coding/debayering 10 minutes of footage in ONLY 18 minutes. WOW!!!!, okay that tops the CS5 news this month.
 
I did a test in CS4
5 minutes of R3D 4K 16:9 25 fps to Quicktime (animation), sequence RED 720p, no effect applied, Maximum Render Quality and Maximum Bit Dept checked.. best debayer - 1 hour and 10 minutes

Vista 64, 8GB, i7 cpu 920 @2.67 GHz, Activity monitor shows that all 8 cores are working at around 60%.

Not bad for cs4
 
Hi Shashbugu, how long would this this have taken pre CS5?..

`Are you serious? wow!!!! trans-coding/debayering 10 minutes of footage in ONLY 18 minutes. WOW!!!!, okay that tops the CS5 news this month`.
 
alright, since cs5 is built to, effects = cuda, and simple playback and rendering is CPU, i find that cpu is more important. How many people really do that much picture in picture and so on? For narrative it ends up being very basic effects, transitions, and filters. So a gtx 285 can really bring you a LONG way. that's really good to know, I"m running maxed out octo core mac, so processors should be there...

I wonder if there will be any news on 400 series cards support for mac. I hope so, they claim near equal results to the quadro's from a gtx 485.

We are in the same boat here. I think for narrative work the GTX 285 is all one should need. I don't have the CS5 beta, but I looked over the shoulder of a motion graphics guy working on an opening for me, he did some quick corrections right there in PPro Cs5. Who knew the funny looking color wheels did Lift Gamma Gain in their own very intuitive but unfamiliar way. He didn't even use plug-ins or send it out to apple color. I was very impressed.
The promo was shot on an HDSLR so I did not get to see the R3D performance.
 
Hi Shashbugu, how long would this this have taken pre CS5?..

`Are you serious? wow!!!! trans-coding/debayering 10 minutes of footage in ONLY 18 minutes. WOW!!!!, okay that tops the CS5 news this month`.

pre Cs5. that would be CS4.1 was the last time I tried it, it was for a 3.5 minute music vid, the full 4k debayer out to prores hq 1080 was about 9 hrs. But it was highly unstable, very buggy. I never tried it again since. i hear the 4.2 is more stable and takes advantage of all cores, though no where near as powerful as mercury. Now I just use our studios Red Rocket. I want to get a Rocket for myself as soon as it works with CS5.

For narrative work I would be satisfied for full 4k debayer 2 hr of r3d to 1080 final render in 12 hrs. But if CS% proves to be faster all the better
 
Are you serious? wow!!!! trans-coding/debayering 10 minutes of footage in ONLY 18 minutes. WOW!!!!, okay that tops the CS5 news this month.

One thing to note: this was Quad HD, maybe full 4K is a bit slower.
 
pre Cs5. that would be CS4.1 was the last time I tried it, it was for a 3.5 minute music vid, the full 4k debayer out to prores hq 1080 was about 9 hrs. But it was highly unstable, very buggy. I never tried it again since. i hear the 4.2 is more stable and takes advantage of all cores, though no where near as powerful as mercury. Now I just use our studios RED Rocket™™™™™. I want to get a Rocket for myself as soon as it works with CS5.

For narrative work I would be satisfied for full 4k debayer 2 hr of r3d to 1080 final render in 12 hrs. But if CS% proves to be faster all the better

Premiere pro CS4 (4.2) is not that slow in my computer. I had a 3.5 minutes music video two weeks ago. 95% 4K the rest 3K full debayer. Every single clip had three effects: color finesse, neat video (with highest specifications checked) magic bullet (for vignettes and spot exposures only). I exported it to avi uncompressed 720p with Maximum Render Quality checked. It took three hours. I will render it again with Maximum Render Quality unchecked.

Notes:
1- My system: Vista 64, 8GB, i7 cpu 920 @2.67 GHz, 7TB RAID 5.
2- CS4 4.2 uses all the cores at around 60 %
3- Maximum Render Quality is a feature added to Premiere with 4.2 update. Its role is to help getting better and sharper edges when downscaling. It gives much better results, but it takes much more to render.

Edit:
I rendered the same project which in fact is 3 minutes of R3D files not 3.5 minutes: with Maximum Render Quality unchecked it took 1 hour 45 minutes.
 
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