Hi

I can confirm that my GTX 260 does:

1)  GPU/CPU usage changes favoring the GPU when I enable MPE hardware support. 100% in software mode, 30% cpu/60% gpu (+/-)

2)  Renderling changes from Yellow to Red when I switch back and forth

But:

3) Smoth playback is possible with GPU while the Software jerky - still plays jerky with Mercury Playback AND above all:

MY SYSTEM CRASHES!!!! PPro freezes after a while and whole system stops working.

Running i920 2,8 Ghz - 12 GB 1033 RAM - GTX 260 and 2x1,5 TB HDD (not in RAID though).

So maybe there is more to it than just doing the software-fix - it might seem to work, but not vorking stable enough? Anyone else been able to see any difference - having crashes? Anyone else having a GTX 260 trying this?

/Morten

Hey

Tried to start a brand new job and made picture in picture - crossdissolve fastcolour correction and brightness/contrast on 5 clips - and it runs smooth. CPU load is only 30%...so it works - but stability might be an issue as I wrote before...I have ordered a FX 3800 - so I really kind of hope that the GTX 260 has it limitations compared to FX 3800 ??? Else I have used 1000$ for nothing??? And I guess Adobe and Nvidai will make some vhanges in next update that closes this way of software modding CS5....If not - and if almost all GTX cards will run significantly better and stable - we have all been misinformed from the start....

/Morten

Ireally hope you are right...if not - this is a scandal....it just seem to be too simple a hack...

Right now I have 4 layers p-in-p with four effects on each - 720 50 P running with NO stuttering at all...smooth playback as I have never seen before,,,my issues with crash I think was related to the fact that I used an old sequence made in CS4 and opened it in cs5 - it did not turn out well. But starting from scratch in cs5 - it works....it seems...

Haha - yeah man - thats the right attitude....

You are right - and I am sure I will be happy with my new FX 3800 anyway.

I do this video-stuff for a living - having ½ of my income from producing small documentaries, e-learning videos etc. So I really need a stable and smooth editting experience. So yes - i need the FX 3800 so I can enjoy stable performance I guess.

Jeff Bellune wrote:

 

still plays jerky with Mercury Playback AND above all:

MY SYSTEM CRASHES!!!! PPro freezes after a while and whole system stops working.

Maybe that's why support is only enabled for a few, well-tested cards.  Caveat Emptor.

 

-Jeff

Jeff Bellune wrote:

 

if almost all GTX cards will run significantly better and stable - we have all been misinformed from the start...

You mentioned "stable".  Apparently, this new hack is not stable - reference the post I quoted.

 

Nobody's been "misinformed".

 

-Jeff

Those are mindless leaps to conclusions (with no actual technical diagnosis), and have pretty much been your only contributions - repeatedly - to this emerging discussion.  The objective is to uncover whether Adobe was being overcautious by disabling CUDA/GPU acceleration for certain cards:  to use the most heinous example, the GTX 295 is based on the same GT200 GPU as the GTX 285, exceeds the GTX 285 capabilities only slightly, and is purposefully disabled from CUDA/GPU acceleration in CS5.  Why?  We prefer to hear boots-on-the-ground answers (and if there is silence, to investigate this issue ourselves), rather than to hear from Adobe's defensive army who don't think twice about bending over.

I just installed a "new" GTX 285 into my workstation, a reasonable compromise since we have been forced to wait for another quarter or two until Fermi capability arrives, while I'll still want to do some editing.  If a Fleabay'ed $200 accessory can save hours of work for a quarter or two of a year, that's a pittance.  However, it is pathetic and spineless to couch that as a formal defense for how this is panning out.  If somebody walked up to you on the street and asked for $200, you'd ask why.  I don't see the wisdom in holding your tongue against a multi-million dollar corporation.

As for the changes in performance I've experienced, I need more time to assess.  To start with, as a practical matter the effect of this on my unique workflow will depend quite simply on whether the third-party developers "play game."  I am a full-blown Red Giant Looks addict, so when they update it "this summer" (whenever that is), if they shall have taken the lazy road, they will only facilitate compatibility rather than adding CUDA/GPU acceleration for the application of their (priceless for me) filters.  In other words, without integration of CUDA/GPU acceleration from third-party plug-in developers, the lowest common denominator will take us back to stuttering.

Another thought:  I didn't invest in a way-overpriced Quadro (which appears to be marketed under the charismatic, faith-based moniker that it is "for pros, industrial, so trust us, it's worth it!").  But I am skeptical at the moment that you would see an appreciable performance gain from the best Quadro up against, say, my GTX 285.  (And I do remember the earlier debate blip in this thread about the number of accelerated tracks available with each respective card, which I find irrelevant since I'm not NBC Sports dealing with feeds from multiple angles at the Kentucky Derby.)  These video timelines are not 3D games, after all.  I am suspecting (based on one day of work) that there was only so much of the GPU's power, from the high-end to the low-end, that Adobe could address for these non-gaming tasks of transcoding, etc.

Basically, I expected a full-blown revolution from this, but merely found myself satisfied by this long-overdue advancement in HD video editing, which had failed miserably to keep pace with technology.  Especially you, Steve Jobs, who has a lot more to worry about with FCP now than the stupid Flash war.

A few early thoughts.

See this:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/629557?tstart=30

Be warned it is a hack so don't expect much if anything at all.

You paid $500+ for that card?

Hi HPmoon

I get your point! I´m very confused too and can´t help thinking there is something rotten in the states of Adobe and Nvidia.If the only thing you have to do to get GPU support for any Nvidia card is to change a few lines in a text-file we have all been victims in a big fraud - but I hope this is not true...time will show if there is more too it than just a simple textfile.

Hi Mox,

Do you really think Adobe was praying that nobody would notice?  They knew about this.

I think long term is that tests will appear and it will show a  clear lead for Quadro.  The cards are different.

Also, the whole time I was goofing around with Premiere 5 with my GTX  470 I was thinking:  "Is this thing going to explode?"

That is the last thing you want to think about when you are working.

You are going to drive yourself crazy.  Now, get to work

Are the GTX 285 1gb and 2gb cards compatible with Premiere CS5 ? I am putting together a computer  right now and just wanted to make sure everything would work fine.

Wil Renczes wrote:

 

 

(Conversely:  let me dispel the myth that you can drop in a CUDA supported board into any box and you magically get umpteen layers of RED 4K in realtime.  All that CUDA does is free the CPU from the tasks of doing image processing - video footage however still needs to be decoded by the CPU.  If you're looking to do high end 4K, do yourself a favor and don't shortchange yourself on a cruddy box.  Get an i7, for cryin' out loud...  but I digress)

 

I wonder why in the world they didn't think to leverage the built-in h.264 decoding that is available on almost ANY graphics card today. Seriously that would free up SOOO much CPU time. You could take a 7D/5D2/1D4 file and instead of using up 30-100% of CPU time just on decoding the h.264 alone you could cut that to like 1-10% CPU time! It's one the easiest ways to get an astonishing improvement. I guess they were just focused in speeding up every video format for now and not caring about getting into specific improvements for individual codecs. Still for the price of the software and the onerous you must upgrade your full suite at once, you'd think they might have added it, especially after the h.264 complaints about CS4. Even the $100 PowerDirector uses hardwre h.264 acceleration (granted it lacks a lot of other stuff, of course). Maybe they are saving h.264 hardware accel for say CS7?

Again, even without that it does perform better than CS4. But imagine the improvements would truly have been breathtaking for h.264 footage if they had done that (and this also something that has long been established on both Nvidia and ATI).

Perhaps using CUDA would disable the hardware h.264 decoding though? Or they would get to many cache hits or loads and unloads using h.264 code oneminute and then loading in the CUDA code the next, still it seems like it might be possible to use h.264 to decode a number of frames and then load hte CUDA code and apply that stuff and so on and still get good out of that. But anyway without knowing more it's really hard to say. Maybe it wouldn't work out well.

Jeff Bellune wrote:

 

if almost all GTX cards will run significantly better and stable - we have all been misinformed from the start...

You mentioned "stable".  Apparently, this new hack is not stable - reference the post I quoted.

 

Nobody's been "misinformed".

 

-Jeff

first who knows why his machine crashed, maybe it was the CUDA hack for his 260 then again there a thousand other potential reasons

so far it has not crashed my GTX 275 system at all

it is odd that I don't seem to get such high GPU usage as others, I don't think I have seen it go above 20%, so maybe something is wrong with forcing the hack on it or maybe it depends exactly what you test (onmany scenes it never goes above 8% usage) but at the least it has been crash free so far and it definitely does smooth certain vids out

. It is a little weird but during parts of clips that use certain functi

ons the GPU may got to 20% and the drop from 95% to 30% and things do look a lot smoother but then as soon as soon as the effect is done with it may back to 95% CPU and 6% GPU.

Anyway whatever the story, so far I have noticed no harm, no instability and occasionaly CPU relief and more often smoothness improvement (at times it radically improves smootheness, at other times it makes no apparent difference in any way). Anyway, all good so far.

I think I will avoiding getting the program for now though although it definitely is a step up from CS4. What if Adobe fights back against the simple hack in a future patch? Seems riskty to spend this sort of money before we get a promise they won't lock people out at a future date (I would seriously hope they don't become one of THOSE sorts of companies).

chupacabracobra wrote:

 

Wil Renczes wrote:

 

 

(Conversely:  let me dispel the myth that you can drop in a CUDA supported board into any box and you magically get umpteen layers of RED 4K in realtime.  All that CUDA does is free the CPU from the tasks of doing image processing - video footage however still needs to be decoded by the CPU.  If you're looking to do high end 4K, do yourself a favor and don't shortchange yourself on a cruddy box.  Get an i7, for cryin' out loud...  but I digress)

 

 

I wonder why in the world they didn't think to leverage the built-in h.264 decoding that is available on almost ANY graphics card today. Seriously that would free up SOOO much CPU time. You could take a 7D/5D2/1D4 file and instead of using up 30-100% of CPU time just on decoding the h.264 alone you could cut that to like 1-10% CPU time! It's one the easiest ways to get an astonishing improvement. I guess they were just focused in speeding up every video format for now and not caring about getting into specific improvements for individual codecs. Still for the price of the software and the onerous you must upgrade your full suite at once, you'd think they might have added it, especially after the h.264 complaints about CS4. Even the $100 PowerDirector uses hardwre h.264 acceleration (granted it lacks a lot of other stuff, of course). Maybe they are saving h.264 hardware accel for say CS7?

 

Again, even without that it does perform better than CS4. But imagine the improvements would truly have been breathtaking for h.264 footage if they had done that (and this also something that has long been established on both Nvidia and ATI).

 

Perhaps using CUDA would disable the hardware h.264 decoding though? Or they would get to many cache hits or loads and unloads using h.264 code oneminute and then loading in the CUDA code the next, still it seems like it might be possible to use h.264 to decode a number of frames and then load hte CUDA code and apply that stuff and so on and still get good out of that. But anyway without knowing more it's really hard to say. Maybe it wouldn't work out well.

Great point.  I have seen an appreciable increase in performance in those areas before GPU acceleration that caused the most stuttering, mainly zooming around my video/still frames on the timeline, and/or applying even the most basic effects like color correction and transitions.  When before those invoked the dreaded red line and required rendering for smooth playback, now the issue is transparent.  This creates a dramatic increase in my productivity.

But the cheering section is too loud, especially from Adobe and its (secretly paid?) evangelists trolling these forums.  Adding GPU acceleration was a development that merely brought the workflow up to established technological minimums (and as you point out, other software developers were ahead of the game compared to Adobe, who has to walk on pins and needles in an oldskool atmosphere where "professionals" freak out from routine technical foibles at the expense of advancing technologies for those of us who grew up on computers).

Intuition tells me that Adobe has only just begun to tap into the capabilities of GPU acceleration.  I echo the observations here that even with four tracks on a timeline (including effects, etc.), my CPU generally always is pushing 100% while the GPU hovers around 10-20%.  Additionally, it's true (as you note) that nVidia has been trumpeting its PureVideo decoding technology for AVC codecs, H.264, etc. for several years now.  CS5 should have been developed to tap into PureVideo, but as I understand it, CS5 fails in that area.  What a pity...and the kind of thing we won't see until CS6, several years out, because Adobe's incremental upgrades are usually bug fixes and they "save" feature enhancements for profitable re-boots.

Perhaps Steve Jobs could stop whining about Flash and Android, and focus the company's energies on bringing FCP up to par with CS5 while adding GPU acceleration to include PureVideo decoding on-the-fly.  Then Adobe would have an incentive to make use of an already-aging technological minimum.

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DVDmike wrote:

 

If you're looking to do high end 4K, do yourself a favor and don't shortchange yourself on a cruddy box.  Get an i7, for cryin' out loud..

 

I have a 980x, 12GB ram, a GTX285 on a clean win 7x64 machine and the GPU does not help play back 2 tracks of 720p footage smoothly.  Apparently I need to speed up my system with faster I/O, as single 7200 RPM drives are not cutting the mustard.  I believed the hype about MPE.  I am not sure that an i7 is even necessary if you have a a cuda card and state of the art I/O.

that sounds a bit weird

since I can get 2 tracks of 1080p h.264 going better than that (with CS5) (although it does push the CPU to absolute limits; AMD Phenom II X4 940; 8GB W7 64bit) it seems like something might be going wrong with your system unrelated to CS5, i'm not sure what type of 720p footage you are talking about but few types would be tougher than h.264 1080p

I'm not even using all that amazing of a HD either, i doubt it is faster than yours (unless maybe your drives are horribly fragmented??)

for basic playback without tons of special effects, CS5 vs. CS4 seemed to be a bigger difference than CS5 with CUDA vs. CS5 withotu CUDA (for h.264)

anwyay i would tend to doubt it is the I/O (barring perhaps a truly horrible fragmented drive)

maybe you are using tons of the non-CUDA accelerated effects?

performance definitely varies depending upon what sort of stuff you do to your tracks

I submitted a support ticket for Premiere Pro CS5 ( an installation issue, which was subsequently solved by an alert member of the Adobe forums) and the canned response from Adobe starts out with "system requirements". They specifically list the supported video cards and ask if you are using one (for what that is worth).