In which case, why are we constantly being told, for me nVidia, that it is going well for Gamers et al, and no nod towards NLE-ers? If it is so different shouldn't we also be getting some sense of capacity for Vegas too?

G

If it is so different shouldn't we also be getting some sense of capacity for Vegas too?

In theory, that's what this page - http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro/gpuacceleration - aims to demonstrate. But like it's said, theory and practice are the same in theory, but not in practice.

"In which case, why are we constantly being told, for me nVidia, that it is going well for Gamers et al, and no nod towards NLE-ers?"

The biggest single market for high end video cards are gamers. Some today run quad SLI, overclocked and water cooled. Gaming is about an immersive experience.

"If it is so different shouldn't we also be getting some sense of capacity for Vegas too?"

To be blunt:
Why would nVidia devote anything to us Vegas users?
The revenue stream for games is something around $20 billion. nVidia can hope to tap into some of that because consummers will pay for a better experience.

The revenu stream for the whole movie / TV industry is around $15 billion. nVidia can hope to tap into some of that because consummers will pay more for a better experience. They do this with a variety of solutions in their GPUs to better decode video, especially on mobile platforms.

Except, we're not consummers, we're producers. I have no idea what the total NLE market is worth but as a percentage of the revenue stream not much. Even worse, Vegas's share of the revenue stream is way, way below 1%. So every NLE supplier is just picking up the crumbs that nVidia and AMD drop almost by accident and Vegas is well....

Bob.

Exactly Bob! Couldn't agree with you more.

So, is there a or ANY meeting ground between SCS and nVidia? Are you saying that SCS has to deal with what nVidia puts out and has to attempt to make a fist of it outta that?

BTW, kinda realise the gaming market share is waaaay in front of VEGAS? But thanks for sharing it with me too.

So we are completely different from the Gamers in terms function and market-share. Quite bleak, really?

Grazie

"So, is there a or ANY meeting ground between SCS and nVidia?"

I doubt it. Keep in mind that OpenCL isn't a nVidia thing anyway.
Kronos.org are the people doing OpenCL, you get the OpenCL libraries from your grpahics card vendor, that's about all.

If you're interested here's a read:

http://www.khronos.org/assets/uploads/developers/library/overview/opencl-overview.pdf

I don't understand a whole lot of that either however, I present it because it should give you a feel for what a vast topic this is. On some of the pages you'll see some of things I've been talking about e.g. shuffling lots of data around between the GPU and CPU.

Bob.

> "Why would nVidia devote anything to us Vegas users?"

Not sure what you mean by "us Vegas users" or if you mean "us video editors" in general but if you go to the Quadro pages at NVIDIA they do talk about Adobe CS6 and how Quadro cards are optimized for Adobe with detailed pages about Premiere Pro CS6, After Effects CS6, SpeedGrade CS6, and PhotoShop CS6. So they dedicate a lot of space for video editors who use Adobe CS6.

> "So, is there a or ANY meeting ground between SCS and nVidia? Are you saying that SCS has to deal with what nVidia puts out and has to attempt to make a fist of it outta that?"

Sony has partnered with AMD/ATI so I doubt you'll ever see Vegas on the NVIDIA page and there is no mention on the ATI pages.

> ""In which case, why are we constantly being told, for me nVidia, that it is going well for Gamers et al, and no nod towards NLE-ers?""

That has been covered many times but since you asked... the GeForce gaming cards are for gamers... the Quadro professional card are for NLE's. If choose to buy the wrong card that's you choice to make.

The difference is in some advanced features and the DRIVERS and the fact that they are tested extensively with, and tweaked for, professional applications for the Quadro cards. I'll make a wild guess here but I would bet that the Quadro cards are actually TESTED with Adobe CS6 and guaranteed to work. And by "guarantee" I mean that part of the price of purchasing a Quadro card is that you get special support from NVIDIA where a real person works with you to solve your particular problem.

If you continue to by gamers cards that are not tested with NLE's then as I said, that's your choice. No one is going to "nod" at you for buying a cheap game card and using it with a professional application. For the record I bought an NVIDIA Quadro 4000 and I have none of the problems that people are having with the GeForce gaming series. Maybe I'm just lucky or maybe I bought appropriate hardware for the work I'm doing?

~jr

John, when I bought my card I was NOT aware of the imperative to purchase the QUADRO. Had I known NOW what you are saying, then I would certainly have been thinking and deciding otherwise.

How would I have known that the QUADRO was specifically valuable for NLEs, over and above the GeForce?

> "the GeForce gaming cards are for gamers"

Then why doesn't SCS spell that one out - clearly, once and for all?

> "If choose to buy the wrong card that's you choice to make."

But how was I to know?

> "If you continue to by gamers cards that are not tested with NLE's then as I said, that's your choice"

And again, where was I to be clearly informed about this?

> "Maybe I'm just lucky or maybe I bought appropriate hardware for the work I'm doing?

You've been fortunate to have had both. And knowing what IS appropriate is the other thing you are fortunate to know.

There once was a time, the received wisdom was with Vegas and GPU cards, was they were much of a muchness. As long as you have a P4 processor or this MoBo with that CPU. Vegas needed fast RAM and a beefy faster CPU.

Being pro is one thing. KNOWING how to get the spec I needed was, at that time missing. As you say, you had a combo of luck and a background knowledge to be aware of what to purchase.

So what this ALL comes down to is SCS categorically confirming that the QUADRO is the thing to use. And if you want to use VPro then get with the programme, and purchase a QUADRO, otherwise a Gaming Card is purely that.

G

> "How would I have known that the QUADRO was specifically valuable for NLEs, over and above the GeForce?"

If you look at the Vegas Peo 12.0 GPU acceleration page on the Sony web site it states:

NVIDIA recommends NVIDIA Quadro for professional applications and recommends use of the latest boards based on the Fermi architecture.

Companies like Adobe that have been using GPU acceleration for a while have said the same thing.

> "Being pro is one thing. KNOWING how to get the spec I needed was, at that time missing. As you say, you had a combo of luck and a background knowledge to be aware of what to purchase."

I based my workstation build on VideoGuys DIY9 Hot Rod which recommends the Quadro 4000. You could purchase a turnkey PC system from someone like BOXX that knows how to put video editing workstations together but people complain that they cost too much. Well... yea you are paying them for their knowledge.

> "So what this ALL comes down to is SCS categorically confirming that the QUADRO is the thing to use. And if you want to use VPro then get with the programme, and purchase a QUADRO, otherwise a Gaming Card is purely that."

I don't think that SCS has said that at all unfortunately. Sony takes a "softer" stance and says "any" GeForce GTX 4xx series or GT 2xx series or higher. That may work in theory but in practice we are learning that this simply isn't true. Some GeForce cards work better than others and Quadros work better than them all. By contrast, Adobe publishes a lists of recommended cards that contain 16 Quadro cards and 4 GeForce cards.

~jr

Thank you.

G

I thought I should say something before thie thread goes off the bottom.

One could read all this as the best way to specify a system for Vegas is to consult Adobe. In my case I did and decided the GTX 570 was a cheap as I could go and still sort of play with the big boy's toys.

In hindsight I'm a bit miffed because if I do upgrade from CS 5.5 to CS 6.0 and want to use all that ships with it then I should be thinking about a Quadro 4000 and maybe a SDI daughter board. That's getting a bit rich even for my tastes but not beyond reason.

Problem is I'm in a unique position, I get (sort of) paid to provide technical support and I can offset that against spending up on the tools to stay current. That's me covered but I can see why Vegas users such as Grazie feel left in the dark but on the other hand my personal experience with SCS over the years had me doing a lot of groping around in the dark so my natural sympathy is offset with a bit of a "welcome to the real world of Vegas" thinking.

Which leads me to a final thought. SCS have finally managed to get just about everyone unhappy. I've for a long time seen Grazie as a bellwether user, sure we've lost quite a few over the last couple of years but I've figured if things got to the stage where Grazie was unhappy, SCS would be in danger of losing their client base completely. We can discuss the technical and marketing aspects of this issue but it really comes down to nothing when a user simply wants it to work and to get good sound advice from the vendor on what he needs to make it work. Adobe are doing a way better job of this, saying SCS are just dipping their toes in the water by comparison doesn't engender any confidence in prospective or current users. We're not crash test dummies. Some here rely on the product to work to make a living and those users have a commercial obligation to their clients, it's not some folksie arrangement like SCS like to project to their users. I'm left with the feeling that SCS have painted themselves into a corner with this whole GPU thing. Perhaps they just need to suck it in, come clean and take a radical change of direction. I'm certain there'll be some ructions but they'll be forgotten eventually and that's going to yield a better outcome than this constant flaffing around.

Bob.

Bob, just a compliment to your last thoughtful post. Clearly you are thinking probably what a lot of us are trialing on balloons in our heads. I can understand your point about cutting edge in your circumstance and writing off technology costs.

I myself run a business, with thousands of dollars invested, for which I must be able to seek a return. I do run 6 machines running in a render farm and doing that has a lot of extensive costs such as mutliple licenses, third-party plug-ins, you name it.

My current committment to VegasPro has ended with VegasPro 9.0e because any further futzing with versions 10, 11, and now 12 would have cost me greatly - maybe even have sunk my ship. I spec good equipment but I have no need of the Quadro card and I can't see really who would. In other words becoming productive with thousands of dollars vested is not to be taken lightly. I have to weigh the cost/benefit of everything that is expensed.

videoITguy, may I ask about the equipment and cards you're using in your machines?

Mindmatter - note I stated that I do not run anything past version VegasPro9.0e for business use. Hence the type of videocard that I deploy is of little practical matter to anyone, that I can think of. But since you did ask, I note that I have nothing superior to a price point of about $180 in a single card in a PC and with nothing more than 1GB of onboard memory. All are driven by NVidia drivers and native ones at that - i.e., I have never bothered to do a single upgrade of driver beyond the version number that was available at the time of board manufacturer. I figure that doing so could have been detrimental but never have had to test that theory.

I am having 2 quadro 4000 installed in my dell T7500 workstation.
GPU has to be turned OFF for vegas pro .
When turned ON , a simple cross fade stutters dramatically .
Quadro driver 310.90 WHQL ( since adobe after effects and boris red benefit much with these drivers ).
This dissapears when preview RAM settings are being set to zero ( seems to be conflict between RAM preview and GPU ) but then , of course , there is no more RAM previewing.

An older driver ( think 297 or something old ) did work better but still the dual xeon horse power AND lots of RAM ( change in internal prefs to higher ram amount for vegas )
blow away all this GPU stuff . ( although vegas pro x 64 still thinking in 4GB limit RAM since it barely uses what is available -> here vegas pro x 64 software could ( should ) be improved a LOT !! )

Do not expect wonders with this GPU idea ( als not in adobe products ) , maybe in very old underpowered CPU and few ram only systems it will help ( a very little ).

I sure am glad I went with the AMD Radeon 6870. It works fine with Vegas Pro 12. Not perfect, but very usable.

Bob (Farss), I completely agree. I may have guessed at the wrong card (560ti - moderate price and performance), but if I _know_ that switching to a Quadro 4000 or AMD whatever will really stabilize V12 for me.

I have only had 2 or 3 white-screen-of-deaths since starting to use V12 (I use it 3 or 4 hours per day), but those came a the worst possible time. (Perhaps something in the bitsphere detected my stress?)

> "Do not expect wonders with this GPU idea ( als not in adobe products ) , maybe in very old underpowered CPU and few ram only systems it will help ( a very little )."

I'm not experiencing that. I have a brand new Intel Core i7-3930K Sandy Bridge-E 3.2GHz Six Core Processor. The rendertest-2010 takes 3:21 with GPU disable and only 1:28 with my Quadro 4000 enabled. So I'm seeing a 228% improvement with GPU enabled and I certainly don't have an old under-powered CPU.

~jr

It's already been stated that for professional usage the requirement would necessitate a QUADRO and not a "gaming" card.

JR said:
"I'm not experiencing that. I have a brand new Intel Core i7-3930K Sandy Bridge-E 3.2GHz Six Core Processor. The rendertest-2010 takes 3:21 with GPU disable and only 1:28 with my Quadro 4000 enabled. So I'm seeing a 228% improvement with GPU enabled and I certainly don't have an old under-powered CPU."

Except you're talking about rendering and woelf is talking about playback.

Grazie said:
"It's already been stated that for professional usage the requirement would necessitate a QUADRO and not a "gaming" card."

By whom and with what qualification?
So far the only statement of that, that I've read is one line copied and pasted by SCS from nVidia's marketing . In fairness to nVidia the statement almost certainly holds true for the entirety of Adobe's product range.


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The whole problem with this and previous such conversations is none of us have a definative specification of what the subject of the conversation is. Saying "what I've always done" is useless, who here knows specifically what that is.
It may or may not be that what you've "always done" aligns well with what SCS or Adobe have been trying to achieve over the last few years or not.
The importance of having very specific information is well borne out by two rather conflicting posts above, both are probably correct for those users.

Bob.

jr: "... the GeForce gaming cards are for gamers... the Quadro professional card are for NLE's. If choose to buy the wrong card that's you choice to make."

Wooohoo! Quadro K5000 only $1800 for the card. I'll take two. hehehehe
Truly useful for professionals.... of which I am not one. I guess I'm happy in hobbyist-land. :)

Read real world results here.

None of the top twenty machines use the Quadro cards. I don't know if any of those people are "professional" however the top perorming system has 25 HDDs in it and from elsewhere I deduce they're all SSDs. Maybe the gent is some uber wealthy guy making home movies :)

The 4000 is built on the GTX 4xx series chips which are dated, even the GTX 5xx series cards are faster.

There's a very good read from nVidia here on how to build a top performing system, well for Adobe's software at least. One point of interest that should be in common is the amount of vRAM, you need at the very least enough to hold 1 frame of video, dependant of course on what resolution you're working at.

Of some note Adobe don't use OpenCL much and it barely rates a mention. CUDA != OpenCL.

Bob.