New MacPro?

For some time I have been critical of the frequent need to render transitions or FX in the timeline in order to get a decent quality preview. In my case I am using EX1 footage ingested using Log and Transfer and placed on a Prores time line. Even a gaussian blur or soft focus filter requires rendering in order to see it at full frame rate, high quality; however it will play at full frame rate, medium quality without rendering, but the drop in quality is very noticeable.

With this in mind I visited my local Mac pro dealer and looked at the latest octo-core, 2.93 GHz MacPro fitted with 12Gb Ram and two NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 cards. To my surprise, I still needed to render in order to get a quality preview (same files as on my own machine) and the render times seeemed much the same.

I suspect the lack of performance boost may have been due to the two graphics cards that were used compared to the ATI X1800 card fitted in my machine (2007, 2 x dual core 2.66GHz , 7GB RAM).

Am I correct in my conclusion and, if so, what sort of improvement should I have seen had the ATI Radeon HD 4870 card been fitted to the demo MacPro? How would the current dual 2.66GHz octo core MacPro compare to my present system?

Thanks in advance for any comment,

Geoff

Blur and defocus aren't real-time effects in Final Cut. They have to be rendered no matter what.

TWO graphics cards doesn't help FCP at all. In fact, it can cause issues. Many plugins are FXPlug plugins, and those rely on the graphics cards to help render them or make them RT. TWO graphics cards causes confusion and they might not work.

Not to mention that Motion and Color rely heavily on graphics cards, and two of them make them not work reliably, if at all.


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As Shane said - two GPUs probably won't help at present as I don't think Snow Leopard's really been optimised to utilise the spare processing power of the GPUs within FCP et al. If you are using Leopard then you definitely won't be making any use of the additional GPU power for CPU tasks through OpenCL.

However with a faster GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) then you need to have GPU enabled plugins that DO take advantage of this. (not sure about multiple GPUs on separate cards though)

For instance - the Noise Industries Blur filter (in Unlimited RT mode) does a very good job of showing you almost realtime playback on my system in most resolutions and CODECs including XDCAM HD EX.

Currently I have a 2008 3Ghz 8-core MacPro with 32GB RAM and the EVGA Nvidia GTX285 Graphics Card Running on Snow Leopard 10.6.2.

Although I imagine the ATI 4870 would be as good due to the Apple Pro Apps being tuned more finely for the AMD ATI graphics cards.

Even the new 2009 2x 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" is faster than my 8-core 3GHz Harpertown.

The Plugins that use CoreImage, CodeVideo, Quartz Extreme or OpenGL are accelerated by the GPU so the faster the GPU the more performance you get out.

Noise Industries, CoreMelt, CHV all do GPU enabled Plugins but I can't comment on which are the best as I haven't tested them thoroughly.

Best thing to do is download the Demos and test them.

But don't expect full rendered quality from any plugin although certainly you will get a better previews the faster and more powerful CPU/GPUs you have.

Another thing to mention is although a faster Mac that will help rendering - you also need to increase your storage speed to feed the monster! So looking into a fast RAID array might also help improve your workflow.



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Thanks guys.

I didn't know at the time that there the two lower end GPU cards were in the machine otherwise I would have asked for the higher end one to be tried, you have confirmed my suspicion.

I was also told the a new ProAps software revision, due in the near future, will enable all cores to be utilised in FCP, have you heard anything along these line. If correct,then this may have quite a big impact on the performmance issues.

Geoff

When I render Topaz Enhance filters in FCP on a 2009 2x2.26 Quadcore, I see activity on all 8 cores and all 8 virtual cores, according to Activity Monitor.

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Quote

I was also told the a new ProAps software revision, due in the near future

Apple never pre-announces stuff like that. Whenever you hear something like that, remember that it's a rumor, and as likely false as true.

I'm not sure what you mean by "performance issues." If you're talking about non-real-time effects, then that's not a performance issue. Some effects in Final Cut are real-time, some aren't; that's just the way it is.

My thanks for all answers so far.

My main criticsm is that in order to get a high quality impression of what many effects or transitions will be like it is necessary to render them and this can take quite some time. In some instances it is possible to play the effect at full frame rate, but using the medium quality setting and this results in a poor display. Although I have never had need to use the QT implode transition, it is impossible for me to play this back without having to render beforehand, playing back at reduced quality produces a horrid image.

Regarding the soft focus and blur effects, I am able to play these back in the high quality setting when applied to SD footage, but not HD; this implies that it is simply because the processor on my present system is inadequate rather than anything else. Additionaly, I am unable to play any FX Plugin filter or transition without rendering.

Am I expecting too much? All comments welcome.

TIA,

Geoff

Hey Geoff
Other than hardware alone I think you might also be able to squeeze appreciably better (or at least more acceptable) performance / results if you revisited some other areas of your workflow that are currently constraining performance. If I'm reading correctly you're working with full raster MPEG HD (Long GOP) based footage (XDCAM EX) in an ProRes timeline, to which you are applying (testing with) processor intensive effects ... and finding the realtime preview (or lack of) not of a high enough quality. My guess is that working in an edit friendly intermediate may lend your existing system the boost it needs to provide the performance you're expecting.
In a similar vein, what kind of storage subsystem are you running with your setup .. this too can affect overall performance.
Best
Andy

Hi Andy,

Your understanding of my problem is correct!

I am presently running two internal SATA drives in RAID 0. I have also tried 3 drives in RAID 0, but didn't perceive any great improvement; the current read data rate is 120MB/s, so this should not be the cause of the problem.

I have also converted the XDCAM EX footage to ProRes before placing them on the timeline, but again I didn't see much improvement in performance.

In comparrison to applying the same type of affect and transition to the same clips on an Edius timeline in the same MacPro (operating under Bootcamp) I find that FCP can take up to 6 or 8 times as long to render and, in many cases, the Edius timeline will playback in real time without any rendering at all. If only I could get all FCP's capability with the Edius efficency and speed ... oh well!

Cheers,

Geoff

>the current read data rate is 120MB/s, so this should not be the cause of the problem.

Agreed.

>I have also converted the XDCAM EX footage to ProRes before placing them on the timeline, but again I didn't see much improvement in performance.

Wow. That's quite surprising.

In comparrison to applying the same type of affect and transition to the same clips on an Edius timeline in the same MacPro ...

And yet, and yet, I so loath Edius, as despite all those things that are clearly great about it, it still manages to be instantly dislikable :-) As you note, it's probably all down to expectations!

For me the realtime preview in FCP for the majority of effects is easily of a high enough quality to get a good impression of how the effect will look on my footage, if not then I'll press Option P (play every frame) to get a full quality if slow preview (or use the Quick View tool, Option 8, for a RAM preview) and so I am not really spending any inordinate amount of time on interim rendering ... but then again this may be more down to my personal edit style as, to be fair, beyond color correction + basic motion properties (in FCP) or color correction + 2D PIP / Layout tool (in Edius) I rarely have need of much in the way of effects ... and certainly not the "implode type" ;-)

Very Best
Andy

>Am I expecting too much?

Yea... Some effects aren't real time. Neither After Effects or Motion gives you full quality real time preview. You will have to wait for the frames to render. Although FCP has less need for speedy renders than a compositing tool.

My gripe is actually with Color. It would be great if you can pre-render around 5 seconds in the sequence to RAM and play that back through the capture card.



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