AVCHD/h.264 GPU plugin for Vegas

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MPM wrote on 7/12/2009, 1:45 PM
If it's of any interest & such...

My understanding is that the drivers accommodate off-loading tasks to the GPU, & it's chiefly up to any developers to implement it. The 1st notable examples were on Wall St, well before the fall, & ATI's folding @ home efforts. ATI's been accelerating some video functions, for some formats, for over a year... it varies by software installed, GPU, & card manufacturer... For a lot of applications having PowerDVD installed & accel turned on makes a difference, even when you're not doing anything you'd think Power DVD would be involved with. This stuff is different than simply using DX functions for video, than advertising hardware accel because the card has hardware DX accel. ATI is still working on their minimalist transcoder, with only AsVideoConv & Cyberlink developing 3rd party stuff. In contrast according to Don Grafts postings Nvidia has been quite helpful in developing software to take advantage of their Cuda stuff. And AFAIK this focus all came about because of AVC HD, & the common need for accel to play it, so of all the video formats possible, that's the one I'd expect to be I guess I'd say most available to developers to exploit.

GPUZ set to display averages & constantly update will show pretty clearly if the GPU's involved. Personally I like to use AviSynth using Direct Show inputs, fed via the now ancient VFAPI into Vegas, & have seen some GPU usage, but haven't gone further to check out just Vegas itself so far.

0404 wrote on 7/14/2009, 11:54 AM
More informations on this video french site

http://www.repaire.net/forums/hdv-avchd-etc/205695-gpu-decoder-plugin-decodage-avchd.html

divide, from divideframe.com, answers questions.
MPM wrote on 7/14/2009, 12:51 PM
or
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.repaire.net%2Fforums%2Fhdv-avchd-etc%2F205695-gpu-decoder-plugin-decodage-avchd.html

for me it would be interesting to know if/how this sort of plugin is effected by the newer win7 graphics drivers?

With ATI, reported GPU speed goes down when hardware accelerating renders -- GPUZ plot actually looks like a comb -- & I'd think it safe to say whether ATI or Geforce, resources have to come from somewhere, so video processing would have to take something from some other function. That doesn't matter much 'cause the video card has resources to spare while in Vegas, but would the new type drivers (with only 1 display cache) add or subtract from what's available?
JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/14/2009, 1:04 PM
> thumbleweed and JohnnyRoy: Could you pls. give us some numbers for Fps before and after using GPU acceleration - and what media you are trying?

I had to uninstall it because there is no way you can work without buying it. Just so you understand, it places a big white rectangle over 50% of the center of your frame with the words "unregistered" or something like that. There is no way to view AVCHD files in Vegas without the rectangle showing up as long as the driver is installed. So you install it, decide right then and there to buy it or not, and if you don't you must uninstall it to use AVCHD files again! Just the nature of the beast I guess.

I really don't remember what the increase was but with the gpu driver I got 29.976 all the way through on AVCHD files without the ramp up that Vegas sometimes does (slow at first and they normal speed). I guess if i didn't have a QuadCore it might be more valuable to me but AVCHD plays back pretty smooth on my PC without any hardware support so I'm not really a good test case.

~jr
David Laine wrote on 7/14/2009, 1:30 PM
I had a go with this to see if it helped my problem with HG10 clips

it does not work I only get the audio part of the clip that was with xp32 using a nvidia 9600 VC
jabloomf1230 wrote on 7/14/2009, 1:53 PM
I had the same problem (see my previous post in this thread) and if you check the link to that forum (in someone else's previous post in this thread), others are having the same problem. It appears that the decoder has not been tested out on a wide variety of platforms.
0404 wrote on 7/16/2009, 1:34 PM
1.02 Update

http://www.divideframe.com/?p=downloads
0404 wrote on 7/18/2009, 8:41 AM
Again

GPU Decoder Vegas 1.03
http://www.divideframe.com/?p=downloads

ritsmer wrote on 7/18/2009, 12:49 PM
Now this is a company that cares about their customers and make an update every time a programming mishap is found.

Just ordered a GeForce 250 card to get the best speed out of this GPU Decoder plugin.
blink3times wrote on 7/18/2009, 1:35 PM
I just picked up a GeForce GTX 275 and thought I'd give this a try.

I can't get anywhere with it.... crashes my system. Of course I'm using Dolby Digital MTS files and that may be the issue. What ever it is..... they still have a long way to go before they reach perfection.

We'll keep an eye on it.
srode wrote on 7/18/2009, 6:43 PM
Hopefully 9.0a it will work with
jabloomf1230 wrote on 7/18/2009, 7:56 PM
V1.03 now works for me with 32 bit Vegas Pro 9 and Vista x64. Previous versions already worked with Premiere Pro CS4. With a quad core CPU, you can add a few FX before the preview loses fps. With a dual core, you get RT preview on "Preview, Half", but once you add FX, the fps slows down.The D-F GPU Decoder does not use SLI, so a high end dual GPU video card doesn't help here, except that you will get slightly faster preview speeds if the GPU core & memory speeds are higher. It definitely makes direct editing of h.264 manageable, but I'm not sure it's worth $95 for each version (PP & VP).

It's also too bad that you presently can't frame serve out of Vegas to something like Badaboom, which is a CUDA-based h.264 encoder. Eventually someone will develop an NLE that has GPU-based decoding, FX and encoding. It's a matter of time.
blink3times wrote on 7/19/2009, 8:01 AM
"It definitely makes direct editing of h.264 manageable, but I'm not sure it's worth $95 for each version (PP & VP)."

Well PP is already somewhat gpu accelerated and even with it's acceleration you can only do simple effects/transitions before things start getting jerky again. I can apply the GPU sphere transition in PP and it will work at full frame rate in DRAFT quality only. If I raise the preview quality passed that then.... right back to the jerking again. Granted, the price/quality of your vid card is somewhat related to the equation (I have the GTX 275).... but the question is how much do you spend before you come to the conclusion that editing in native avchd is not worth it.
apit34356 wrote on 7/19/2009, 10:17 AM
I think being able put AVCHD on the TL , with simple cuts added(ie-B-roll), then push out to MXF for further work, could be solution. Since we can run multi copies of vegas, one copy could be converting AVCHD to MXF, while another copy could be the production workhorse using the MXF files ;-)
ritsmer wrote on 7/19/2009, 1:28 PM
Yes - and don't forget to set the priority of the converting job to Below Normal - then your editing job will not slow down.
0404 wrote on 7/19/2009, 11:53 PM
Once again: the 1.04 version.

http://www.divideframe.com/?p=downloads
0404 wrote on 7/28/2009, 5:21 AM
New: 1.05

http://www.divideframe.com/?p=downloads

blink3times wrote on 7/28/2009, 5:32 AM
1.05 is still a TOTAL failure for me. Vegs won't even start. I get asked to file a crash report before Vegas even comes up. Granted I'm using the latest Nvidia driver (190.xx) and divideFrame says you shouldn't. None the less I have no plans on down grading my machine to test any further.

Maybe by version 2 or 3 it will be stable enough to work with.....
enespacio wrote on 7/28/2009, 1:13 PM
The Divide Frame 1.05 version is working for me. For the first time I'm able to playback my .mts files on the timeline without any skipping. I monitored my CPU usage before DF and it would jump up to 90 or 100 percent. With DF the CPU never gets beyond 65 percent. My .mts files are from my Canon HFS100 maxed out at 24mbps. It may help that my GPU is an Nvidia Geforce 9800M GTS 1GB.
enespacio wrote on 7/28/2009, 1:24 PM
Uh Uh. spoke too soon. If you reverse a clip, vegas won't recognize it. If you use the velocity envelope to reverse its recognized for a while, and then they become "offline". There are also frames being dropped. I have contacted them about these issues.
Laurence wrote on 7/28/2009, 1:51 PM
Just out of curiosity. I usually do all my cuts first before I start adding filters and color correction. I started doing this when I used to work with a Canopus 1394 device for SD playback (which had the same limitations). It seems that if you work this way (doing cuts and timings first) that this program would be quite useful when working with AVCHD. Do most of you guys start adding color correction and filters right away?
jabloomf1230 wrote on 7/28/2009, 3:24 PM
The Vegas version has been working for me since V1.02 of the plugin, with driver 185.58, Quad core CPU, Vista x64 and a 9800GT video card (which is not a high-power card by any means and can be purchased online for ~ $100 US).

The Premiere Pro CS4 version has never worked for me, up until the most recent V1.05 of the plug-in. Now I get RT previews in "High Quality" mode. What more can you ask for?

With either NLE, as you add more transitions and FX, the load on both the CPU(s) and GPU increases and the preview speed slows. But AVCHD is definitely editable in Vegas Pro 9.