Thought I'd share some test results for Vegas renders of HDV (1440x1080 Cineform Intermediate) and DV (720x480) clips using a Magic Bullet White Diffusion 5 filter. I love this filter but don't use it very much because of horrendous render times.
I upgraded to MB Editors 2 which uses the GPU and upgraded my video card from an nVidia Geforce FX 5700 (128MB) to a 6800 GS/256MB (if interested, see my system specs below).
Here are the comparative renders times in mm:ss for a 10 second clip (talking head, not much motion). I rendered the DV clips to mpg2 using a custom DVD Architect "best" setting. This was to emulate my usual workflow. I rendered the HDV clips to wmv9 1440x1080 default template.
Video Card................................5700.............6800........Difference
DV no filter.................................00:13...........00:13.............none
DV with MB filter........................04:10...........00:32......7.81 times faster
HDV no filter..............................03:21...........03:18.......1.02 times faster
HDV with MB filter.....................19:17...........03:50.......5.03 times faster
I didn't expect the faster video card to have any effect on Vegas rendering without a MB filter. And this is essentially what happened.
I did expect much faster renders with the MB filter. And that's what happened.
The MB website reports comparative playback framerates for NTSC DV clips using MB version 2.0 with three different video cards. For the nVidia 6800 Ultra, they report 14-21 fps using various MB filters. My 6800 GS is close to the Ultra. I got 15.6 fps DV playback with the White Diffusion 5 filter. Using the 5700 card, I got 1.5 fps playback. The 6800 was 10.6 times faster.
HDV framerate was 4.2 fps with the 5700 and 22 fps with the 6800, 5. 2 times faster.
The great thing for me is I can now use the MB WD5 filter on HDV clips with a modest render time penalty of only 16% (i.e. 1.16 times longer). It used to be a penalty of 475% (i.e. 5.75 times longer).
With DV, the penalty is still significant--146% (i.e. 2.46 times longer). But this is way better than the old penaly of 1823% (i.e. 19.23 times longer).
A 7800 card would of course improve things even more. And there is now an AGP version of the 7800 out there. The Magic Bullet website suggests it would give real time playback of DV.
GPU processing is indeed a magic bullet for using Magic Bullet v2 filters in Vegas. I hope GPU processing becomes a similar magic bullet for accelerating the next version of Vegas.
System Spec: Supermicro dual Xeon (2x2.8 Ghz) mobo with an AGP (no PCI Express); 2 Gigs of RAM, SATA Raid 0.
I upgraded to MB Editors 2 which uses the GPU and upgraded my video card from an nVidia Geforce FX 5700 (128MB) to a 6800 GS/256MB (if interested, see my system specs below).
Here are the comparative renders times in mm:ss for a 10 second clip (talking head, not much motion). I rendered the DV clips to mpg2 using a custom DVD Architect "best" setting. This was to emulate my usual workflow. I rendered the HDV clips to wmv9 1440x1080 default template.
Video Card................................5700.............6800........Difference
DV no filter.................................00:13...........00:13.............none
DV with MB filter........................04:10...........00:32......7.81 times faster
HDV no filter..............................03:21...........03:18.......1.02 times faster
HDV with MB filter.....................19:17...........03:50.......5.03 times faster
I didn't expect the faster video card to have any effect on Vegas rendering without a MB filter. And this is essentially what happened.
I did expect much faster renders with the MB filter. And that's what happened.
The MB website reports comparative playback framerates for NTSC DV clips using MB version 2.0 with three different video cards. For the nVidia 6800 Ultra, they report 14-21 fps using various MB filters. My 6800 GS is close to the Ultra. I got 15.6 fps DV playback with the White Diffusion 5 filter. Using the 5700 card, I got 1.5 fps playback. The 6800 was 10.6 times faster.
HDV framerate was 4.2 fps with the 5700 and 22 fps with the 6800, 5. 2 times faster.
The great thing for me is I can now use the MB WD5 filter on HDV clips with a modest render time penalty of only 16% (i.e. 1.16 times longer). It used to be a penalty of 475% (i.e. 5.75 times longer).
With DV, the penalty is still significant--146% (i.e. 2.46 times longer). But this is way better than the old penaly of 1823% (i.e. 19.23 times longer).
A 7800 card would of course improve things even more. And there is now an AGP version of the 7800 out there. The Magic Bullet website suggests it would give real time playback of DV.
GPU processing is indeed a magic bullet for using Magic Bullet v2 filters in Vegas. I hope GPU processing becomes a similar magic bullet for accelerating the next version of Vegas.
System Spec: Supermicro dual Xeon (2x2.8 Ghz) mobo with an AGP (no PCI Express); 2 Gigs of RAM, SATA Raid 0.