Video ! - How Sony Creative Software use OpenCL

T Reynolds wrote on 4/7/2015, 12:36 AM

This talk will discuss how Sony Creative Software used OpenCL to build a 4K video pipeline in Vegas Pro and the new Catalyst Prepare applications. It will cover the design as well as the promises and pitfalls of writing over 100 OpenCL kernels for all aspects of video processing from color management to plug-in video effects.

By Dennis Adams Director of Technology, Sony Creative Software Inc.

http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2015/video/S5592.html

Explains the History of OpenCL using Sony Vegas Pro, Past and Future.

Below, is a Video explaining the links Between Vulkan, SPIR-V and OpenCL 2.1

Khronos API Standards Update: Including Vulkan, OpenCL 2.1 and SPIR-V
Neil Trevett Vice President Mobile Ecosystem, NVIDIA

Discover how over 120 companies cooperate at the Khronos Group to create open, royalty free standards that enable developers to access the power of the GPU to accelerate demanding compute, graphics and vision applications. This session includes the very latest updates, including the newly announced Vulkan, SPIR-V and OpenCL 2.1 specifications.

http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2015/video/S5734.html

GPU Power through Javascript for Anyone with Universe 2.0 SDK
Sean Safreed Co-founder, Red Giant

Red Giant Universe is a set of tools for creating visual effects across a wide range of popular DCC apps. It is now accessible by artists with basic Javascript programming skills. The system enables users to create in minutes or hours what used to take days or weeks to write in a mainstream computer language. This session will follow on the introductory session from 2014, with new expanded coverage of the SDK, Javascript examples and new additions to the system for real-time vector render and photo based rendering all in real-time on the GPU.

http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2015/video/S5483.html

High-Performance Video Encoding Using NVIDIA GPUs

Abhijit Patait Sr. Manager, System Software, NVIDIA

This session is intended to provide a broad overview of the video encoding capabilities of current and future versions of NVIDIA's NVENC, a hardware accelerated encoder that ships with NVIDIA GPUs. We will provide an overview of the hardware capabilities and software APIs used for video encoding, with an overview of recent improvements in features, performance and quality. We will also provide a quick overview of how NVIDIA video encoding can be used in applications such as transcoding, video streaming, and GPU virtualization.

http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2015/video/S5613.html

Comments

Grazie wrote on 4/7/2015, 1:04 AM

Thanks Terence! - I hang on any words coming from Dennis Adams.

This explains the success I've had with my very humble nVidia GTX560ti . It also explains the "roll-out" over GPU<>CPU and the strategic decision making regarding the same - totally, totally absorbing.

Again, thank you for this post.

Grazie

astar wrote on 4/7/2015, 3:17 AM

Very informative. Thanks for posting this.

I always wondered why Vegas did not show the CPU in the list of compute devices. That would be because the Vegas engine is using that device for internal work.

My guess is that all video gets decompressed, converted from YUV to RGB, then sent to various elements CPU or GPU. Before finally being sent back to the display driver, to be drawn to screen. Depending on the type and amount of effects or compositing, a single uncompressed RGBA video stream could be sent back and forth across the GPU PCIe bus many times. Next add multiple tracks doing the same thing, all of which might have to be composited together. You can see how timing issues on effects that take to long to process, or bandwidth, can quickly slow a system down below full frame rate.

A systems like the new X99 and Xeon chipsets would be better optimized for Vegas by dedicating a GPU/x16 paths to displays only, and another GPU/x16 path towards compute functions. Most i7 Gen4 or below chipsets do not have the PCIe lanes/X16 slots, to support more than one GPU at a time running full bandwidth.

Another thing I noticed is that Vegas 11 shipped with the HD5770 a Juniper XT AMD chip, as a supported configuration. The HD6870 in the presentation, and the V8800 are both XT chips. The 7970, 290X, FPW9000, and FPW9100 are all XT chips. My guess is that the XT chips and drivers are tested more thoroughly than the other non flagship chipsets. It was surprising to see such old cards offered as benchmarks, in a very recent presentation.

Based on the presentation, it also seemed like Vegas 14 might be rebranded, or at least have a PC and a MAC OSX version. Since it sounds like maybe they are working on a new engine, which is already in Cat Prepare.

T Reynolds wrote on 4/7/2015, 1:05 PM

Your Both Welcome.

I Have added some more Video's you might be interested in.

videoITguy wrote on 4/7/2015, 1:36 PM

and very relevant -

From Sony at the NAB 2015 - two vital seminars:

1) XAVC® technology: An advanced codec architecture for HD to 4K production workflows. Sony's Chief Technology Officer Hugo Gaggioni gives you an inside look at the expanded XAVC family of codecs and their application throughout the workflow.

and

2)Catalyst Production Suite: Focused, fast cutting for 4K, RAW, and HD video. Learn how to take advantage of the amazing resolution of 4K, as well as the high dynamic range of Sony's RAW and XAVC formats. Discover the tight integration between Catalyst Prepare and Catalyst Edit.

Pete Siamidis wrote on 4/7/2015, 2:00 PM

Sooooo....does this mean the next version of Vegas Pro will be supporting hardware encoding on Maxwell gen 2 cards?

OldSmoke wrote on 4/7/2015, 2:15 PM

[I]Sooooo....does this mean the next version of Vegas Pro will be supporting hardware encoding on Maxwell gen 2 cards? [/I]

I think the question is more how well the next Gen of Nivida cards will support OpenCL. It seems that SCS is moving away from hardware specific codecs like current ones for MC AVC and Sony AVC towards full OpenCL support. OpenCL/GL has been an issue with Nvidia because they are putting more weight on their proprietary CUDA.

I am looking forward to proper multi GPU support.

Pete Siamidis wrote on 4/7/2015, 2:39 PM

I know that Kepler cards were kinda poopy for opencl support, but from the benchmarks I've seen Maxwell cards do ok on open cl. In any case this announcement is kinda interesting, almost sounds like they have started from scratch with a brand new speed focused render engine for this new Catalyst Suite they are talking about. Have to wait for NAB to see what happens but they are claiming fluid 4k editing of Sony XAVC footage with Catalyst Edit. This is very promising! I know that Vegas Pro currently has huge bottlenecks, probably because it's a decade+ old design, to where scrubbing 4k footage on my 750m based laptop actually performs at the same speed as my 970 based desktop, so you know something is clearly wrong under the hood. I'll happily switch to Catalyst Edit if it does indeed work smoothly with 4k footage, if they kept scripting support that is. It's not yet clear if Catalyst is meant to work with Vegas Pro or eventually replace it one day, have to wait and see how this all shakes out. But in any case it looks like Sony is indeed looking very seriously into gpu support and smooth editing which is great news.