Aw! C'mon Bobola - spit it out, 4 those of us aren't up to speed on this . . I know you want to?

Grazie

It seems like common sense that a fast graphics card through a fast bus can write pixels to the screen faster and thus enhance the preview experience.

So, this is solely at the Monitor end? This is NOT the processing of the timeline TO the monitor? Is that it? In which Bob's "suspicion" is only relevant to the managing of the pixels which, again, in turn as you say is what WOULD be expected? Is that?

A faster GraphCard is purely for the delivery to the screen, not for VEgas to internal process the timeline - yes? - Then suspicion than what we would have thought of. Bit like SATA to Firewire? It is ONLY another bit of fast hardware, nothing intelligent going on here?

Grazie

I have no reason to believe that Vegas is using the graphics hardware to actively speed up playback of the timeline. I believe that a faster card is just shuffling pixels around faster than a slow card.

My suspicion came from the controls we get in the Secondary Display Device, they are possibly hooked into the video card drivers. The Secondary Display I believe runs as a video overlay which is different to the internal preview. I doubt it makes a huge amount of difference but sometimes every little bit helps.

Bob.

> My suspicion came from the controls we get in the Secondary Display Device, they are possibly hooked into the video card drivers.

Ah! So that's where you are considering the extra poke could be coming from, AND maybe that was what the responder (Gary?) was referring to?

We would still need a conclusive, intelligent answer to nail it?

Grazie

"We would still need a conclusive, intelligent answer to nail it?"

Sure but look at the controls, you cannot get the internal preview monitor to de-interlace but you can the secondary. The de-interlace quality I get on my secondary display is very good, better than I can get out of Vegas and it doesn't slow down the preview. I'd ask if Vegas is doing that in its own code then something is really messed up, like how come it's only available on the secondary display!

Same goes for ICM lookup tables for monitor calibration, those are probably a pretty hefty load to run in software and yet it makes no difference to preview performance turning them on or off.

There's a couple of other switches that I can't remember as well but they too look very much like what GPUs eat for breakfast and CPUs tend to choke on.

As Gary said, it may help Preview, it will not help rendering.

On top of that as John says, simply a card that can be written to faster (less wait cycles) could also make a difference.

Bob.

Clearly we need a more conclusive response from SONY. Wouldn't you think?

Grazie

Also, some plug-ins like AAV ColorLab seem to utilize some GPU acceleration, as they do not slow down the real time playback at all.

This wouldn't be possible if Vegas itself was completely and absolutely GPU-agnostic.

Anyway, if SCS ever confirms that or announces full CUDA support in future release, this is the card I'm going to buy:

Quadro NVS 450

CUDA support, up to 4 monitors, passive cooling - looks like the winner for video editing. With the Tesla add-on card with plenty of memory, this will also serve my CAE applications.

I'd like more details about EXACTLY what the Secondary Display Device settings do, they get very scant coverage in the online help. It does mention something about improving playback performance by unchecking the Display Frames During Preview checkbox.
I'm getting 25fps playback of my FullHD XDCAM footage on my 24" Dell monitor and it is very nicely de-interlaced AND I can select Studio or Computer levels. However some combinations of setting between the internal preview and the seconday display produce unpleasant outcomes, have a play around with them.

Piotr is right on the money, CC is one thing that the GPU should be used for. I'm not so certain about using the GPU for decoding and encoding. The GPU data stream is mostly one way so you can easily use the GPU to provide quite complex CC in realtime for preview and then switch the same algorithms to the CPU during rendering.

Bob.

another tidbit that confirms what many experience:
What causes the low memory errors while rendering in Vegas Pro 9? Is it a software limitation?

Could explain why someone like me, who converts pretty much everything to DV or HDV before doing my editing has relatively no problems compared to someone who doesn't & takes whatever format they end up with.

I agree though, THAT SHOULD BE A STICKY!

Lots of questions could be answered (but people still ask how to post pic's so.... ;) )