Importance of graphic cards during rendering

[bertsmith]

Hello there!

I've worked on several small video editing project over the last few months while at work. I'm doing this on my fairly standard desktop PC, and without any type of specialist hardware.

My question is this... after i have finished the editing process and i'm ready to export my work, which piece of my hardware contributes the greatest amount of effort whilst the frames are being rendered?

I know that a large CPU and plenty of RAM is definatley beneficial, but i was thinking more along the lines of graphic cards. Do they make a significant differance during rendering?
If they do provide the 'processing power' behind the rendering could someone advise me one what i'd be looking for if i were to buy such a card.

I havent needed to do any video capture as of yet, so if a graphic card solution is the way forward it wouldn't need to have any capturing capabilities.

Any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!!

[confus-ed]

Well welcome to Windrivers

Simple answer Yes, any video intensive application will benefit from a 'better' graphics card. Simple advice again, the 'best' card you can afford should give the most impact, but video performance is always to some extent 'hampered' by what else is attached & how its connected (interfaces create bottlenecks) ... so not much point for instance 'really' putting a high performnace video card on a system that can't move the data through it anyway without waiting for the data to arrive each time.

Perhaps if you advise on just what you have now, someone can talk you through the best options available to you ?

[bertsmith]

Well welcome to Windrivers

Simple answer Yes, any video intensive application will benefit from a 'better' graphics card. Simple advice again, the 'best' card you can afford should give the most impact, but video performance is always to some extent 'hampered' by what else is attached & how its connected (interfaces create bottlenecks) ... so not much point for instance 'really' putting a high performnace video card on a system that can't move the data through it anyway without waiting for the data to arrive each time.

Perhaps if you advise on just what you have now, someone can talk you through the best options available to you ?

Thanks for the reply... but sorry for the length of time its taken for me to get back to your post.

The information you give is definatley useful and has given me some 'food for thought'. But my main question at the moment really revolves around, what really makes a 'high performance' video card.

I know that there are lots of commonly available 'high spec' cards available for people who play games etc, but are these the cards that you would want to use for video work? Or can you indeed, use these types of cards.

I ask because in the past, I've looked at some high spec machines which have some cards which must have cost some serious money, so what is it that these cards have that allows them to perform well. I hope that my ignorance isn't shining through here, but at the moment i just dont know the answer to this.

Thanks.

[NooNoo]

That depends on which video application you have in mind... animation rendering requires some serious kit, however playing the latest and greatest shootemup only requires only a 10th of the performance required by professional animators.

Hardware mpeg2 encoding and decoding will be found on video editing biased cards.

It really is horses for courses, you tell us exactly what you plan to do, we tell you which range of cards to look at.

Also, a budget would be a good idea too.l

[bertsmith]

That depends on which video application you have in mind... animation rendering requires some serious kit, however playing the latest and greatest shootemup only requires only a 10th of the performance required by professional animators.

Hardware mpeg2 encoding and decoding will be found on video editing biased cards.

It really is horses for courses, you tell us exactly what you plan to do, we tell you which range of cards to look at.

Also, a budget would be a good idea too.l

Ok then, here goes.
I'll primarily be using Premier and possibly Adobe After Effects later on in a few months time.
I'll be taking source material from clients, which is currently supplied on disk but later to be supplied on digital tape.
I wont need to do any analogue capturing and I dont see this changing in the immediate future. I can use firewire for the digital transfers.

As for what I'll be doing in Premier, it'll amount to chopping and sequencing, adding affects, sorting out and adding sound etc and then exporting to various formats in various sizes. Some of the exports will be of a reasonably high resolution and of a reasonable length, so the speed of the rendering would be important.

Since i dont know what type of card it is that I'd need to look for, I can start at a budget of around £500, but if anyone can suggest a card that is less/more expensive that can do the job, then i'm completley open to suggestions and i'm sure that if i need to go higher, can twist the arm of the person how controls the purse strings if need be.

Thanks.

[confus-ed]

Does our £500 have to buy us some s/w too ? 'cos adobe premier will cost nearly that !

You get it 'chucked in' (full version) with a number of matrox cards, which would no doubt suit your needs, worth a think ...

[ilovetheusers]

What is said above makes the largest difference out of anything from what I understand. The Real time video editing card makes the world. It's not a video card, it's just another card that sticks in and crunches the video and effects faster than anything else will.

To answer your original question, the CPU makes the biggest difference. After that it's everything else, not just one thing.

Lots of RAM helps a lot, a really big and FAST hard drive is key and a video/sound card helps with some things but not really with speed. Its most important what sort of video types can be rendered and what effects can be applied and whether they can be rendered by the card or by the CPU. I've had 3 cards I've used with Premiere and none have seemed to have a major impact on speed. I've had a ATI Rage Fury which couldn't render mpeg2, a Matrox g550 which was designed for video/graphics and when I swapped it for an ATI 9200 I saw a difference applying effect, but no increased speed for rendering video to a different format or what have you. Pretty sure that's more dependant upon the CPU.

Next thing I'm getting when I have $$ again someday will be one of the cards Confused mentioned. They come with Premiere 6.5 which is way better than it's predecessors (7 is out now though and may be even better but I don't have the $$ for a copy).

[ShadowWynd]

For what you are doing, the video card does not really factor into the rendering speed of premiere. The things that will influence the speed in Premiere is CPU, Memory, Hard drive, in approximately that order.

Matrox RT.X100 is a separate card for video editing. It comes with Premiere Pro, and is able to run Premiere in real-time (all the effects, MPEG conversion, etc.) The slow link in the chain then becomes the operator, not the machine - it can go as fast as your creativity. When I last checked, the card is $1100 and a workhorse system is recommended. If you are doing this professionally, as opposed to a hobby, a card like this is the only way to go.
Especially since it comes with Premiere as well.

A high-end video card really will not help unless you are doing certain types of CAD or 3D work, and then it depends on the program and the type of render. For some projects, an OpenGL render will have enough quality (as opposed to radiosity or raytracing), so getting a nice high-end video card could enable an animation job to go down in real time, rather than weeks.

[slgrieb]

Ah, the joys of video editing! It mostly sucks. OOPS! Forget I said that. Even if it is true. If I had to make a suggestion, I would vote for Canopus hardware. Guardedly.
Canopus had a well-deserved reputation in the industry for buggy software and excessively processor-intensive products until the last couple of years. If you are doing DV, I would look at the DVRaptor2. It has an on-board processor and can do most rendering tasks in real time. About $500 US.

I used to like Pinnacle Systems hardware lots, but the last 3 years or so have seen their tech support turn to crap, and their software is awful. As for Matrox, I'm not sure right now. They have had distributor trouble over the last few years due to their warranty and return policies. These days, I would focus more on overall system performance ( quick CPU, plent of good RAM, a good high capacity hard drive [SCSI not required]) and not worry about specific video hardware. But, in any event, your video card will not affect your rendering performance in the least unless it incorporates video rendering hardware so do some Matrox products