Video editing card

[moogle]

I've been reading up on video editing cards for a friend as I had no idea what they were used for. From what I've read it seems these expensive cards are specially made to do realtime effects on videos open in programs such as Adobe Premiere Pro, Vegas etc. They also have dedicated processors for MPEG/video encoding.

What I'd like to know is with i7 out, and the huge amounts of memory you can get, do these cards still make a big difference? Like can't an i7 system do the effects as fast and encode the video or does the video editing card still beat it.

I'm comparing the i7 to an editing card bought in 2000-2003. Surely it can't still beat a top end system of today?

Any help is mucho appreciated

[Funkstar]

I don't know for sure, but I would suspect the lower end hardware cards of a few years ago are pretty much redundant because of the increase in general processing power.

What is of benefit these days, is things like Nvidias CUDA system and the Adobe CS suite.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=16939

Nero is also CUDA optimised apparently. - http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=17449

The major advantage to a system like CUDA is that they aren't really hardware acceleration cards like the old Matrox RT series. They are built specifically for what they do. Stream processing cards like the CUDA system mean that when they get faster, so the capabilities of their acceleration improves.

[moogle]

Thanks Funkstar. I naively thought that the CUDA side of Adobe software was only integrated in Photoshop.

[Funkstar]

I would actually have thought After Effects and Premier would benefit from CUDA even more than Photoshop. But I could be wrong, I don't know what kind of maths they use for image vs. video operations.

I'd love to get my hands on a cards like that and a copy of the full blown CS4 for my desktop rig. Haven't played with After Effects since v4.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I don't know where people get all this info that Nvidia cards only accelerates CS4 and Premier but the ATI HD3*** and HD4*** series does it too!!

http://www.techenclave.com/graphic-c...ti-120237.html

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/view...nalId=kb405445

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/view...nalId=kb404898

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/view...5711&sliceId=1

http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b73e90

Everything actually points to Adobe using OpenGL.

[Funkstar]

Thats probably down to ATI not pushing this very much, and Nvidia really pushing it.

[moogle]

I'd love to get my hands on a cards like that and a copy of the full blown CS4 for my desktop rig. Haven't played with After Effects since v4.

Doesn't need to be a Quadro card does it?

[Biscuit]

no works beautifully with my GTX260

Video editting cards are great if you are ingesting from sources that have a specific format such as a DVCproHD(tape) camera or HDCAMSR (i wish ) however now that there is a lot of file based formats kicking around like P2, AVCHD and XDCAM, even this is becoming slightly irrelevant. I think they offer you real time effects for these specific formats but thats really the problem with editting cards, they work with specific formats which makes them redundant pretty quickly in broadcast.

[fuddam]

yep, in video editing software, the vid card tends to be less of a benefit for crunching numbers, other than for ingestion of specific formats. On other hand, NLEs like Edius come in multiple versions, some of which are software only, and others bundled with a card that definitely improves real time previews etc.

Sony Vegas scales with the hardware, and doesn't care what card you have, so can run it on an 800mhz machine (yes, true story), all the way up to the fastest multi cores out there.

essentially, choose the software you like, then look for related hardware.

[Badbonji]

With Badaboom it could transcode at the same speed as my i7 at 4Ghz for my 8800gts and GTX295, and the speed with each was the same roughly. But the added benefit is with my GTX295 and i7 I can probably find a way to transcode on each gpu seperately, and have another one on my i7 for 3 in 1
So I wouldn't think an old editing card would do as well at all, without CUDA to help it anyway.