IndieV

Just a heads up that a new update for Premiere Pro CS5 has come out.

Notable fixes
• The Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 5.0.2 update adds Windows-based Mercury Playback Engine (MPE) support for new NVIDIA cards (GTX 470, Quadro 4000, Quadro 5000).
• The RED importer is now compatible with current RED firmware (build 30, v30.5.0), Mysterium X, and the most recent Color Science.
• Support for import and export of RED RMD files to and from REDCINE-X software.
• Support for XD-CAM HD export.
• Support for QuickTime files from JVC solid-state cameras.
• Support for source timecode in XDCAM 4:2:2 footage.
• Support for RED Rocket cards.
• Support for Broadcast Wave audio file format.
• Support for Broadcast Wave in OMF export.
• 10-bit DisplayPort support for NVIDIA Quadro cards (Windows only).

Finally official support for the new Fermi Nvidia cards. Seems a bit weird that the higher end GTX 480 and up aren’t listed.

It’s been two weeks since I got back from Vietnam and I finally feel like I’m getting back into the swing of things. I don’t know about you but after spending a month doing nothing but drinking cocktails, eating out every day and night and getting massaged every other day (no happy endings), all at a pittance mind you, it kind of feels like a drag getting back to reality. It didn’t help that I caught some nasty flu at the end of my trip.

Well the unfinished work is piling up and there’s nothing like building a new editing machine to get the motivation cranking again. Instead of going out and getting a custom built machine, being a cheapskate, I’d thought I’d save the $50 and put the bunch of components together myself. I’ve done it numerous times before and it’s really just like the adult’s equivalent of putting together a Lego set.

My budget for the whole PC including keyboard, monitors and everything else to get it up and running came to $1800au. My goal was to have something that could chew through any kind of footage I could throw at it and be compatible with the mercury engine in Adobe Premiere CS5. The result was as follows:

CPU: 2.8ghz – Currently the cheapest i7 quad core out there in the new LGA1366 socket spec.
Motherboard: – The cheapest most feature packed motherboard I could find locally. Includes the new USB 3.0 and SATA 3 specs. Good overclocking options too.
Ram: – No thrills 6GB set of ram. I’m planning on doubling this to 12gigs soon.
Video card: Zotac with 1gb of ram. With the GPU hack, I’d save a couple of hundred bucks on getting GTX285 with all the mercury playback engine benefits. This actually outperformed my other computer’s GTX285 in the Cinebench OpenGL test. I think the fact that the other computer has a Q6600 in it has more to do with that though.
Power Supply Unit or PSU: One of the most underrated components. Usually the first point of failure in a computer system so I went with a trusty psu. I wished I had paid a bit extra and got the with modular cables though. Modular cables make the build so much easier and neater.
Monitor: 23.6″ Wide LCD monitor. Doesn’t have the colour fidelity or bit depth of my Dell 24″ 2407. Really noticable in After Effects when you create any gradients and banding occurs where on the Dell it’s smooth as. It still makes an acceptable image though and at a very good price.
Keyboard and Mouse: – The worst keyboard I’ve ever used. You get what you pay for here and the keyboard is absolutely rubbish. You have to really push down hard on the buttons and if you’re a fast typer then expect to go back a lot to fill in letters that didn’t register. I don’t think they’ll offer a refund for this so I plan on doing a snuff film starring this keyboard.
Hard-drive: drive. Despite the green in the title, it’s still 7200rpm with 64mb of cache. I’ve got a bunch of other drives in ESATA cases to do the media handling.
All housed in a Black ATX Tower Case. I wanted something to look plain and sexy without looking like a neon world of warcraft base.

So how does it perform? Out of the box on stock settings, the performance in Premiere CS5 was frustratingly underwhelming. Things lagged like it was 1998 again and I couldn’t understand why. Even though it was stock, 2.8ghz should be plenty.
I soon found out what the cause was when I started to overclock the beast. The cpu underclocks itself when it’s not doing anything to save power but even when it was doing something, ie, trying to play a timeline with 7D footage in it, it wouldn’t kick into high gear and the playback kept stuttering.

To fix that I found a bios overclock setting for my combo of the i7 930 and my motherboard on the internet. Its now running at 3660MHz with the cpu throttling feature disabled and now the thing performs like it should. It now handles all sorts of heavy editing or rendering requirements with ease. I forgot to mention I also installed a cooler on the i7, otherwise it would be running at over 100degrees on the stock Intel cooler. It currently runs at around 80 degrees whilst running Prime95, ie, the most stressful thing you could do to your computer. Very necessary if you want a rock solid system. If it can run Prime95 for hours on end without crashing or coming up with an error then your computer can do normal video rendering on all cores without a sweat.

Here’s hoping Intel doesn’t come out with a must have CPU with 52 cores in the next year or so. That would really piss me off.

Update (30/07/10): These i7 chips are really stellar overclockers. I now have the computer running at the magic 4GHz mark with the Coolermaster V8. I could bump the voltages higher and go faster but 4GHz is plenty for now.
When you’re doing actual work on these computers, stability is extra important. Some other stress test programs I’ve found to make sure your computer is running rock solid are:
IntelBurnTestV2 Stresses your cpu more than Prime95. Expect up to 10c higher temps.
LinX Similar to IntelBurnTest. Find out whether your overclock is stable quicker than with Prime95
Memtest When you overclock your base clock speed, chances are you’ll also be overclocking your ram. Use this to see if your ram runs error free.

I’ll be flying off to Vietnam tomorrow for a month long vacation with the missus. We’ll be working our way from the south in Saigon to Ha Long Bay in the north, Topgear style (without the motorbikes). Vietnam is a beautiful country that I hope I’ll be able to capture with my gear.

For this trip, I’ve decided to travel light and will bring the following items to document my journey:
Canon 7D
Tamron 17-50mm VC
Velbon Ultrastick Monopod
Zoom h4n
Manfrotto Shoulder Brace
Glidetrack SD compact dolly.
I’m most excited about the last thing on the list, the Glidetrack. The thing is tiny and the smooth dolly moves I get out of it makes the $260AU or so I spent on it (used) worth it. For those that don’t know, it’s basically a very small dolly that uses lubricated plastic bearings rather than wheels. It can also be called a slider as the dolly moves you can get out of it can be very deliberately slow. Just go to their website or search on Vimeo for glidetrack to see a plethora of examples. The only problem is, I’m afraid it’ll make me a one trick pony as I’ve seen it occur to others. The gloss of the slow dolly move loses its shine when it’s used for every shot in your edit. I can see why it’s so overused though, it can turn a dull composition of anything into magic.

Adobe have just released an update for Premiere Pro CS5 that uncripples the GeForce GTX 285 from only 3 layers with realtime effects. I guess they finally realised that their customers are no fools to be taken advantage of.
This pretty much negates the need for those costly, Quadro cards.

I assume the update must also allow the other GeForce cards to support more than 3 layers with the hack I previously wrote about. Can someone confirm if so or whether their card even works at all now?

Way to go Adobe!!

With the widely known simple hack that I previously wrote about, Premiere CS5′s new CUDA Mercury Engine now works with a greater number of Nvidia Geforce cards. Below is a list of GeForce cards that have been confirmed working by members on various forums. Please keep in mind your card will need 768MB of ram as a minimum. Best to get one with 1GB to play safe.

For those that don’t know, the hack is simply adding your card’s name to a text file list in your Premiere folder.
Copy and paste the list above into your “cuda_supported_cards.txt” file in your Premiere CS5 folder. Get and install one of the cards listed and then enable the Mercury GPU Playback setting in your project settings. Voila! Cheap supercomputing editing for the masses!

Update: It’s best to stick to the higher quality brands of Nvidia cards. Cheaper versions have been known to use cheaper capacitors that could blow a lot sooner than the solid caps used by brands such as BFG, EVGA, ASUS, GIGABYTE. Stay away from brands like Sparkle and other generic ones.