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Author Topic: How important is the video card?  (Read 9424 times)

aaronleitz

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How important is the video card?
« on: December 15, 2010, 05:42:50 pm »

So I am starting to play around with "motion" and it's a whole new ballgame for me!

I've got a 2006-2007 Mac Pro quad 2.66ghz with 16gb of ram and lots of fast disks that works fine for my photo needs but really shows its age when it comes to editing video. I'm editing in Final Cut Pro and anything beyond minor color adjustments needs to be rendered. A 10 second clip takes about 2 minutes to render depending on what I've done to it. My current video card is a stock nvidia geforce 7300 GT with 256mb of ram.

I will most likely be buying a new Mac Pro tower in a year or so. In the meantime, do you think it would be worth the $400 or so to upgrade to a slightly better card with 512mb of ram? I can get by OK with my current set up since I'm in the personal edification phase of video production, but would be willing to spend a few extra bucks to get a little more performance to hold me over until I buy a new machine.
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Christopher Sanderson

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Re: How important is the video card?
« Reply #1 on: December 15, 2010, 07:24:58 pm »

It rather depends on what 'kind' of video you are editing and correcting.

But the short answer to your question is 'No'

Video in it's more recent HDSLR versions is far too computationally intensive to work under a four-year-old computer.

Down Rez your video to DV and you'd be OK, but any Colour correction of HD is going to leave you frustrated even with a new video card.

aaronleitz

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Re: How important is the video card?
« Reply #2 on: December 15, 2010, 08:08:48 pm »

Thanks for the input. Much appreciated. I'll put the video card upgrade towards a new machine.

I tried Premier CS5 but it seemed to run pretty much the same as FCP on my machine, and often I felt it was worse. I'm not going to pay for CS3 or CS4 as when I do get a new machine I will most likely switch to the CS5 suite via Adobe's "upsell" path. For now I'm fine learning about editing video using FCP.

These "consumer" applications like CS5 and FCP have more than enough features for my current and future needs and I'm definitely not paying $15k for Autodesk Smoke! ;-)

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Christopher Sanderson

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Re: How important is the video card?
« Reply #3 on: December 15, 2010, 08:21:33 pm »

I have worked HD in FC for three or four years. If you know how to avoid the problem areas it works well. But if you force it to render things it will drive you crazy. The render management is very poor, so you simply learn to not render unless you have to and then only when you walk away. Honestly there are ways around almost all problems if you care to look.

bcooter

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Re: How important is the video card?
« Reply #4 on: December 16, 2010, 03:10:13 pm »



I will never tired myself to point that F.C is probably the best hoax Apple ......................

 

Fred,

You sound kind of new to this motion image thing, but you should know that when Final Cut Pro came out it was a revelation.  The world then was media 100 and avid both very limited in what they did, both very expensive.

FCP was a breath of fresh air and has developed into a system than can do almost anything in 2 dimensions.

That's kind of the problem because with a NLE your not suppose do do almost everything.  You suppose to tell and cut the story, leaving blank spaces for titling and effect pieces.

Then once the cut is approved and only when the cut is approved, you send the edl out either to color or a stand alone device and/or service for grading, sound sweetening and then insert the corrected footage and score back into your cut.

When fcp falls down is everyone tries to do everything at once.  Keying, color correcting with filters, complex transitions and effects.  Then FCP gets slow.

Where apple falls down recently is they aren't sure what they want to be.  One week it's ipods, the next it's business systems, then they drop business systems, then the graphic arts, though the software kind of stands still (fcp and apeture), then Apple goes silent because they NEVER announce before it's on the shelf.

Still, for what it's intended use is, FCP is still a very good system.

IMO

BC
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jerryrock

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Re: How important is the video card?
« Reply #5 on: December 16, 2010, 11:42:59 pm »

For $250. you can upgrade to the ATI HD5770 video card for Mac with 1GB of vram. I just did the upgrade on my 2006 1,1 MacPro and it really did help until I can afford to upgrade the computer.
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Gerald J Skrocki

aaronleitz

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Re: How important is the video card?
« Reply #6 on: December 17, 2010, 01:50:11 am »

For $250. you can upgrade to the ATI HD5770 video card for Mac with 1GB of vram. I just did the upgrade on my 2006 1,1 MacPro and it really did help until I can afford to upgrade the computer.

That's the card I was looking at. Are you running Snow Leopard? Did it help with video editing?
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jerryrock

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Re: How important is the video card?
« Reply #7 on: December 17, 2010, 03:07:30 pm »

I upgraded from the ATI X1900XT card because Adobe is no longer supporting Advanced Open GL functions with the card. I did find the application of filters in After Effects to be much more responsive with the ATI HD5770. This was especially true of the 32bit SA Color Finesse 3 filter that seemed very slow with the old video card.

Overall the card was a much needed improvement and now compatible with the older model MacPro because of recent updates in Snow Leopard. I am currently running 0SX 10.6.5. The other advantage is that it has two mini display port outputs as well as a dual link DVI connector. It can support up to three monitors with the optional mini display port to dual link dvi adapter from Apple.

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Gerald J Skrocki

Electromen

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Re: How important is the video card?
« Reply #8 on: December 17, 2010, 03:15:09 pm »

Motion 4, which is a software program within Final Cut Studio,  will test every element of your computer.  I don't know of any more demanding software available for the Mac.  Final Cut is demanding but runs smoothly on my machine.  Motion is a resource hog.  The more cores the better. The faster video card the better.  My Mac Pro is eight core with ATI 4870 video card, it runs Motion well as long as it's a short video.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2010, 03:24:36 pm by Electromen »
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Electromen

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Re: How important is the video card?
« Reply #9 on: December 17, 2010, 03:36:36 pm »

Are you talking about Motion or just Final Cut?  These are two different programs.
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jerryrock

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Re: How important is the video card?
« Reply #10 on: December 17, 2010, 07:34:51 pm »

I suppose the biggest difference is that Final Cut Pro is not a 64bit program and can only use a max of 4 gigs of ram.
Premiere Pro CS5 was released as a 64bit program on Mac and can now utilize all of the available system ram.
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Gerald J Skrocki

fredjeang

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Re: How important is the video card?
« Reply #11 on: December 18, 2010, 08:08:50 am »

I suppose the biggest difference is that Final Cut Pro is not a 64bit program and can only use a max of 4 gigs of ram.
Premiere Pro CS5 was released as a 64bit program on Mac and can now utilize all of the available system ram.
Indeed, that is why putting a CS3 you would work fine and with a CS5 your computer becomes outdated.

 
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jerryrock

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Re: How important is the video card?
« Reply #12 on: December 18, 2010, 03:41:11 pm »

Indeed, that is why putting a CS3 you would work fine and with a CS5 your computer becomes outdated.

Not true. The 64bit implementation is a function of the operating system (Snow Leopard) as well as the individual program. A 2006 MacPro can accommodate a maximum of 32GB of ram which would be available to Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.
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Gerald J Skrocki

aaronleitz

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Re: How important is the video card?
« Reply #13 on: December 18, 2010, 04:20:29 pm »

So Jerry are you using Premier or FCP?

Crap. I'm thinking now that I should have maybe gone with Premier CS5, upgraded my video card and upgraded to Snow Leopard.

I may do that anyway and try and sell FCP if there's no improvement in performance. From what I've read it seems that Premier CS5 is leaps and bounds better than earlier versions and I do like the way After Effects handles effects and plugins and for $1,000 I can get Photoshop, Illustrator, AE, Premier and Flash all together. And the 64 bit would be a bonus with all the ram I have.

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jerryrock

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Re: How important is the video card?
« Reply #14 on: December 18, 2010, 04:30:49 pm »

I debated the issue and decided to upgrade my CS4 Design Premium Suite to CS5 Master Suite because of the advantage of the extra ram usage in Premiere Pro and Photoshop. I have not used Final Cut Pro. I understand all video needs to be transcoded when importing into FCP. This is not the case with Adobe Premiere which will import different video formats and resolutions only needing to transcode the finished product. There is also the advantage of being able to use Photoshop and Illustrator files as well as After Effects.
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Gerald J Skrocki

ChristopherBarrett

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Re: How important is the video card?
« Reply #15 on: December 18, 2010, 04:43:33 pm »


Crap. I'm thinking now that I should have maybe gone with Premier CS5, upgraded my video card and upgraded to Snow Leopard.


+1 and I just bought the FCP studio a few months ago, not to mention CS5 can work natively with Red files and FCP is more of a pain.  Guess I'll d/l the demo and play with PP.  At least I can upgrade my CS5 suite to the full kit for not too much more coin.
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