Graphix Card

dabear · Post by **dabear** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 1:51 am

Does having a nice/new graphix card better the quality of videos that you create with msp? Would a new card better things for me?

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 5:30 am

The type of video card used does not, as far as I am aware of, have any bearing on the output quality. That is governed by the quality of the source material, its format and the encoder used.

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Wed Jan 09, 2008 8:49 am

I agree that the graphics card has no bearing on video quality. I'll even go so far as to say that the very cheapest 2-D graphics card will do the job perfectly, because the expensive "gamers'" cards emphasise 3-D performance, which is irrelevant to video editing (unless you are creating very complex animations with special software). On one of my computers, I use a Matrox G-550 with 32 Mb RAM and it does just fine for video. The only reason I have a more modern card in my dedicated video computer is that it no longer has a slot that accepts a parallel AGP card, only a serial PCIe one.

The only time I would recommend adding a graphics card is when the current graphics is an "on-motherboard" system. This is nothing to do with quality but with performance. The on-board systems use resources, such as RAM and the associated buses, that a separate card will not use. This may slow down some operations.

troppo · Post by **troppo** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 12:43 am

I have heard an openGL card will help somewhat, but I don't think anyone has verified this with MSP.

cgould · Post by **cgould** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 4:43 am

I don't know of any video editors (except the specifically-hardware tied older ones) that use graphics cards to accelerate editing.
There are some plugins out there to accelerate effects, but they tend to be for "mainstream" editors eg Adobe and such, though I believe some had plugins for MSPro too.

The primary concern for video card would be playback, eg overlay support and multiple monitors, or HD playback acceleration for eg h.264 such as nVidia PureVideo on 8600 or ATI on 2600xt. (Note higher cards eg 8800 and 2900 don't have it!)

troppo · Post by **troppo** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 5:54 am

(Note higher cards eg 8800 and 2900 don't have it!)

Actually the 8800gt does. (It uses a newer core G92 as opposed to the 8800GTS which uses the older G80 core)
And I know Premiere specifically uses GPU to accelerate real time effects.

cgould · Post by **cgould** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 7:47 am

troppo wrote:
(Note higher cards eg 8800 and 2900 don't have it!)
Actually the 8800gt does. (It uses a newer core G92 as opposed to the 8800GTS which uses the older G80 core)
And I know Premiere specifically uses GPU to accelerate real time effects.

Thanks for the correction- yes, that appears correct, although it might only work on Vista geforce drivers, which would be problem for mspro.
http://www.xsreviews.co.uk/reviews/grap ... xxx-512mb/
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s ... ost1083823

The nvidia purevideo pages are out of date, they only refer to the older 8800gts/gtx apparently

troppo · Post by **troppo** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 1:21 am

It also is a BTO option on the new Mac Pro. I want one

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 9:00 am

Yup, but, as I said, that is all about performance, not quality.

Helge · Post by **Helge** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 11:18 pm

In source window you can switch on to display the timecode of recording. Online help states, that this works not with all graphic cards, but does not tell with which. While this has no influence on quality, its a nice feature, so you might want to consider it, if you buy a new card.
Does anyone know, which (types of) cards should be preferred / avoided?

troppo · Post by **troppo** » Fri Jan 11, 2008 11:28 pm

Like I mentioned earlier, I believe video editors use the openGL part of a video card rather than the directx part. I could be mistaken, but a few years ago when I was researching i did find something that said premiere benefitted from an powerfull openGL card. However, I have no idea about MSP.

Gorf · Post by **Gorf** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 12:44 am

All video editing programs will benefit from a better graphics card - faster response and the driver's ability to co-operate with Windows APIs will make the whole editing process more fluid.

However - the benefit is not commensurate with what you pay. The "law of diminishing returns" starts right at entry level. I've got a top-of-the-range PCIe card which redraws the MSP screen instantly, whereas on my old AGP Parhelia you can watch it redrawing the various screen components. Whether the extra GBP60 for the new card is worth it just for the better resolution and faster redraw is another matter. In may case, I'd say it's not.

Devil wrote:...the expensive "gamers'" cards emphasise 3-D performance, which is irrelevant to video editing (unless you are creating very complex animations with special software).

What I've said about video editing also applies to 3D applications - only more so. The inherent abilities of the card may help speed up workflow, but the card is not used for rendering, so its abilities are irrelevant when it comes to finished output.

That makes sense, if you think about it. If the animation software was able to use the card's capabilities as an aid to rendering, I'd have to set up a render farm with identical GPUs to avoid the various frames in my animation looking wildly different due to differences in the card or driver.

The same would be true of those hardware-linked versions of Premiere. If you render a transition aided by the GPU on one machine, and the same transition is rendered in the software on a different machine, they may look noticeably different.

troppo · Post by **troppo** » Sat Jan 12, 2008 5:50 am

all the advantages that I am aware of relate to extra graphics power assisting in realtime preview and nothing else. They dont render things in a different way, just help a realtime preview of whatever 3d or transition thing you are doing.
By your logic rendering an identical project on an AMD processor compared to a Intel processor would result in different looking result. I'm highly dubious that the type of processor has anything to do with the finished results.

dabear · Post by **dabear** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 4:20 am

ok, so its better for play games then with little input on the finished video. thanks guys for the info.