Saturday, September 20, 2014

Re: [Avid-L2] Re: best editor for H264?

 

I find background transcoding can interfere with foreground performance even of the Avid GUI -- for instance when running Quickeys macros, it tends to lose keystrokes when transcoding is using a lot of CPU in the background.

However, how much CPU gets used by background vs foreground transcoding varies a lot between different types of footage, which is more of an issue, I think.

On a 24-core Westmere, background rendering of F55 XAVC 4K footage maxes out at around 250% CPU, whereas in the foreground, it gets up to about 2000% CPU -- so 8 times faster.  There's a tradeoff between foreground usability and background transcode speed, but I wound up going back to foreground transcoding for the bulk of this footage.  Just too slow in the background to get anywhere unless you leave it overnight, which defeats the purpose.

5D footage, on the other hand, seems to transcode at the same speed whether in the foreground or the background, maxing out around 200% CPU, which is pretty weak.

I've had other footage (RED or Epic, I think?) hit 1800% on a background transcode - so not too much of a time penalty, but it definitely made foreground tasks more sluggish.

Cheers,
--Michael

On 2014-09-20, 7:53 AM, Andi Meek kwikpasta@hotmail.com [Avid-L2] wrote:
 

For me, this is one of the areas I'd like to see more movement on from Avid; GPU acceleration and CPU optimisation.  Everyone else seems to be pretty keen on taking advantage of CUDA/ OpenCL and it's near impossible to find any information about what Avid actually uses fully.  As far as I can tell it's some Boris effects which seems a bit crap.  If background render is coming, I want that render to be fast and not getting in the way of operating Avid the way that a background transcode currently seems to.  Do others notice a noticeable drop in performance when using background transcode or is it just my old z400 showing it's age?

Andi



To: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com
From: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 10:23:25 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avid-L2] Re: best editor for H264?

 

Newer Xeons do support it. 


DQS


On Sep 20, 2014, at 10:13 AM, "Oliver Peters oliverpeters@oliverpeters.com [Avid-L2]" <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

I don't believe that applies to Xeon processors, though. Only the Core i5 and i7 CPUs.

- Oliver

Posted by: Dom Q. Silverio
modern Intel CPU has a built in acceleration of h.264 decode and encode. In some tests it is better than NVidia's implementation. Unfortunately, Avid does not support it. 



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Posted by Video Geek Squad at 12:49 PM 0 comments

[Avid-L2] Do you need 4K?

 

IBC 2014: News Shooter - Cinematographers Megapanel


HT to Oliver for the link.

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Posted by Video Geek Squad at 8:57 AM 0 comments

Re: [Avid-L2] Re: best editor for H264?

 

That doesn't seem to be the case with the 2013 Mac Pros ("tubes"), which have updated Xeons.


- Oliver

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Posted by Video Geek Squad at 7:59 AM 0 comments

RE: [Avid-L2] Re: best editor for H264?

 

For me, this is one of the areas I'd like to see more movement on from Avid; GPU acceleration and CPU optimisation.  Everyone else seems to be pretty keen on taking advantage of CUDA/ OpenCL and it's near impossible to find any information about what Avid actually uses fully.  As far as I can tell it's some Boris effects which seems a bit crap.  If background render is coming, I want that render to be fast and not getting in the way of operating Avid the way that a background transcode currently seems to.  Do others notice a noticeable drop in performance when using background transcode or is it just my old z400 showing it's age?

Andi



To: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com
From: Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 10:23:25 -0400
Subject: Re: [Avid-L2] Re: best editor for H264?

 

Newer Xeons do support it. 


DQS


On Sep 20, 2014, at 10:13 AM, "Oliver Peters oliverpeters@oliverpeters.com [Avid-L2]" <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

I don't believe that applies to Xeon processors, though. Only the Core i5 and i7 CPUs.

- Oliver

Posted by: Dom Q. Silverio
modern Intel CPU has a built in acceleration of h.264 decode and encode. In some tests it is better than NVidia's implementation. Unfortunately, Avid does not support it. 


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Posted by Video Geek Squad at 7:53 AM 0 comments

Re: [Avid-L2] best editor for H264?

 

This is probably why the newer iMacs generally outperform the aluminum Mac Pro with FCPX.  It's written to take advantage of that capability.

On Saturday, September 20, 2014, Oliver Peters oliverpeters@oliverpeters.com [Avid-L2] <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

I don't believe that applies to Xeon processors, though. Only the Core i5 and i7 CPUs.

- Oliver

Posted by: Dom Q. Silverio
modern Intel CPU has a built in acceleration of h.264 decode and encode. In some tests it is better than NVidia's implementation. Unfortunately, Avid does not support it. 

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Posted by Video Geek Squad at 7:30 AM 0 comments

Re: [Avid-L2] Re: best editor for H264?

 

Newer Xeons do support it. 


DQS


On Sep 20, 2014, at 10:13 AM, "Oliver Peters oliverpeters@oliverpeters.com [Avid-L2]" <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

I don't believe that applies to Xeon processors, though. Only the Core i5 and i7 CPUs.

- Oliver

Posted by: Dom Q. Silverio
modern Intel CPU has a built in acceleration of h.264 decode and encode. In some tests it is better than NVidia's implementation. Unfortunately, Avid does not support it. 

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Posted by Video Geek Squad at 7:23 AM 0 comments

[Avid-L2] Re: best editor for H264?

 

I don't believe that applies to Xeon processors, though. Only the Core i5 and i7 CPUs.

- Oliver

Posted by: Dom Q. Silverio
modern Intel CPU has a built in acceleration of h.264 decode and encode. In some tests it is better than NVidia's implementation. Unfortunately, Avid does not support it. 

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Posted by: Oliver Peters <oliverpeters@oliverpeters.com>
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Posted by Video Geek Squad at 7:13 AM 0 comments

Friday, September 19, 2014

Re: [Avid-L2] best editor for H264?

 

I work with GoPro footage in FCPX quite often mixed with other camera AVCHD/H.264 footage in 1080p multicam clips. No transcoding. Just import (don't have to wait for import to finish), sync for multicam, and start editing. I can add GoPro lens correction, sometimes some scaling/positioning, source side color correction, audio sweetening… still no need to transcode.

When done the export is very fast. I used to transcode to prores proxy for multicam editing, but with my new MacPro I don't find any reason to anymore.

James


On Sep 19, 2014, at 5:33 AM, paulsulsky@comcast.net [Avid-L2] <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com> wrote:


Hi Michael,

I recently did a test with Go Pro footage on AVID, FCPX, and Adobe on one video layer only.  Adobe is the best.  You can link to it immediately in the camera without copying it to a hard drive and it's off to the races.  FCP X wanted to transcode it in the background, but you could stop the transcode and still work with the footage real time off the camera.  Avid MC  8 can't handle the footage period no matter how short the clips are and this includes copying the files to a solid state hard drive. 

Exporting:

I export H.264 footage from Premiere Pro. I created a template for it.  I took a 100 minute AVCHD recording of a live event, dropped it on a Premiere Pro time line and exported it as H.264 for upload to youtube.  It too 60 minutes for the encode on a Macbook Pro with a solid state drive, 16 GB of RAM and an AMD card with 2GB of video RAM. 

An extra comment on Avid:

Media Composer 6 could AMA Go Pro footage directly off the camera.  Three years ago I taught a group of students Final Cut 7 and Avid.  The machine was a two year old, 24 iMAC with 3GB of RAM.  They liked FCP much better.  One asked why would you use Avid.  I AMA'd a Go Pro camera and edited the footage live. I then showed how FCP had to import each file first.  It was really impressive and he edited his Go Pro projects on the Avid. This is really embarrassing now since  I am editing a documentary with one of my ex-students now.  She has a lot of footage from sailboat mounted Go Pros.  We can play the footage back from th e camera on everything from Quicktime to FCP X.  It will not play on an avid.  The video keeps freezing and and jumps forwards to catch up to the audio. Clip size doesn't seem to make a difference.  Neither did copying the footage to the internal solid state drive (I had the Desktop Play Delay set to 28 frames for the latest test - apparently I didn't drag it all the way to 30 frames. - didn't matter.)

Hope this helps,

Paul


From: "Michael Brockington mbrock321@gmail.com [Avid-L2]" <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com>
To: "Avid-L2" <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 4:10:21 AM
Subject: [Avid-L2] best editor for H264?

 

I need to do the following:

Take sets of 4 clips from gopros covering the same event. Sync them 
from audio-only cues. Trim the head of each clip so they all start from 
the same sync frame, and export the trimmed clips - preferably without 
having to re-encode or transcode to a different format. Each set of 
clips is at 48 or 60 fps. Some sets are 1920x1440, others 1920x1080. 
I'd also like to add warps/pips to each set in the editor so I can 
review all 4 at once (or multicam them.)

It doesn't seem like Avid is the best tool for the job. AMA performance 
of H264 is still pretty bad with even 1 clip on the 24-core Westmere Mac 
Pro I'm using. I don't think Avid can export AMA H264s same-as-source 
after trimming, and certainly can't do it with odd raster sizes and 
frame rates. Transcoding for something so simple seems like a waste of 
time and space, and the non-standard rasters and frame rates will be a 
pain there too.

Can Premiere or some other editor deal with this sort of task natively 
and gracefully? What would folks recommend?

Thanks,
--Michael




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Posted by Video Geek Squad at 4:27 PM 0 comments

Re: [Avid-L2] best editor for H264?

 

modern Intel CPU has a built in acceleration of h.264 decode and encode. In some tests it is better than NVidia's implementation. Unfortunately, Avid does not support it. 




DQS


On Sep 19, 2014, at 3:26 PM, "John Pale pale.edit@gmail.com [Avid-L2]" <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

H264 sucks on PC too.  Avid, at least for now, does not use the graphics card on either platform, in the manner that Premiere uses CUDA and OpenCL for the heavy lifting of real time performance.  The graphics acceleration on the PC in minimal on Avid, in comparison, and in my experience, is not noticeable when switching platforms on similarly powered systems.



On Friday, September 19, 2014, Michael Brockington mbrock321@gmail.com [Avid-L2] <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
 

I'm curious -- does H264 on Avid suck as badly on the PC side, or is linked to not using the graphics cards for much on the Mac?

Those Cineform conversions sure chew up a lot of disk space!

Cheers,
--Michael

On 2014-09-19, 9:53 AM, Jeff Hedberg jeff@unioneditorial.com [Avid-L2] wrote:
 

I know that GoPro changed their H.264 formats a while ago (maybe when they started supporting larger frame sizes?) - up until then - you were right - AMA worked fine. 

But now - we have to run them through GoPro's very awkward conversion app before the Avid likes the files.

(that was a really long 'me too' wasn't it?)

Jeff

------------------
Jeff Hedberg

Director of Operations
Union Editorial
575 Broadway,6th floor
New York, NY 10012

On Sep 19, 2014, at 8:33 AM, paulsulsky@comcast.net [Avid-L2] <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com> wrote:


Hi Michael,

I recently did a test with Go Pro footage on AVID, FCPX, and Adobe on one video layer only.  Adobe is the best.  You can link to it immediately in the camera without copying it to a hard drive and it's off to the races.  FCP X wanted to transcode it in the background, but you could stop the transcode and still work with the footage real time off the camera.  Avid MC  8 can't handle the footage period no matter how short the clips are and this includes copying the files to a solid state hard drive. 

Exporting:

I export H.264 footage from Premiere Pro. I created a template for it.  I took a 100 minute AVCHD recording of a live event, dropped it on a Premiere Pro time line and exported it as H.264 for upload to youtube.  It too 60 minutes for the encode on a Macbook Pro with a solid state drive, 16 GB of RAM and an AMD card with 2GB of video RAM. 

An extra comment on Avid:

Media Composer 6 could AMA Go Pro footage directly off the camera.  Three years ago I taught a group of students Final Cut 7 and Avid.  The machine was a two year old, 24 iMAC with 3GB of RAM.  They liked FCP much better.  One asked why would you use Avid.  I AMA'd a Go Pro camera and edited the footage live. I then showed how FCP had to import each file first.  It was really impressive and he edited his Go Pro projects on the Avid. This is really embarrassing now since  I am editing a documentary with one of my ex-students now.  She has a lot of footage from sailboat mounted Go Pros.  We can play the footage back from the camera on everything from Quicktime to FCP X.  It will not play on an avid.  The video keeps freezing and and jumps forwards to catch up to the audio. Clip size doesn't seem to make a difference.  Neither did copying the footage to the internal solid state drive (I had the Desktop Play Delay set to 28 frames for the latest test - apparently I didn't drag it all the way to 30 frames. - didn't matter.)

Hope this helps,

Paul


From: "Michael Brockington mbrock321@gmail.com [Avid-L2]" <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com>
To: "Avid-L2" <Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, September 19, 2014 4:10:21 AM
Subject: [Avid-L2] best editor for H264?

 

I need to do the following:

Take sets of 4 clips from gopros covering the same event. Sync them 
from audio-only cues. Trim the head of each clip so they all start from 
the same sync frame, and export the trimmed clips - preferably without 
having to re-encode or transcode to a different format. Each set of 
clips is at 48 or 60 fps. Some sets are 1920x1440, others 1920x1080. 
I'd also like to add warps/pips to each set in the editor so I can 
review all 4 at once (or multicam them.)

It doesn't seem like Avid is the best tool for the job. AMA performance 
of H264 is still pretty bad with even 1 clip on the 24-core Westmere Mac 
Pro I'm using. I don't think Avid can export AMA H264s same-as-source 
after trimming, and certainly can't do it with odd raster sizes and 
frame rates. Transcoding for something so simple seems like a waste of 
time and space, and the non-standard rasters and frame rates will be a 
pain there too.

Can Premiere or some other editor deal with this sort of task natively 
and gracefully? What would folks recommend?

Thanks,
--Michael





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Posted by Video Geek Squad at 3:17 PM 0 comments
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