MacBook Pro editors rejoice - new Premiere Pro CS6 supports OpenCL for renderless timeline not just NVidia CUDA!

[Andrew Reid]

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[img]http://www.eoshd.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/premiere-cs6-opencl.jpg[/img]

One of the biggest changes to Premiere Pro in the new version is a renderless timeline which supports OpenCL capable graphics cards. Previously Adobe only supported NVidia’s CUDA standard for GPU acceleration. Mac users with ATI cards missed out on the huge performance gains from a GPU accelerated video editing package.

Previously even MacBook Pro users with high end (for the time) CUDA capable NVidia graphics found themselves without quite enough video RAM and in need of a [url="http://www.eoshd.com/content/442/enable-premiere-cs5-cuda-on-your-macbook-pro-and-never-render-again"]hack[/url] to get it to work.

That has all changed with CS6.

[url="http://www.eoshd.com/?p=8027/"]Read full article[/url]

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[AaronChicago]

The whole CS6 suite is ballin. I've been playing around with Speed Grade the last couple of days. It's insanely fast and plays DPX files in real time while changing parameters.

[riogrande100]

[quote author=AaronChicago link=topic=701.msg5071#msg5071 date=1336509297]
The whole CS6 suite is ballin. I've been playing around with Speed Grade the last couple of days. It's insanely fast and plays DPX files in real time while changing parameters.
[/quote]

Can't wait to try it! Not processed any mark II stuff and out of cam looked good, but with all talk of GH2 hacks makes me wanna get that without seeing first what mark II can do!

[riogrande100]

What about PCs with ATI graphics cards?

[AaronChicago]

[quote author=riogrande100 link=topic=701.msg5076#msg5076 date=1336514572]
What about PCs with ATI graphics cards?
[/quote]

Not sure. If its working on Macs then I dont see why it wouldnt work on a PC. If it doesnt then get a $100 Nvidia card with 1GB of Ram and install the simple hack. I'm using a GT440 and its flying.

[jcs]

For simple edits, 1GB GPU memory is fine. For 4K and complex edits, >= 2GB is needed. My 1GB GTX285 could not render a recent project, however a 2GB GTX285 could with some issues and work-arounds, and a 2.5GB Quadro 5000 had no issues.

[Andrew Reid]

[quote author=riogrande100 link=topic=701.msg5076#msg5076 date=1336514572]
What about PCs with ATI graphics cards?
[/quote]

As long as the card supports OpenCL, and your drivers do, should be fine.

[bradleyg5]

I was relying on having no competition for quick turnaround! :'( Been using this since CS5 and it's a huge advantage, the whole reason I got a Lenovo laptop was having the 1GB nvidia card for Premiere pro.

I have it running on a GTX 460 1GB on my desktop and a Quadro FX 880 1GB in my laptop(basically a 330M). So even for NVidia cards you don't need the ones they officially support, I believe it just needs to be 1GB. And it's hardly a "hack" to get other cards working, you just need to add a line of text to a cuda_supported_cards.txt file. You don't even really need to use the GPU sniffer, you just need to enter it in the proper format which can be inferred from the other entries.  I can't get the Media encoder working at the moment with exported PP files that use graphics effects... although the direct export is working fine.

I'm disappointed in SpeedGrade though! it's not renderless! if you try and export a PP project into it, it tries to convert it to 32bit uncompressed!  I'm totally lost with it, I hope Lynda releases a tutorial series because I'm having trouble seeing what I can do with it that i can't already just do in premiere.

And man did I get a good deal on Production premium I have to brag. I got a full version of Production premium CS5 for 800 dollars off ebay(and it worked!) then I upgraded to CS5.5 right on the last day of availability and they give you a free update to CS6 so that's only an extra 400$. So production premium plus two version updates for 1200$ As opposed to the 1800$ they are asking up front if you want to start right at CS6. Such an insanely good deal because I primarily do photography so I get a lot of use out of photoshop and adobe camera raw.

[Francisco Rios]

GREAT NEWS!!
CHEERS!

[cpc]

[quote author=Andrew Reid - EOSHD link=topic=701.msg5080#msg5080 date=1336520564]
[quote author=riogrande100 link=topic=701.msg5076#msg5076 date=1336514572]
What about PCs with ATI graphics cards?
[/quote]

As long as the card supports OpenCL, and your drivers do, should be fine.
[/quote]

Anyone tested this?
My understanding was OpenCL is specific to MacOS. Probably limited by some shady agreement with nVidia or stuff. :)

[hoodlum]

[quote author=cpc link=topic=701.msg5091#msg5091 date=1336571708]
Anyone tested this?
My understanding was OpenCL is specific to MacOS. Probably limited by some shady agreement with nVidia or stuff. :)
[/quote]

You are correct.  It it even limited to just 2 video cards on the Mac.

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/994892

You will not be able to use OpenCL for GPU acceleration in Premiere Pro CS6 on Windows.

And Adobe made a wise move in limiting initial OpenCL GPU acceleration support to those MacBook Pros running OSX Lion equipped with the HD 6750M and HD 6770M chips with 1GB or more VRAM: That particular move was made largely because Apple no longer sells any of its systems with NVIDIA GPUs. The HD 6750M and HD 6770M GPUs in iMacs will also not be supported because those systems with said GPUs have only 512MB of VRAM - too little VRAM to even enable GPU acceleration at all.

I'll leave it to our engineering leads/managers (Steve and Dave) to talk about specifics, but there is actually a lot more engineering and testing work that would need to be done to use OpenCL on Windows.

When Premiere Pro CS5 came out, Premiere Pro could use about half a dozen cards for GPU acceleration. With each update, we added more, so that it's now more than two dozen, including two using OpenCL. From this, it should be very clear that we are taking a conservative but brisk approach to these GPUs: We will only support what we have been able to implement and test fully, and we'll add more as we get specific requests and have the time/resources to do so.

[Francisco Rios]

Mr.Hoodlum,
And what about the Imac 27 middle 2010? It has ATI RADEON HD 5750.
Can you help me?
Best regards.
Francisco.

[hoodlum]

[quote author=Francisco Ríos link=topic=701.msg5098#msg5098 date=1336580777]
Mr.Hoodlum,
And what about the Imac 27 middle 2010? It has ATI RADEON HD 5750.
Can you help me?
Best regards.
Francisco.
[/quote]

According to adobe only those 2 cards are supported.

[xenogears]

Here you can read about many graphic cards for Cs5/6 and how make it work with Mercury playback for Pc and Mac.
http://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/PremiereCS5-2.htm

[Trankilstef]

Hi everybody, I'm new to this forum but i'm an avid reader of this site, which is my favorite info site for dslr and video news.
I have a problem maybe you could help !
I just get Adobe Master collection CS6, and I'm happy with it so far. But still I can't seem to have the choice you have Andrew on the picture of this article. Actually when I go to project settings, I can't choose between those two lines, i'm stuck with "mercury playback engine software only". Actually the "video and playback" setting is all grey ! I can't even interact in it !
What's the problem?
Thanks in advance for replies !  :-\

[tehellet]

What I don't seem to get anywhere is that, will the full Premiere Pro CS6 potential be usable on a new iMac? It's got "AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics processor with 512MB of GDDR5 memory".

I use a 2010 macbook pro and have been wanting to change to an iMac, but I want to know if it's a wise choice. I'm not going to change to a PC, so I'd lie to know really what options do I have?

[bradleyg5]

Well there is an iMac with 6970M 1GB card. If you do the 'hack' that might work. But I'm not sure if you can add in cards because I don't know if the mac install has an equivalent "cuda_supported_cards" file. basically on windows in Program Files/Adobe/Premiere pro CS6 there is a file labled "cuda_supported_cards" if you open this file(as administrator) you can just type in your unsupported card and it magically works.

Someone with a mac install should let us know if there is a text file like this on the mac install, maybe a "Open_CL_supported_cards" or something along those lines.

[Francisco Rios]

Brad,
Take a look on these...

http://www.cinedigital.tv/como-activar-el-soporte-para-opencl-de-premiere-cs6-en-imac-2011/comment-page-1/#comment-3448

These guys are from Mexico. You can translate with google and will get the point.
They have a Imac 2011 and have a method to activate the openCl supported card.
Best regards.
Francisco.

[tehellet]

So in theory, the 21.5'' iMac with AMD Radeon HD 6750 should work with CS6 and the Mercury engine? And if it doesn't, it should be easy to "hack" it to make it work?

[bradleyg5]

[quote author=tehellet link=topic=701.msg5142#msg5142 date=1336669480]
So in theory, the 21.5'' iMac with AMD Radeon HD 6750 should work with CS6 and the Mercury engine? And if it doesn't, it should be easy to "hack" it to make it work?
[/quote]

I would say yes, as long as it has 1GB of video ram from experience with the CUDA cards and that article, I would reckon any AMD card with 1GB of ram and quoted as supporting OpenCL should work.

Wouldn't go buy a computer on that assumption just yet, but if you have a Mac from the last couple generations you should definitly download the free trial from Adobe and see if it works, as I bet it does.