graphics card

[Luke]

OK, silly question. Does the quality of your graphics card have any affects on the quality of your video in any way. There, I said it.
Thanks

Luke

[J.R. Hudson]

It is my understanding that NO IT DOES NOT. Me personally? I have the Nvidia Quadro FX 250 MB. Makes Battlefield all the more interesting.

As far as programs like 3D MAX? I am thinking it critical. Anyone?

[GenJerDan]

It should have no effect on the rendered output.

BUT...if you're using a less-than-adequate card to do color-correction on the computer (rather than using a real calibrated monitor), how "correct" will the output be? I'd think not very.

That being said, I think you'd really have to dig to find a card these days that is so bad that it couldn't be used.

Dan

[Luke]

That’s kinda what I thought. Thanks for the speedy replies. oh ya, one more silly question. I know when you save a screen grabe you set the preview window to best (full) for the best quality. Does setting it to best (full) have any affect on rendering?
Thanks

Luke

[Frizzle Fry]

I don't think you should preview at best while rendering. the cpu has to work harder to display the preview. how much harder? i don't know, but you'd like as many clock cycles dedicated to rendering as possible, right?

it doesn't affect the quality of your rendered file, if that's what you were asking..

[GenJerDan]

I was thinking the same thing, but...when I render, the preview jumps to Best all on its own. I don't recall it doing that in V5, but in V6 it is. A setting somewhere?

Dan

[Destrier]

In Vegas, on rendered output, no: on its screen display- yes. I actually run two cards, switching them when I need to. An Nvidia 6800GT and a ATI Radion 9800Pro (I prefer the Nvidia Card). One of the effects I am using in my film is a fly by of a fortified medieval city built in Gmax and rendered against high resolution terrain. For that rendering- I have clocked and observed different behaviors between the cards, but its mostly due to that fact that I'm capturing the video stream off the display in near-realtime. The Nvidia performs better for this. When running Vegas 6, I observe no difference in rendering results or rendering times- but a small difference in how fast the preview window updates on the screen. I have not measured it scientifically but the old mark-1, mod-1 eyeball between the display and the two CPUs (the regular CPU and the Graphics CPU) indicates a slight gain for the Nvidia card over the ATI for that display. Yeah... I'm a graphics geek- I'll go back and hide now:)

[Frizzle Fry]

Destrier--No, stay out and play for awhile! We're all geeks here, of one kind or another, or just in general. :) Most of us drool over hardware, and your graphics setup sounds sweet! Love to see those effects you're creating sometime...

Back on track, though. It makes sense that Vegas would prioritize the rendering process and just update the preview when it won't interfere with rendering.

[Destrier]

Frizzle: Concur- Vegas does appear to prioritize rendering over display- which is the right answer in my view- I know the fans on the chips really kick in when it renders. I don't even get that response from some of the tests I've run on games or flight sim stuff. Having been around graphics intensive software and graphics cards for some time- I can say again- I'm am very impressed with Vegas and damn happy that I read and listened to the likes of John Hudson and Dave Jimerson and went with Vegas! Hopefully some of the stuff I'm doing will come out well enough to post!

Getting back to the point- My observation (grosso modo) is that it doesn't hurt to have a high end card when doing any of this type of work - graphics cards do offload the primary CPU somewhat (also helps if the application takes advantage of advanced capabilities- the calls to which are made through the graphic package directly to the graphics drivers then to the card), but from what I can tell just looking at some of my performance-monitoring stuff- When Vegas hits the rendering stage, its all primary CPU and lots of it.

I've seen other posts by really knowledgable folks that suggests to me that what Vegas may be doing is "layer processing" such that it renders various effects in a iterative manner, adding each subsequent effect as it goes. This would mean looping through a frame several times, applying each transformation - probably in memory or virtual memory- and then outputting a final raster/render before moving to the next element. If this is roughly correct (and I make no guarentees about my musings) then speed of processor, bus speed, and ultimatley available RAM are the key computational gates. I have 2 gig of ram on a 3.47 P4 HT machine and it seems to get through rendering something moderatly simple quickly- When I take half of that memory away (yeah- I spend wayyy too much time with these things) there's not a lot of impact- take 3/4 away- and I nearly double the rendering time. Again- just general observations- not science. It's the same technique I use to determine complex scenery and aircraft impacts for flight sim models (FS9) where sometimes there's 1000's of polygons. Its all bits to the machine so the loading paradigm is somewhat analogous as the machine has to render a result - either to a display or a file.

Bottom line regarding Vegas (again, just my own observation: your mileage may vary) - if you have a decent graphics card to start with- probably better to spend money on RAM. If not- it doesn't hurt to have a better g-card- but the resulting bang for the buck might not be as apparent as one might hope and probably not as effective as spending money on RAM.

[Destrier]

Oh... and try to kill off those useless background apps that windows so loves. I run both mac and pc and I'm constantly amazed at how much CPU pc's waste on programs hanging around for no real good reason. That' can free up CPU capability and help everything over all... Now I promise that I will go sit in the corner quietly!

[Frizzle Fry]

Great analyses. I have a 2.2 Ghz Athlon 64 FX-51, 2 gigs RAM, and I'm holding off on getting XP 64-bit until some 64-bit versions of my favorite software comes out (and there's better driver support) ...curious to see how Vegas 64-bit will fly on a 64-bit system!

As for bang for the buck, I intend to upgrade my hard drives to SATA 10k WD Raptors. One 36 GB for system, two 74 GB drives in RAID 0 for the project files. As I understand, the increased throughput makes a huge difference in fps when previewing footage with magic bullet effects, as well as overall rendering time.

Must remove bottlenecks, one by one, and g-card is certainly on the list.

[Luke]

So what if i turn the preview window off? Same results? Or will it be FASTER! Oh and does the G-card have any influence on the preview quality on an external monitor?
Thanks

Luke

[Frizzle Fry]

Luke, depending on your system, there may be no difference at all. For example there may be no difference on a P4 but a noticeable difference on a P3. As far as the external monitor, you should connect your IEEE1394 (firewire) to a DV camera and connect that to the ext. monitor. then under vegas properties, choose IEEE1394 device as external preview. on your preview window, click the button that says "preview on external monitor." it's way better than going through your vid. card.

not the best instructions (i'm not at my PC) but should point you in the right direction.