NVIDIA GTX 480 Software vs Mercury Playback Engine (MPE) Comparison – Part 1

DigitalDSLR — Wed, 05 May 2010 22:26:31 +0000

Well, I received my new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 today and installed it in my computer. Using the Adobe Premiere CS5 GPU Hack, I added in my GTX 480 card to the Mercury Playback Engine supported list. Figured I’d do a comparison between playback/export times using Software vs Mercury Playback on two separate file formats. I was using my .mov files from the Canon 5D Mark II and the same files converted via HDLink and altered via FirstLight. Here is how the results turned out.

Cineform Files – Software
Total Time- 3min 30sec
No Filter CPU Playback Quality – Yellow/Smooth
Export Time No Filters – 4min 17sec
Filter CPU Playback Quality – Red/Few Stutters
Filter List – Gaussian Blur(47), Sharpen(43), Fast Color Corrector, Tint(100), Noise(16)
Export Time Filters – 7min 17sec

Cineform Files – MPE
Total Time- 3min 30sec
No Filter CPU Playback Quality – Yellow/Smooth
Export Time No Filters – 4min 22sec
Filter CPU Playback Quality – Yellow/Smooth
Filter List – Gaussian Blur(47), Sharpen(43), Fast Color Corrector, Tint(100), Noise(16)
Export Time Filters – 4min 49sec

Cineform Files – CS4
Total Time- 3min 30sec
Filter CPU Playback Quality – RedStutters
Filter List – Gaussian Blur(47), Sharpen(43), Fast Color Corrector, Tint(100), Noise(16)
Export Time Filters – 15min 32sec

5D Mark II Files – Software
Total Time- 3min 30sec
No Filter CPU Playback Quality – Yellow/Smooth
Export Time No Filters – 3min 42sec
Filter CPU Playback Quality – Red/Few Stutters
Filter List – Gaussian Blur(47), Sharpen(43), Fast Color Corrector, Tint(100), Noise(16)
Export Time Filters – 6min 40sec

5D Mark II Files – MPE
Total Time- 3min 30sec
No Filter CPU Playback Quality – Yellow/Smooth
Export Time No Filters – 3min 40sec
Filter CPU Playback Quality – Yellow/Smooth
Filter List – Gaussian Blur(47), Sharpen(43), Fast Color Corrector, Tint(100), Noise(16)
Export Time Filters – 4min 17sec

Cineform Conclusions

No Filters – No Difference
Filters 34% less time using MPE (437sec vs 289sec)
69% less time using CS5 MPE vs CS4 (289sec vs 932sec)

5D Mark II Conclusions
No Filters – No Difference
Filters 36% less time using MPE (400sec vs 257sec)

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NVIDIA GTX 480 Software vs Mercury Playback Engine (MPE) Comparison – Part 1