Hi

. . . . . Has anyone got this Graphics card.XFX HD-545X-ZCH2 Graphics Card (ATI Radeon HD 5450 1 GB PCI-E GDDR3 Memory DVI HDMI 1 GPU . . . .

I had one in my old computer, a quad core pre Intel ix series being released, transferred to my current PC and dumped it within a week - was not as fast as using the integrated chipset of the i5 4570K.

It worked OK with MEP 2013 on Windows 7 and 8, so I would expect it to work with MEP Premium however you will need to check you can get ATI/AMD Windows 10 drivers for it - there may be issues if you use the Microsoft drivers.

HTH

John EB

Hi

Good to know the info re MainConcept and AMD cards compatability.

Thanks

John EB

Hi Tony

Thanks for posting that list, but know surprises there as it is what I have posted and discussed many times over the years. I was looking for that information to copy from the Mainconcept site where they used to list it in relation to the SDK for H264 HW encoding, on Nvidia and AMD GPU's, but I see they have retired those kits since a few months ago and removed the info. It seems that there is a new Encoder Wrapper that is taking over the task to enable any usable hardware on you system for acceleration of encoding, whether it be the legacy cards you have listed, or optimisations in Intei I series CPU's even if they do not have integrated GPU's.

From MC:-

The AVC/H.264 Video Encoder Wrapper is a module which grants access to all MainConcept AVC/H.264 Video Encoders through a single, common API. Regardless of whether a customer application is using MainConcept Software Encoding, Intel Quick Sync hardware encoding on a 3rd Generation (or later) Intel® Core™ processor, or the legacy OpenCL or CUDA encoding modules the wrapper is able to reliably detect available encoders and configure them. Based on the configuration requirements automatic selection of encoders is being performed. The AVC/H.264 Video Encoder wrapper is available as add-on to any of MainConcept’s AVC/H.264 Video Encoders.

Interesting and I am sure Magix takes advantage of this which could explain why I am seeing almost as fast render times with the MC Codec without HWA as I do with the Intel with HWA enabled, on my 6th Gen i7 system.

Your statement "Why they would hardcode the list of video cards into the MainConcept AVC encoder is beyond me." It is beyond me too but they would know better than us.They built it to make use of the chip architecture available at the time and what is more important is why they decided not to keep developing it for later hardware. "the video quality is much better when you set the MainConcept AVC encoder to CPU." is part of it probably.

You need to be careful when reading sales blurb from the Editing SW manufacturers when they make Hardware accelerated claims as it is often either:-

1. with Legacy cards no longer available.

2. Acceleration of the timeline decoding and encoding during preview, and preview of effects (selectable in the program settings in MEP) .

3. Encoding of effects on the GPU during export (selectable in the Export dialog in MEP).

I can not see anything in the link you sent or on the Cyberlink site that would confirm any other NLE program would do anything other than those 3.

Peter

Hi

. . . . Why they would hardcode the list of video cards into the MainConcept AVC encoder . . . .

I suspect this is because one graphics card maker was mixing chip types for the same model graphics card and there was some incompatibility between them.

. . . . legacy OpenCL . . . .

Interesting statement from MC - unless they mean it is 'over a few years old'.

Unlike CUDA, OpenCL is alive and kicking, the newest version was finalized April 2016 and supported by a multitude of modern graphics cards.

@ Peter

. . . .Magix takes advantage of this which could explain why I am seeing almost as fast render times with the MC Codec without HWA as I do with the Intel with HWA enabled, on my 6th Gen i7 system. . . .

I think that if you turn on HWA in MEP, the MC render times will be the same as without it, and MC is ignoring the program setting altogether.

John EB

Hi John

Interesting statement from MC - unless they mean it is 'over a few years old'.

I think they are referring to "the Modules" that they used to enable HW Export with the up to:- GTX5xx series and Radeon HD6000 cards.

Unlike CUDA, OpenCL is alive and kicking

Well I think Cuda still is as well, for purposes other than what we are interested in, or can utilise in NLE's. The latest cards still contain CUDA cores.

I think that if you turn on HWA in MEP, the MC render times will be the same as without it, and MC is ignoring the program setting altogether.

Yes, that is what I suspect based on the MC info about the "automatic selection of encoders" with their new encoder wrapper.

Peter

Hi Guys. What do you make of the info in this link? Admit I am a bit baffled by all this so not going to spend any more time on it and just accept that my graphics card is of no use in terms of HWA. https://www.studio1productions.com/Articles/SonyVideoCards.htm All the Sony software I gather now is Magix.

Finally got a reply from Magix which confirms.

"Please note that hardware acceleration in MAGIX software is applicable only under Intel graphics. You should enable your Intel component in your computer's BIOS if it is not showing in Windows device manager. "

--
Thank you for contacting Magix Support.

Finally got a reply from Magix which confirms.

"Please note that hardware acceleration in MAGIX software is applicable only under Intel graphics. You should enable your Intel component in your computer's BIOS if it is not showing in Windows device manager. "

But, it means you can keep using your discrete video card (e.g. NVidia GTX970), and with the monitor connected on the discretre video card?

Hi Tony

Thanks for the link. I think I have seen it before but no surprises there. One thing with articles like that is that they are often a year or two old, and cards and editing software processing engines are constantly being updated to take into account updated SDK's like the Mainconcept ones I mentioned before.

The fact that AMD cards handle Open CL acceleration better than Nvidia in Vegas may have no relevance in MEP as I am not really sure what MEP is leveraging for timeline preview rendering, it may be using Direct Compute which is Direct X accn. I am not able to access a modern AMD card to compare playback performance.

Yamane

I would enable both the integrated Intel GPU and the Nvidia discrete card as my experience has shown that during exports with Quicksync HWA enabled, both cards are doing work with "Calculate FX on GPU" ticked in the export template window. GPU-Z showed about 15% load on the Nvidia card and 65% on the Intel HD530 integrated Graphics and 1 minute of 1080 50P went through in 38 seconds. This could relate to what that article is saying about the timeline rendering of FX etc. being a process that must occur before the encoding on the GPU can take place, suggesting that in my case this was the 15% activity on my GTX1060. Other members have reported faster exports with both GPU's enabled also.

BTW - once setup- you can choose which GPU can be used for timeline preview, in MEP Program settings > Display options > Preview in the arranger, to see which works better for you. I have not seen much difference with either although I think the GTX1060 is slightly smoother at full res. Also make sure 'HW acceleration for playback' is enabled in the previous Tab.
 

Peter

I have PD 15. (Bought it for $35 USD during Black Friday to try it out.) It does offer HW encoding using my GTX 960. At times, can be very, very fast.

I prefer MEP over PD for editing. But I encode into high BW in MEP and then run it thru PD to shrink it for upload.