Technology Sneek Peek: Adobe® Mercury Playback Engine

[dradeke]

Hi guys,

Been working on this blog post for what seems like forever.  I hope you enjoy it.  Please be sure to post comments there and not here...or at least if appropriate post in both places. 😉

http://blogs.adobe.com/genesisproject/2009/11/technology_sneek_peek_adobe_me.html#more

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Dennis

[PaulieDC]

I figured you'd know the answer.

[Chuck_A__McIntyre]

Monitor requirements will of course vary depending on the kind of work you are doing. For the hobbyist, Get two of the inexpensive AOC 19" monitors with DVI . If you are doing corporate video, two inexpensive 19" monitors with DVI will work fine as your editing monitors. Rather than spending your money on expensive editing monitors, I suggest saving that money for a decent HD reference monitor. There is quite a price range there. If you're not working on major motion pictures, the really expensive ones are a waste of money in my opinion. One of the more expensive ones being:

http://www.barco.com/en/product/2146/video

The really expensive HD reference monitors are nice, but our TV guy who produces HD television specials (perhaps due to education and experience) doesn't see the need.

[PaulieDC]

My first computer (1985) had 128K of ram and a TV with bent rabbit ears for a monitor...

[Harm_Millaard]

Just shows that you are 2-nd or 3-rd generation. I started out on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800 and the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5100.

Till this day APL is still one of my favorite languages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_%28programming_language%29

[PaulieDC]

Woohoo! You win Harm, I'm a total late bloomer in the computer world. My Commodore 128 was way too sleek and polished to fit in with the first gen crowd. However, I did get a calculator for Christmas in 1973 which blew my mind. Four functions and it didn't even have an "=" button... you typed your first number, hit "+" to get it registered in memory, then typed the second number and hit the function you wanted, such as division. I wish I kept that thing.

OK, that's totally OT, just havin' some fun! Back to Gigabytes of memory and Megabytes of data rates... the Thirty-somethings are getting a headache from rolling their eyes.

[Harm_Millaard]

Probably was an HP, that used RPN (Reversed Polish Notation). It's main strength was in avoiding ((((())))). It was a fun time when hacking the OS on the HP-41C to do some synthetic programming.

[tclark513]

I would be real curious to know how well the MPE works with multiple AVCHD video layers.  In the video he only shows playback from ONE layer.

Dennis?

[Chuck_A__McIntyre]

tgdaily.com is running an article on Adobe's MPE:

http://www.tgdaily.com/gpu/48373-nvidias-quadro-gpu-accelerates-adobes-mercury-playback-engine

[joshtownsend]

The Nivida stuff was cool because it gives me a good idea of what FX will be sped up by MPE. Noticed the curves being used on 4k RED footage real time cool, but it makes me wonder why doesn't Premiere add some more powerful CC fx? AE's curves is way better than PR but nowhere near as good photoshop's. I know it can't be that hard to beef up some of the color correction plug-in..hell most AE plug-ins work in Premiere fine if you drag them into the CS4 common folder.

Right now with DVCprohd footage I can color correct way faster in Premiere than AE. It's mostly realtime including 3rd party stuff like MB Looks and Colorista. But in AE it's slow as hell. Seems like this tech would be better suited for AE in my mind. I understand that RED 4k and heavily compressed consumer codec's (AVCHD, HDV, H264) will benfit from this alot more than anybody else and the RED people are the only ones that would spend $300+ on a videocard to edit footage (the consumer codec folk would've spent money on a better camera).

Also all this 4-8 track realtime is something most of use never use. That many tracks at once is only for two people Wedding shooters (that MPE demo video with 8 PIP screens looks early '90s stuff) and Compositors. The only time I have more than two tracks at once is when I'm compositing stuff and then I only do it in AE.

Sorry for being Mr. cynical I think it's a great step forward but I also think it's a miss-step that is going to Keep Premiere #3 behind FCP and Avid.

Also don't wanna shower to much praise on Adobe till the Final Product comes out. I wantto keep these guys on there toes. Maybe if the 4 grand RED SCARLET was coming out anytime soon I'd be stoked but I'm pretty sure it'll be next year till we see that.

Keep up the good work.

[tclark513]

After reading a few articles I am starting to think there will be an extra charge to activate MPE inside of Premiere...lets hope not!

[joshtownsend]

Yeah that might explain there reluctance to say it 'will ship with CS5'. I'd still buy it and so will 70% of RED users on top of the $300 plus card.

[PaulieDC]

Right! I admit, I'm stuck the the Buy group too... always been an early adopter. One day it's gonna bite me.

[Eric Addison]

tclark513 wrote:

After reading a few articles I am starting to think there will be an extra charge to activate MPE inside of Premiere...lets hope not!

I haven't seen that anywhere....

[PaulieDC]

and the RED people are the only ones that would spend $300+ on a videocard to edit footage

You can add Canon 5D Mark II people to that list too, Bubba...    I can't even ponder editing my raw footage in Pr CS4 without converting it to huge AVIs with NeoScene.  If I can get ½ the gain I saw in the CS5 demos, then I'm chomping at the bit to upgrade my GTX260 to a 285 when CS5 time comes (OK, I digress, I also gain and 10FPS on Flight Sim X as well, lol). An additional $200 for the 285 is nothing, being I can still get ~$150 for my 260 at this point in time... Adobe is saying the GTX285 is the one non-Quadro supported card. Fries me, because my 260 Core 216 is CUDA-enabled and spec-for-spec nearly equal to the FX3800, but Nvidia didn't allow the licensing. No surprise there! We'd all buy the $200 card in a heartbeat.

[joshtownsend]

PaulieDC wrote:

function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}

and the RED people are the only ones that would spend $300+ on a videocard to edit footage

You can add Canon 5D Mark II people to that list too, Bubba... 

I said this earlier "heavily compressed consumer codec's (AVCHD, HDV, H264)" with H264 I meant the 2-3 grand DSLR's. I get real time playback right now on pretty good system and it's not the best type of footage to CC or color key (been playing with d7 lately)

Actually MPE is cool an all but I feel naked not having my MB looks and Colorista, the thing that worries me most about CS5 is 3rd party plu-in support for native 64 bit Premiere. MPE is gonna be what it is, and it won't accelerate 3rd party plug-ins. I am excited about Ultra being included with premiere CS5 MPE or not.

[Curt Wrigley]

joshtownsend wrote:

Sorry for being Mr. cynical I think it's a great step forward but I also think it's a miss-step that is going to Keep Premiere #3 behind FCP and Avid.

You lost me somewhere in there.  How is this a step fwd and a misstep?

I think it's brilliant.  Put performance in the end users hands.  Dont need real time performance; dont invest in acceleration.  For me the $300 gets paid back in about 1 day at most.  To add color correction, titles, motion, tansitions etc.. to a typical cut and play back HD stuff in real time full res; is awesome.  This is more than a step fwd; this is a leap forward.

[joshtownsend]

I'm in feature film and national TV spot quality mode, I love Adobe (because of AE and PS) and will buy CS5. Personally I think bringing GPU into the into the NLE is a step forward (FCP and AVID have had GPU accelerated FX for a while now) but if it had been applied to AE rather than Premiere it would be 'A leap not a step'. This is my opinion (Hell porting a few AE fx in Pr would be a leap to me).

I don't do titles or CC or more than 2 layers in Premiere and right now I get real time playback for all of them when doing straight cutting (except for 4k RED) footage. For you maybe it'll make you 400+ in one day. For those of us that do titles in 3d apps like Cinema 4d then composite in AE or NUKE it's nothing to get excited about.

Adjustment layers and real masking in Pr would make me very exicted. I just wish Adobe would be serious about taking on FCP and Avid. I'd bet my computer that a new version of FCP with GPU accelerated editing will come out with in months of MPE's release.

[dradeke]

I'm in feature film and national TV spot quality mode, I love Adobe (because of AE and PS) and will buy CS5. Personally I think bringing GPU into the into the NLE is a step forward (FCP and AVID have had GPU accelerated FX for a while now)

Thanks for props.  Avid and FCP have had about the same amount of GPU capabilities as Premiere has had (though I could be wrong).  In short, its nothing to write home about.  The Mercury Playback Engine could very well be that leap in the NLE space for perforamance.  Clearly Avid's Mojo has been a GPU accelerator but it's proprietary.

Adjustment layers and real masking in Pr would make me very exicted. I just wish Adobe would be serious about taking on FCP and Avid. I'd bet my computer that a new version of FCP with GPU accelerated editing will come out with in months of MPE's release.

Me too.  Make sure to submit it as a feature request!

[joshtownsend]

dradeke wrote:

Me too.  Make sure to submit it as a feature request!

I have brother at least 3 times in the past few years....

Thanks for being around man, I'd hate to be you having to keep all these secrets