Graphics card for multicam sequences

Report · Nov 30, 2016

I know that there are already multiple threads for the best graphics card. But I have a kind of different scenario since I don't have many fancy/crazy effects, but just many cameras that recorded simultaneously.

So I need to do some multisequence editing in Premiere Pro with a total of 10 cameras with these resolutions: 1x 4k, 3x 2.7k, 6x FullHD

In my wildest dreams I'd be able to smoothly see all 10 streams while setting the camera switches. The streams only have some "smaller" effects like "sharpen" and "lumetri color".

These are my other specs:

CPU: i7-4770, Quad-Core @ 3.4 GHz

Mainboard: ASRock Z87 Extreme4

RAM: 16 GB DDR3 (2x G.Skill F3-2400C11-8GSR)

HDD where footage is stored: 2x WD 3TB 5400 rpm in Raid 1

The system and also the Premiere Cache/Stretch disk are laying on SSD (Samsung 840 EVO 250 GB and Intel 80 GB respectively). Unfortunately, the footage in total has 360 GB so it's no option to put that on a SSD.

Is there any hope that with buying a graphics card showing those 10 video streams simultaneously would work? If so, which card would you recommend?

Report · Dec 03, 2016

Hm, nobody got any tips?

I know that the next bottle neck is my HDD and I'm going to replace this by a big SSD afterwards. But right now I can only afford one thing. Nevertheless, I'd like to buy a video card that will also be good enough for my next round of CPU/RAM/Mainboard which is probably coming in a year or two.

Report · Dec 03, 2016

10 layers and 360GB of media seems like a pretty heavy workflow. And the video card is not the only critical element - CPU, RAM, and drives are critical too.

If I were to just take a stab at a good PC spec. to work with your described workflow, I would be envisioning something along the lines of:

- 6, 8, or even 10 core i7

- GTX 1070 8G video card

- Fast 1GB M.2 drive for most files

- your 840 EVO could be re-purposed as a OS/programs boot drive

- 32GB of RAM (minimum)

Regards,

Jim

Report · Dec 03, 2016

Hi Jim,

Thanks for your input.

I feared something like what you said. I'll then probably start with the GTX 1070 you suggested and see where it'll get me. Then later on I might upgrade everything else as well.

The 360 GB is for 2 hours of total coverage (times 10 cameras). I just added the total bitrates of all cameras and ended up at around 370.000 kbps, or 46 MB per second. If I copy one file from my media storage HDD to my 840 EVO I get around 85 MB per second. So don't know about how Adobe is reading those 10 files simultaneously, but at least in theory it could be working out.

I might not have been specific enough, but the 840 EVO already is my OS/programs boot drive. And the Intel SSD (pretty old one, when SSDs started to get somewhat affordable) is used as scratch disk/cache/...

Report · Dec 03, 2016

The bottleneck for 10 layers of typical compressed media is typically the work required by the CPU and GPU to decompress the video on-the-fly.

Of course if you pre-render your whole timeline (Sequence / Render In to Out) then you do all the heavy work up front and your main remaining bottleneck would be your drive speed.

Most users though would much prefer not having to pre-render everything, and that requires a more powerful compuer.

Jim