GTX Titan in After Effects & Premiere CS6

[cszeno]

GTX Titan Superclocked now running in OS X 10.8.3 using the latest NVIDIA Web Driver (313.01.01f03) and CUDA Driver Version 5.0.59.

I've modified both the "cuda_supported_cards.txt" file for Premiere Pro CS6 (6.0.2) and the "raytracer_supported_cards.txt" file for After Effects CS 6 (11.0.2) to include the "GeForce GTX TITAN."

Premiere recognizes the card fine and is able to leverage the Titan for it's Mercury Playback Engine GPU Acceleration (CUDA). However, After Effects reports the following error when starting up:

After Effects error: Ray-traced 3D: Initial shader compile failed (5070 :: 0)

Mylenium discusses the error in detail here:

http://myleniumerrors.com/2013/01/06/5070-0-3/

Removing the "GeForce GTX TITAN" from the "raytracer_supported_cards.txt" file resolves the error message, however, this obviously renders the Titan useless for any ray-traced acceleration using the Titan.

Any thoughts on why After Effects is reporting this error (even though Premiere is capable of enabling CUDA with the Titan) and what the solution might be?

One final note, even with the startup error, After Effects successfully reports the GTX Titan under GPU Information (see attached image below)

[Todd_Kopriva]

That card is not one of the cards that After Effects will use for GPU acceleration of the ray-traced 3D renderer. By modifying that text file, you have put your system into an unsupported state.

See this page for details of GPU features in After Effects:

http://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2012/05/gpu-cuda-opengl-features-in-after-effects-cs6.html

[cszeno]

Thanks Todd, this makes sense.

Based on your response and the fact that both Premiere CS6 (6.0.2) and After Effects CS6 (11.0.2) are both capable of leveraging CUDA accelerated functions using the CUDA cores on the GTX Titan, this error is related specifically to ray-tracing GPU compatibility with the the GTX Titan and less a "general" GPU compatibility conflict with the GTX Titan, yes?

[Todd_Kopriva]

GPU acceleration of the ray-traced 3D renderer relies on very different software than the GPU acceleration in Premiere Pro. Specifically, it relies on the Nvidia OptiX library.

[cszeno]

One user has successfully confirmed raytracing support with the newly released GTX 780.

http://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/1038010

So what's the technical hurdle that's preventing After Effects from accessing the Ray-Traced 3d renderer using the GTX Titan?  The GTX 780 and GTX Titan are both GK110 GPUs.  Their architecture is nearly identical, so why the respective conflicting support for the Ray-Traced 3d renderer?

[EchoOut]

Is this still the case in CC?

EDIT: I see now that the Titan is still not approved. How can that be? Wow.

[cszeno]

Epic fail

[Rad Scientist]

it may not be officially supported but I can assure you, the Titan is a beast and works fine with AE raytracing and premiere pro cuda acceleration in both CC and CS6, once you edit the supported cards list. However this is on a pc running windows 7 x64 so I can't confirm or deny support on a mac.

[cszeno]

Thanks fstopdigital420 for the Titan update running on Windows AE.

I'm on Mac OS X 10.8.4 here and have modified the "raytracer_supported_cards.txt" file to include the GeForce GTX TITAN, so it would seem that the issue is specifically related to the AE CS6 11.0.2 build for OS X.  Very unfortunate that the Titan is "unofficially" supported in AE Windows but not AE OS X.

[vecomvideo]

Hi,

this is very interesting, I'm about to order 2 titans for my computer, do you think this will work? It's going to be a PC on W 7 Pro 64.
How do you had the titan to what list?

thanks a lot

[cc_merchant]

Do you have dual Xeon E5-2687W CPU's, 64+ GB memory, sustained transfer rates of more than 800+ MB/s on all volumes and dual PSU's (or a single 1500+ W PSU) and edit mainly EPIC 5K material? If so, yes. Otherwise it is a great way to burn money.

See Balanced Systems.

[vecomvideo]

Hi cc_merchant, I plan to put 2 Xeon E5-2620, but with 32 GB memory (but 2400 MHz), for the volume I work on 7200 rpm disk. Is that to slow? For the PSU I plan to order a 1200 W, do you think that's not enough? I made a simulation, and I should not use more than 1100 W...

And Yes, I edit mainly Epic 5K material, that's the reason why I buying this huge computer.

[RjL190365]

vecomvideo wrote:

Hi cc_merchant, I plan to put 2 Xeon E5-2620, but with 32 GB memory (but 2400 MHz), for the volume I work on 7200 rpm disk. Is that to slow? For the PSU I plan to order a 1200 W, do you think that's not enough? I made a simulation, and I should not use more than 1100 W...

And Yes, I edit mainly Epic 5K material, that's the reason why I buying this huge computer.

Unfortunately, you made the wrong choice in CPUs: Those E5-2620 CPUs have an extremely low clock speed (they run at only 2.00 GHz). And dual 2.00 GHz hexa-core CPUs still perform significantly slower than a single i7-3930K CPU that's running at its stock 3.2GHz speed.

[Rad Scientist]

Yes xeon is server class. The chips are designed for long term stability,

not necessarily speed. You would see much better performance from an

overclocked 3930K. I have mine running at 4.7 ghz and it routinely

benchmarks faster than dual cpu xeon setups. Just because something is more

expensive does not mean it is always better.

Additionally - 7200 rpm drive is way too slow for editing red footage in

realtime. The hard drive IO is always going to be your bottleneck, not the

graphics cards. The only reason youd need dual titans is for AE raytracing

(not very useful) or working in maya / max / cinema 4d. Or gaming on 4+

monitors at resolutions over 4k (the cards real strength).

I would suggest setting up at least a raid 0 with two 7200 drives, getting

an ssd, or even setting up a raid 0 with two ssds. I have a project drive

in this config with close to 500 MBps read / write speeds. More than enough

for red 5k. If you can exchange that build for a 3930k setup id recommend

it. And you only need one titan. Trust me.

[vecomvideo]

Hi,

Actually I haven't ordered yet. Thanks for all those precious infos.

So what is the best set up to edit 5K Raw footage from the RED Epic? I really want it fast and reading in hi quality.

[JEShort01]

Regarding "the best", you probably do not really mean that. An 8-way Xeon with 4 Red Rockets and 2 GTX Titans would probably be the best, however you would be paying over $30,000 US for the privilege!

Keeping it under $10,000, I'd suggest dual e5-2687w Xeon, 8x Raid 5 array with SSDs or 7200rpm HDs (Areca controller) + 1 128GB SSD boot drive, single GTX Titan, and 64GB of RAM (32 if you are not using After Effects).

Keeping it under $5,000, think single overclocked i7-3930k, 4x RAID 0 array on motherboard + 1 128GB SSD boot drive, single GTX Titan and 32GB of RAM.

Regards,

Jim

[Quentin222]

I agree with the above. Couple things I would add:

-1200W PSU should be good for nearly all systems, unless you are running 6+ HDD and multiple GPUs. The titan is actually very energy efficient for its speed

- IF going the overclocked 3930K route, I'd suggest the corsair HAF100 closed loop water CPU cooler, at a minimum.

- Coolermaster and thermaltake both make great cases. Airflow is very important.

- Also I have found in previous builds that 128 GB SSD for OS is not enough, it gets full very quickly. Personally, I'd recommend at least 256 for SSD overheard, especially if you want to install full Adobe CC suite + multiple 3D apps and programs.

- don't forget data backup is very important, especially when using RAIDS for projects, as they are not super stable and can have disk failures - you can get a cheap external 2-4 TB USB 3.0 drive for pretty cheap. It will save your life one day

- Definitely look into the red rocket PCI card. if you can afford it. Much better use of your money for editing red than another titan, or xeon chips.

[vecomvideo]

ok, so:

i7-3930k is a better solution than 2 Xeon 2620. Because I heard that it can get good and stable overclocking when it's watercool.

Yes I was planning to get 250 go ssd for the system. I agree.

For data, I guess I need 3 disk of 4 To in RAID 0 to get my 12 To with a good speed access. (Deskstar 7K4000: looks good to me, but I'm not sure, is it as fast as a 3 To?)

I will go for 64 Go of ram I think.

But now I'm confused, does the Red rocket is that much beter than any CPU + good graphic card?

Because my actual computer is not that bad: Windows 7 64 / i7 950 3.07 Ghz / 24 Go of ram 1600MHz / GeForce GTX 470 / 128 Go SSD for system (but no raid 0 for my 7200 hard disk)

Do you think I should only buy a red rocket and a RAID 0 system instead of bying a new computer?

[Rad Scientist]

If you make your money working exclusively with RED footage, then I would

say yes. However if you are planning on doing any editing of other formats

like prores, or doing 3D VFX with AE or Nuke, Maya / Cinema 4D / Max,

RealFlow, any of that, you are much better off having a second, faster

all-around computer.

Additionally, as a freelance VFX artist, having more than one "main"

computer is indispensable. I have two workstations, a mac mini i7 for

prores transcoding, a networked Synology NAS for projects and archive, and

a macbook pro. There is always one machine rendering and I switch between

them using a Linkskey dual-dvi KVM switch.

[Todd_Kopriva]

The GTX TITAN is added to the list of cards that After Effects will use for GPU acceleration of the ray-traced 3D renderer in the After Effects CC (12.1) update, coming in October.

See this page for details:

http://adobe.ly/AE_CC_12dot1_details

[JEShort01]

Awesome news Todd, and thanks for the heads up!

I'm curious, does AE allow for the capabilities of more that one video card to be utilized like the CC version of Premiere Pro now can?

Thanks,

Jim

[Todd_Kopriva]

> I'm curious, does AE allow for the capabilities of more that one video card to be utilized like the CC version of Premiere Pro now can?

After Effects has always taken advantage of CUDA cores on all installed GPUs, as described here:

http://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2012/05/gpu-cuda-opengl-features-in-after-effects-cs6.html

[cszeno]

Installing the latest CUDA Driver resolves the Ray-Traced 3D Renderer error when "unofficially" using the GTX Titan in AE CS6 OS X.  My apologies Todd, looks like the issue was on NVIDIA's end not Adobe's.

Initial test results with the GTX Titan to accelerate ray-traced 3D rendering are impressive.

[MarkWeiss]

How did you get the GTX Titan to run in AE CS6? I'm getting the shader compile error. This is a new system with the following:

Supermicro X10DRi

Dual E5 2630 V3 CPUs

nVidia Titan X 12GB VRAM

128GB ECC RAM

240 GB SSD boot drive

2TB Samsung SSD 1st video drive

1TB Muskin Reaktor 2nd video drive

1TB Muskin Reaktor 3rd video drive

I edited the raytrace_supported_cards text file to add what GPUsniffer reports.

I'm running a much later version of the nVidia drivers.

[Todd_Kopriva · Accepted solution]

The GTX TITAN is added to the list of cards that After Effects will use for GPU acceleration of the ray-traced 3D renderer in the After Effects CC (12.1) update, which we just released.

See this page for details:

http://adobe.ly/AE_CC_12dot1_details