Hello,

we are working with Avid MediaComposer HPZ840. And we are looking for a System, what givs two or three GPU-Cards out to Avid for better render-performance. Is there any Avid (certified) solution available, what works this way? The idea was tob put three Titan XP into a Sonnet Chassie and then connect it to the Z840. We need to render  VFX with Avid and one single Card is not enough. We looking for a Renderfarm or something else, bit during we work . It is not possible to render it on other systems or over night... cause have to controll and adjust it right at the moment.. Thanks for any help- Thomas

Thomas,

I'm pretty sure there's not an Avid certified setup for an external GPU box, and I've never heard of anyone who has used such a setup to improve render times within MC.

Historically, Media Composer never made much use of the power in high-end graphics cards, and although this has improved over the years, I think it's mainly used by modern AVX plugins from Boris etc. Software like DaVinci Resolve make full use of GPU acceleration and there's lots of colourists working on systems with external GPU boxes to improve performance. I think some of the older code in MC (which would include a fair proportion of their effects) won't take advantage of the GPU, and simply rely on the CPU for rendering. In fact, a rendering bug in the latest versions of MC is forcing users to switch off GPU rendering, but we've been assured that a fix is forthcoming.

Before you spend any money, I would see if you can find someone with an external GPU setup to test out how MC performs with the extra graphics cards. As I said, it's likely that it's going to be professional colourists who will have this sort of setup.

Bear in mind that it's likely such a setup will cost a few thousand dollars, and there's (as yet) no background rendering in MC, so even if it speeds things up by a factor of 2 or 3 times, you might still be having to wait a long time for complex renders to complete, that's why a lot of editors leave MC to render overnight.

As an alternative to your particular workflow, have you though of using the Fusion AVX Connect plugin to create your effects? This way you can create your effects in Fusion, and leave them to render, whilst you get on with editing. When the Fusion render is complete, the effect is automatically updated in the Avid timeline.

 

MC does not take advantage of multiple GPUs in a system. While it's possible that 3rd party effects might, I'm not aware of any that do. You're better off getting the fastest possible card for your video to speed up rendering.

Bruno M:

Bear in mind that it's likely such a setup will cost a few thousand dollars, and there's (as yet) no background rendering in MC, so even if it speeds things up by a factor of 2 or 3 times, you might still be having to wait a long time for complex renders to complete, that's why a lot of editors leave MC to render overnight.

Bruno is incorrect on this point. MC does offer background rendering; it's an option on the Render dialog. However, when running in the background I don't know how much GPU processing is actually being used.

Unfortunately, Fusion does not use multiple GPUs either for rendering either (though if you have more than one, it will dedicate one to rendering and the primary for the display).

 

DStone:

Bruno is incorrect on this point. MC does offer background rendering; it's an option on the Render dialog. However, when running in the background I don't know how much GPU processing is actually being used.

Depends on what effects that are used of course but between 40 and 80 % with a 4000 K card, Sapphire are close to 80 and some Boris effects not long behind, Baselight and Symp CC around 40 %

 

Ok, so it ends up in adding a Titan XP what we have to bring into the Avid Certification Pass Controll. Any idea? Here is a similar topic about this, but I do not have knowledge, where I have to do command-changes inside of Avid:

http://community.avid.com/forums/p/137413/780012.aspx#780012

For GUI we would place a second Card NVIDIA Quadra K4200 into the Z840.

 

Could anybody give some cool tips?

Thank you,

Thomas

Thomas, I don't think we've made this clear yet. MC will ONLY use a single video card, that being the primary card which drives the display. You cannot add a second card for the GUI. Nor do you need to edit the qualified card list any more. The Titan XP will run as-is. If it were me, I'd get a GTX 1080 TI. It's half the cost of the Titan XP and is only about 5% - 7% slower. It's a much better bang for the buck. But that's my opinion. Neither it nor the Titan are qualified cards (which means Avid does not test against them), but so far most of the GTX cards are working with the latest drivers (instead of a qualified card list, Avid implemented an unqualified card list for cards which are known not to work). If you want a completely qualified system supported by Avid, then you'll have to go with a Quadro.