Will we ever get HD video hardware decoding? Flash GPU support?

[Sharky II]

Hi

Really bugs me that a mbp can play back canon 5dmk2 footage (1080p) more smoothly than a mac pro (i have an early 2008 2.8ghz, 8800GT, 6gb ram).

Do you think we'll ever get an update that does decoding of HD video by the onboard gfx cards?

What about the new flash beta, any speculation if you think we'll get hardware acceleration for that?

I'd like to think so!

Cheers

 

[TheStrudel]

Your Mac Pro shouldn't be struggling with that, acceleration or not...you're sure everything else is just fine? Plenty of HDD space, etc.?

Also, isn't the 5dmk2 shooting M-JPEG compressed footage, or am I thinking of a different DSLR?

The flash beta currently supports weaker and mobile GPUs, under the (valid) reasoning that anything in a Mac Pro class doesn't really need it.

Also, flash causes tremendous overhead on H.264 video that actually plays better without it, but that's a different story.

I wouldn't hold your breath on better Flash GPU support. Maybe you'll later get some enhanced H.264 handling, but you don't really need it.

The flash container's just making everything slow.

 

[Pressure]

For starters, Flash has nothing to do with the 48Mbit/sec H.264 codec the Canon EOS 5D Mark II compresses its video files into.

Do you use Final Cut Studio?

To get smooth play back of simultaneous streams I would recommend you transcode all your clips into ProRos 422, ProRes, or ProRes LT, whichever suits your needs.

There are different ways you can do this. Either you can use the free program MPEG Streamclip or the EOS Movie Plugin-E1 for Final Cut Pro, which enables you to use Log and Transfer (if you have an CompactFlash reader connected to the computer with the desired Compact Flash memory card inserted).

Personally since Canon released the EOS 5D Mark II Firmware update that included 24p / 25p and the EOS Movie Plugin-E1 I have been using Final Cut Studio's Log and Transfer because it makes the workflow easier.

Are you running this from a single disk or do you have a separate application disk and "scratch" disk?

 

[Sharky II]

Yes, i realise that the flash support is separate. As were my two questions. Both relate to hardware acceleration support for playback on a mac pro.

And yes, i know about ProRes for editing. You're missing the point. 'Don't need it' is a bad excuse. Why use more cpu than is necessary? If all you're doing is watching a HD video then the Mac Pro can handle it fine - now multitask heavily - like trying to compose music to 1080p HD video - why the hell isn't my GPU being used if it can be?

Quite often previewing (quick look) lots of different videos quickly on a MBP is smoother on a MBP than on a Mac Pro.

 

[Pressure]

Yes, i realise that the flash support is separate. As were my two questions. Both relate to hardware acceleration support for playback on a mac pro.

And yes, i know about ProRes for editing. You're missing the point. 'Don't need it' is a bad excuse. Why use more cpu than is necessary? If all you're doing is watching a HD video then the Mac Pro can handle it fine - now multitask heavily - like trying to compose music to 1080p HD video - why the hell isn't my GPU being used if it can be?

Quite often previewing (quick look) lots of different videos quickly on a MBP is smoother on a MBP than on a Mac Pro.

Was just trying to be helpful.

That second part is a bit easier to answer. The short answer being that Final Cut does not in any way make use of the graphic card. Motion and Color does however. We are waiting for the update to Final Cut Studio that will transition it from Carbon to Cocoa, making it 64-bit and enable it to use OpenCL, not to mention the new and much improved Quicktime X framework.

It takes time to transition the whole Final Cut Studio package to Cocoa (Objective-C).

I have no problem Quickviewing different things on my Mac Pro running 10.6.3.