NVIDIA GTX series cards can reduce processing time with Adobe Premiere to almost zero

Adobe Premiere CS5 uses video card acceleration

The speed improvement with Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 and a CUDA enabled video card from NVIDIA is something you have to experience to believe.

An NVIDIA CUDA card is essential equipment for video editing. The combination with Adobe CS5 leaves other video editing systems in the dust.

While I like to prepare video reports for NJN Network, the time spent rendering high-definition video has severely restricted my output. It’s the main reason we stopped doing This Hour Has Five and a Half Minutes. The editing took 3 days.

Fans of  the satirical series would approach me on the street and ask when it was starting up again. Never was my answer – I only have one life and it won’t be spent waiting for a video editor.

Adobe’s CS5 release of Premiere Pro, their top-of-the-line video editor, has the Mercury engine that efficiently off-loads the processing to approved video cards.

The speed improvement is unbelievable.

I read about the improvements with CS5 but the approved card list read like a Cadillac dealer’s price list. It didn’t seem feasible to spend $500 and up for a video card.

Then I read an article in Tom’s Hardware on a simple hack that made any CUDA enabled card from NVIDIA work with CS5.

Dreading the video editing for our Blue Christmas video, I read the hack again and applied it for my entry level GeForce 9800 GT card. Rendering an 18 minute HD clip in Premier before the hack took about 36 minutes. After the hack, it took 21 minutes. That was impressive for a 4 years old, barely compatible card.

If you only had to render once a day it would be irrelevant. However, rendering can happen almost every 5 or 10 minutes during heavy editing or applying effects.

Using Premiere is an exercise in hurry-up-and-wait. It’s cheaper cousin Premiere Elements is too slow to even consider. You can’t touch the computer while Adobe is rendering or it stops, or locks up the computer. So you’re stalled waiting, endlessly waiting.

The hack involves not much more than opening a txt file and listing your CUDA compatible card. Read the Tom’s Hardware story to get the details.

Emboldened by my success, I nipped into Future Shop and purchased a $190 GTX 460 card.

Adobe CS5 Mercury engine test with NVIDIA cards

I couldn’t get the card to boot at first until I connected the second power cable. These cards are generally used for computer games and consume more electricity, one drawback. Of course, now that Energy Minister Richard Brown is saving so much money on the light bills we can afford to burn a few more kilowatts.

I started CS5 Premiere Pro and picked the same project, set my stopwatch and clicked “Render”.  The screen blinked and the video started to roll. Hey, that’s not correct. It has to render first.

Assuming it might have been rendered from the last test – the 7 minute result – I swapped out another 18 minute clip of HD video, clicked on render again. The screen blinked and started to roll the video.

Several tests later, I determined that rendering was now almost instantaneous with the Mercury engine and CUDA video card.

To put the system to the test, I asked it to render the clip in reverse at 1.33 times the normal speed. Finally, Premiere gave me a waiting status bar. That task took 40 seconds.

Before the Mercury engine, the same task would have locked up my computer.

Case closed.  An NVIDIA CUDA card is essential equipment for video editing. The combination with Adobe CS5 leaves other video editing systems in the dust.

I’ve got to go now and finish editing Blue Christmas and I’m really looking forward to it.

After that, I should order a GTX 570 card ($350) which is more energy efficient than last year’s GTX 460. It also produces less heat and is quieter.

Not all CS5 tasks are CUDA enabled but the worst ones appear to have achieved significant speed improvements.

Adobe Premiere Pro is not inexpensive. You may be eligible for upgrade discounts or if you are student for lower student costs.

The US price for a full retail copy of Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 is $665. In Canada, Amazon sells Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 for $865.

Upgrades start around $300. Education pricing is about that range. Caveat emptor – there are hundreds of scam sites claiming to sell Adobe CS5 for 10% of retail. Your computer and your credit card are likely to be hacked if you purchase Adobe products on those site. See New Adobe download scam has trojan attached