HD Video Playback

Anyone using a dedicated card or dedicated slave system to playback video? I’d like to playback HD video on a dedicated screen but I dont want it to cause CPU use issues. I also want it to be frame accurate sync with no stuttering. Is this something an i7 system can handle on its own, or do I need a slave or special GFX card? CB 6.0.5 doesn’t like my GFX card, so its time to upgrade…

I can play an H.264 HD 720p 23.976fps video and score to it in Cubase without issues. I have a 5 year old system too (see signature below). A Core i7 would handle it without a sweat.

The other issue I have is choppy HD video playback in quicktime, but thats probably an issue with my Nvidia 8400 GS Graphics card. How do you like your ATI card? Do you have any recommendations?

I sometimes get choppy HD video playback of H.264 files in QuickTime, but not when I work in Cubase. It depends on the bit rate of the video too. As you know, H.264 is a very compressed format, but somehow Cubase seems to handle it without problems. Maybe if I had a newer system it would handle it better, idk.

As far as ATI goes, I love their cards. Never had an issue with them and I’ve been through at least 5 of them. I couldn’t recommend a specific model cause I don’t know what’s up (haven’t kept up with that in years). However, I can say that their Radeon HD series are pretty good. Just search online to see what’s the latest and greatest.

Take care!

Anyone have a blackmagic decklink card? Anyone able to explain what those specialty cards offer for cubase users?

Found the problem. Apple ProRes 422 codec is barely supported on PC, and its unusable. QT stutters and then crashes everytime. I’m now on the hunt for a good alternative. The ideal codec would offer the same amount of picture quality, but be easy on the CPU too.

I imported the ProRes 422 into Sony Vegas Movie Studio 10 and tried exporting a number of different codecs. Among the ones I tried, Sorenson Video (not sorenson video 3) had the best picture and smoothest playback on my system. I had 1080p quality and no skipped frames that I could see. It also works in Cubase. Downside to sorenson is the HD export takes probably 25 hours. SD export is considerably quicker though.