Thursday 30 August 2012

Nvidia release new CUDA drivers for Mac

Nvidia have released a new version of their CUDA drivers for the Mac, Version 5.0.24
For some reason they are not seen by the CUDA update tool in system preferences.
You can download them manually from here.

On my Mac Pro with a GTX550ti I saw performance improvements in xbench, Quartz graphics went up from 288 to 335 and OpenGL rose from 114 to 119.

I'm expecting my GTX660ti to arrive today so will update these figures with the results from that.

If you are interested in running a PC graphics card in your Mac Pro, please read my other post here

Tuesday 28 August 2012

Blackmagic Cinema Camera starting to ship!

The Blackmagic Cinema Camera
The Blackmagic Cinema Camera is finally starting to ship, although it seems to only be only to bloggers at first
(not me unfortunately) :-)

Dan Kanes has put up an unboxing video on his blog here

Hopefully they will be shipping to lesser mortals soon, I'll let you know when we have any in stock at CVP where you can order one at 8% off list price. Click here

UPDATE: Blackmagic have posted the user manual and first version of drivers for the camera here

Wednesday 1 August 2012

Blackmagic release DaVinci Resolve 9.0

DaVinci Resolve 9.0
UPDATE 26th September Resolve 9.01 has been released

UPDATE 9th September. Resolve 9.0 has been released

UPDATE 16th August Blackmagic have released Beta 3 of Resolve 9

UPDATE 8th August: Blackmagic have just released Beta 2 of Resolve 9

From the press release:

Blackmagic Design today announced the release of DaVinci Resolve 9 public beta, a major new update to the world’s most advanced color correction tool featuring a completely redesigned user interface to optimize workflow speed. DaVinci Resolve 9 public beta is now available for free download to existing full featured DaVinci Resolve customers, as well as the free DaVinci Resolve Lite!
This significant user interface overhaul has been created to harness the power of multiple new technologies added to DaVinci Resolve in the last few years, including automatic 3D eye matching, multi layering timelines, XML support plus more camera and file type support. The new user interface is extremely fast to use and eliminates unnecessary clicks and settings to get working fast. A job can be up and running in three clicks: one to log in, one to drop media into the project and the next to grade.
New user interface improvements include a new streamlined project import, export and selection workflow, scrubbable media thumbnails to speed up shot selection, production metadata fields for entering on set shot notes and larger color control palettes to give faster access to grading tools. There are new clear graphical palettes for control of power windows, keys, sizing, tracking and stabilization, camera raw and data burn ins. The Gallery now includes resizable stills displayed in user named albums and 44 “prebuilt looks” for fast grade selection. DaVinci Resolve 9 now ensures that the product remains a true, modern, multi platform tool, while retaining all the powerful features as the previous version.
Other new features in DaVinci Resolve 9 include ‘Log grading’ in every corrector node, audio playback support up to 16 channels per source clip and audio renders in both Quicktime and MXF, automatic ‘Audio Sync’, clip data burn ins and batch rendering for dailies, additional and faster automatic stereo 3D image alignment tool, plus new stereoscopic 3D floating windows and new 3D monitoring options.
I've had a quick look through the installation guide and I noticed a couple of interesting things:
Resolve can now support a single graphics card for UI and processing, this was always a problem on some systems because of the restrictions on adding second GPU's.
Resolve 9.0 is designed for Mountain Lion and CUDA 5, you can use the Nvidia GTX 470 or GTX 570 in a Mac Pro running Lion and you can use the GTX 680 under Mountain Lion but only using an external expansion chassis, I presume because of the power requirements of the GTX 680. Similarly the GTX 480 and GTX 580 can only be used in an expansion chassis.
The UI will now run at 1680 x 1050 on a laptop, but is designed to run at 2560 x 1440 so ideally you would have a 27" monitor at that resolution. Resolve will run on the new Retina display MacBook Pro, but only at 1920 x 1200
On both the Mac Pro and Macbooks 16GB of RAM is recommended although it will run with 8GB.
I'm going to install it and have a play. I will update this post if I find anything else of interest. :-)

Download the beta for PC here

Download the beta for Mac here