As we prepare for the NAB show (National Association of Broadcasters) this week, AMD and Adobe have released a fairly substantial news release concerning the future of Premiere Pro, Adobe's flagship professional video editing suite. 

Earlier today Adobe revealed some of its next generation professional video and audio products, including the next version of Adobe® Premiere Pro. Basically Adobe is giving users a sneak peek at the new features coming to the next versions of its software. And we’ve decided to give you a sneak peek too, providing a look at how the next version of Premiere Pro performs when accelerated by AMD FirePro™ 3D workstation graphics and OpenCL™ versus Nvidia Quadro workstation graphics and CUDA.

This will be the first time that OpenCL is used as the primary rendering engine for Premiere and is something that AMD has been hoping to see for many years.  Previous versions of the software integrated support for NVIDIA's CUDA GPGPU programming models and the revolution of the Mercury Playback Engine was truly industry changing for video production.  However, because it was using CUDA, AMD users were left out of these performance improvements in favor of the proprietary NVIDIA software solution.

Adobe's next version of Premiere Pro (though we aren't told when that will be released) switches from CUDA to OpenCL and the performance of the AMD GCN architecture is being shown off by AMD today. 

Using 4K TIFF 24-bit sequence content, Microsoft Windows® 7 64-bit, Intel Xeon E5530 @ 2.40 GHZ and 12GB system memory, AMD compared several FirePro graphics cards (using OpenCL) against NVIDIA Quadro options (using CUDA).  Idealy we would like to see some OpenCL NVIDIA benchmarks as well, but I assume we'll have to wait to test that here at PC Perspective.

AMD also claims that by utilizing OpenCL rather than CUDA, the AMD FirePro GPUs are running at a lower utilization, opening up more graphics processing power for other applications and development work.

While this performance testing is conducted on a pre-release version of the next Adobe Premiere Pro, we’re really pleased with the results. As with all of the professional applications we support, we’ll continue to make driver optimizations for Adobe Premiere Pro that can only help to improve the overall user experience and application performance. So if you’re considering a GPU upgrade as part of your transition to the next version of Adobe Premiere Pro, definitely consider taking a look at AMD FirePro™ 3D workstation graphics cards.

You can continue on to read the full press release from AMD and Adobe on the collaboration or check out the complete blog post posted on AMD.com.

AMD and Adobe Collaborate on Upcoming Version of Adobe Premiere Pro Software to Enable Breakthrough Video Editing Performance through Open Standards

 

AMD A-Series APU, Radeon™ and FirePro™ Graphics Technology Work Seamlessly with Next Version of Premiere Pro Software to Provide Real-Time Editing, Effects, Compositing and Color Grading

 

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Apr. 5, 2013 –AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced its collaboration with Adobe Systems Incorporated to deliver OpenCL™ hardware-accelerated video editing for the first time on the MS Windows platform with the next version of Adobe® Premiere® Pro.  This collaboration further demonstrates AMD’s commitment to enabling partner ecosystems with cross-platform open standards, empowering Adobe to amplify the editing experience for creative professionals everywhere. The combination of expanded support for open standards and the Adobe Creative Cloud™ brings unmatched access to the most up-to-date and powerful professional post-production tools anywhere.

The next version of Adobe® Premiere® Pro has been optimized to take full advantage of a wider range of AMD professional- and consumer-class graphics processing units (GPUs) and accelerated processing units (APUs), delivering  unprecedented real-time editing with formats from DV to HD and 4K Ultra HD at high frame rates. Now, Adobe and AMD extend this advanced OpenCL™ functionality to creative professionals running the Windows operating system.  The expanded support on Windows and OSX complements the already popular Mac OSX OpenCL™ support available on Adobe® Premiere® Pro.

“AMD and Adobe are dedicated to delivering professional and consumer level solutions that support open standards and provide artists everywhere with the ability to create at the speed of thought,” said Neal Robison, senior director, Software Alliances at AMD. “Through AMD’s strong relationship with Adobe, video editors no longer have to wait for the rendering of edits, effects, and composites – most everything can now be achieved at high-quality in real-time.”

Coupling AMD graphics hardware with the latest Adobe software, video professionals and prosumers alike will benefit from seamless, high-quality feedback. The next version of Adobe®  Premiere® Pro with support for OpenCL™ harnesses the power of discrete AMD graphics cards and  AMD A-Series APU’s to enable real-time edits, application of dozens of effects, support for the new Lumetri deep color engine and multi-stream and mixed format accelerated workflows with AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology. 

From its APUs and notebook graphics cards to professional workstation cards like the AMD FirePro™ W-series, AMD technology works transparently with Adobe® Premiere® Pro to provide scalable GPU-accelerated editing solutions for inspired prosumers to creative professionals everywhere.  The software is accelerated by OpenCL™ to efficiently harness the compute power of AMD APU and graphics products and achieve up to 4.3X faster exports from a source format with effects to a preferred final destination format for quick and easy distribution and publishing[1].  

“We’re all about creating the best software possible, and at NAB we’re revealing some incredible enhancements to our video editing tools,” said Simon Williams, director of strategic relations at Adobe. “Our customers require powerful systems that enable them to work quickly and efficiently. While we already support OpenCL™ on the Mac, today’s announcement gives creative professionals the opportunity to tap into the massive compute resources of AMD APUs and GPUs on Windows-based PCs, broadening the type of accelerated experience they can have with our upcoming software.”

Video professionals and enthusiasts utilizing the Adobe Creative Cloud gain a competitive advantage through immediate access to AMD hardware-accelerated features and functionality with the latest Adobe video production software. Adobe Creative Cloud offers an end-to-end, cross-platform tool kit with industry-leading software seamlessly integrated with all the hardware needed to create, collaborate, and stay connected.

At NAB, Adobe is previewing the next generation of its professional video and audio products (NAB Booth SL3910). Learn more about the next versions of Adobe’s pro video and audio tools at: www.adobe.com/go/nab_reveal.  More information about Adobe's upcoming new video tools will be unveiled at Adobe MAX, The Creativity Conference, May 4-8 in Los Angeles, CA.

 

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About AMD 

AMD (NYSE: AMD) is a semiconductor design innovator leading the next era of vivid digital experiences with its groundbreaking AMD Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) that power a wide range of computing devices. AMD's server computing products are focused on driving industry-leading Cloud computing and virtualization environments.