GPU Acceleration

GPU Accelerated plug-ins

The Exposure and White Balance plug-ins are available in new versions featuring GPU acceleration:

Exposure GPU and White Balance GPU

They behave exactly like their non-GPU equivalent in terms of color correction, and share the same parameters, so that the upgrade can seamlessly be done without any impact on your existing projects... Except performance improvements!

Fluidity, Speed, Availability

Using the GPU-accelerated plug-ins provides the following benefits:

  • More fluid preview, even when dozens of effects are applied to an event;
  • Faster rendering, whatever the output format;
  • CPU kept available for other tasks, including other effects, making them more fluid as well.

And if your computer does not have a GPU, then the plug-ins will use the CPU to operate. This may be useful for instance if you intend to use the plug-ins on both a desktop computer with a GPU, and a laptop with no GPU (the license agreement allows you to install each plug-in license on 2 different machines, provided that you do not use them simultaneously). You may then seamlessly edit your projects in both environments.

Evaluate

You may download free, fully functional evaluation licenses of both plug-ins:

We are ready to help you if you have any questions: send us an email!

Compatibility

FBmn Software's Exposure GPU and White Balance GPU support all nVidia GPU cards embedding the CUDA technology.

Simply speaking, if your graphics card has a nVidia chipset, and is from 2009 or later, it will most likely provide GPU acceleration to FBmn Software's Exposure GPU and White Balance GPU.

For a list of nVidia CUDA-enabled GPUs, check this nVidia web page. However, strangely enough, some low-cost graphics cards do not support CUDA even though they use such devices, so it is safer to check that the CUDA logo such as shown on the side illustration, is drawn on the card box. And it is even safer to make the test with our evaluation licenses.

ATI graphics cards are currently NOT supported.

If you have not upgraded your graphics card driver for a while, you may have to do it to have CUDA available. Get the latest version from the nVidia web site in order to have one supporting CUDA 4.0 (the driver version should be 270.61 or more for GeForce graphics cards).

If you have any doubt, the best way is to try by downloading an evaluation license as mentioned above!

Setup

To setup the plug-ins (either White Balance GPU or Exposure GPU):

  1. If you already have the non-GPU version of the plug-in:
    • make sure that Sony Vegas is not running - and close it if necessary;
    • uninstall the non-GPU plug-in using the provided uninstall program (available in the FBmn Software folder of the Windows Start Menu).
  2. Download the evaluation version of the GPU accelerated plug-in.
  3. Run the setup file and follow the instructions.

Optional Configuration: GpuSelect

By default, the plug-ins will automatically choose the best solution as follows: if a nVidia GPU is available, they will use it. If there are several nVidia GPUs, they will use the most powerful one, in terms of number of multiprocessors. And in any other case, they will fall back to the CPU.

If for any reason, you want the FBmn Software plug-ins to use a specified device, including the CPU (instead of any GPU), select the appropriate line in the provided GpuSelect utility, and click OK.

The GpuSelect utility may be found in the FBmn Software folder of the Windows Start Menu.

Please notice that GpuSelect must be run as an administrator: right-click it from the Windows Start Menu, and choose "Run as administrator" from the popup.

Also, please notice that GpuSelect does not show non-Cuda based GPUs.

Evaluating performance

First of all, you may check the effect About box: it will tell you the active processing unit: either CPU or a nVidia GPU.

You may then want to check that your GPU is actually being used instead of the CPU. Several tools are available for that purpose. Among others, you may for instance get the free EVGA Precision utility.