NVIDIA’s Parallel Computing Architecture Driving Growing List of Groundbreaking Video Processing Solutions

Press Release from NVIDIA

International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) 2010, AMSTERDAM — Sept. 10, 2010 — NVIDIA announced today that a growing range of software for broadcast and film production professionals is harnessing its NVIDIA CUDA™ parallel computing architecture, which enables dramatic increases in computing performance by tapping into the power of NVIDIA® Quadro® and Tesla™ graphics processing units (GPUs).

Independent software vendors (ISVs) such as Adobe, Ambrado, Blackmagic Design, BroadMotion, Cinnafilm, Elemental Technologies, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Iridas, MainConcept, Microsoft Corp., and TDVision are using NVIDIA GPU technology. They are using its speed and power to provide solutions for video encoding and decoding, visual effects (VFX) creation, 3D stereoscopic video processing, and color grading and correction.

“The film and broadcast industry is highly competitive, and the demands for providing even richer imagery, including stereoscopic 3D, are only increasing,” said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research, the multimedia industry’s research firm in California. “CUDA is a remarkable architecture that utilizes the GPU to accelerate processes crucial to film and video production, such as encoding, color compression and effects simulation – we are going to see things we never saw before.”

CUDA Powers Visual Effects Creation

“Our customers come to us for breakthrough visual effects that have never been seen before, from 150 foot waves to fire that can be interactively manipulated within a scene,” said Richard Kerris, CTO, Industrial Light & Magic. “NVIDIA’s GPU technology and CUDA, more specifically, have played a significant role in how we do our work. We’re seeing improvements on simulation turnaround times that in the past would have taken hours, even days, and are now in some cases, down to minutes.”

Cinnafilm, (Stand 1.C61, Harmonic Inc., and Stand 7.A20, Quantel Ltd.) a leader in GPU-based image optimization and conversion, is utilizing NVIDIA CUDA for their Dark Energy Software Suite and Dark Energy Plug-Ins, enabling features such as standards/format conversions, video retiming, noise and dust removal, grain management, film simulation and other impressive visual effects up to 4K. 

CUDA Makes Stereo 3D Work Flow and Enriches Color

Iridas, (Stand 7.H11) is a leading provider for color grading, playback, Stereo 3D and RAW processing. Iridas SpeedGrade, FrameCycler and MetaRender leverage NVIDIA GPUs to provide an end-to-end postproduction workflow from onset to finishing, with a specific focus on universal processing of RAW files originating from digital cinema cameras.

“As one of the earliest users of NVIDIA GPU processing in the industry, the impact the latest generation of CUDA technology brings to the table is truly dramatic,” said Lin S. Kayser, CEO, Iridas. “CUDA allows us to run advanced image processing algorithms in real time, which, by comparison, would take minutes to render on today’s fastest CPUs.”  

CUDA Accelerates Video Encoding and Decoding, including new 3D-based Solutions

Adobe  (Hall 7, H.23) recently introduced Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 software for virtually every creative workflow including designers, photographers and video editors. Adobe® Premiere® Pro CS5 software incorporates the NVIDIA CUDA parallel processing architecture, so NVIDIA Quadro GPUs and their hundreds of CUDA cores enable film and video professionals to work unconstrained,  unleashing the real-time video editing and effects processing capabilities of Adobe’s leading non-linear editor.