the nvidia gtx 1080 what's it like for
video editing and should you buy one or
is it overkill hello and welcome to
another switched on network video I'm
Paul FP in this video we'll be
discussing graphics cards for video
production work specifically Adobe
Premiere Pro and After Effects I built
my current video editing PC back in 2012
and it's the machine that I use to make
these videos as well as other client
work with my business it's based around
an Intel Ivy Bridge i7 processor and you
can see a video of it being built and
check out its full specs by clicking the
I just up there now partly to save on
costs and partly is a bit of an
experiment to see how long I could last
without one
I left a dedicated GPU off the spec
sheet and maxed out the budget on other
components instead sticking with just
the integrated intel HD 4000 graphics
well five and a half years have now
passed and I've decided I could no
longer live without one partly for the
time it takes to render and export
projects from Premiere Pro and After
Effects but also for the enhanced
experience of being able to edit with
full quality effects previews in real
time on the timeline without everything
grinding to a halt in choosing which GPU
to buy and video and CUDA were generally
considered best for Adobe CC work so it
boiled down to a choice between the 1060
1070 or the 1080 initially I was
considering whether and lower-cost
1060 would be sufficient but since I'm
going to be doing more and more work at
the 4k and possibly even VI in the
coming years and I tend to have multiple
effects plus color Corrections and
grading all stacked on top of each other
I was worried that the 1060 might not
quite be up to the job and need
replacing down the line then looking at
the price difference between the 1017 to
1080 in December 2017 which was partly
fueled by cryptocurrency miners as well
as the impressive performance increased
a price increase ratio it became harder
and harder to advocate the 1070 so in
the end I went for the 1080 and you can
see more details about exactly which
card I bought with the links in the
videos
down below the 1080 also has many more
cuticles than the 1070 2560 vs 1920 so
there's all that extra power for the
software to make use of now before the
comments section goes wild I'm aware
that most of the performance increases
of the 1080 over the 1070 will be of
benefit to gamers rather than video
editors like me but I also wanted to
ensure that I was future-proof in my rig
as much as possible and going forward
updates to software like Premiere Pro
After Effects and Photoshop will surely
make better and better use of our extra
power as the software is refined and
improved and effects re-written for the
GPU I'll be running some tests in
Premiere Pro and After Effects to look
at the performance jump from CPU only to
the GTX 1080 so let's head over to the
editing suite and get stuck in to do
these tests I'm using a recent video
from the channel which is based around
green screen footage of me speaking
there are quite a few effects applied to
the video namely scaling and rotation a
mask the green screen King itself plus
the sharpening and a luma Terry color
correction and then a drop shadow so
lots of effects which according to Adobe
can take advantage of GPU acceleration
with the exception of the unsharp mask
which still uses CPU only you can check
which effects can make use of GPU
acceleration here in the effects window
the project also contains six After
Effects comps so we'll be putting the
Machine through its paces pretty well
and with a realistic real-world project
we also have some stock footage like the
New Year fireworks place underneath me
as a background and other bits used as
b-roll for the cutaways these were taken
from video blocks who are the sponsor of
this video video blocks is a stock video
website where you can get all sorts of
video clips for your projects as well as
After Effects templates for some more
advanced looking effects it works on a
subscription model so you just pay a
very reasonable annual fee and can then
download as much as you want everything
you download is yours to keep even if
you don't renew your subscription and
it's all royalty-free you can get a 7
day free trial of video blocks by
clicking the link in the video
description and even stuff you download
during your trial is yours to keep so
definitely worth checking that out
anyway back to our timeline without
rendering it let's see how well this
plays back using CPU only and then we'll
let Premiere Pro use
GPU so first of all let's try with CPU
only and as you can see with the preview
playback except too full it's pretty
much unwatchable if we drop that down to
half resolution the situation does
improve massively to manual for you
every day if you need help right but
that's not great if you want to use a
dedicated monitor as your preview screen
now let's allow premier to use the GPU
and see the difference almost perfect
for this next test we'll make sure the
timeline is completely unrendered and
then render it with just the CPU which
saturd a hundred percent for nearly the
whole render it finished in one hour
thirty-six minutes and 53 seconds
however exactly the same task using the
GPU finished in just 31 minutes and 20
seconds which is a whopping 68 percent
improvement the CPU was still mostly
after around 100 percent during the
export which might be partly to do with
the unsharp mask effect in use and the
GPU danced around no more than about 24%
so wasn't even breaking a sweat
next we'll take that same video project
and export it using h.264 as an mp4 file
using one of my customized youtube
presets which in this case exports at a
constant bitrate of 10 megabits a second
this takes the CPU 3 hours 31 minutes
and 35 seconds
switching to reproduce the test with
cuter enabled brought the export time
down to 49 minutes and 14 seconds which
is an even more impressive 77%
improvement and finally let's look at
this After Effects project which is
based around a template and I used it as
a teaser trailer last year for my video
production company
it's quite effects-heavy and does lots
of scaling of the video clips which are
inserted into these fake film strips by
the way you can download lots of
similarly impressive After Effects
templates to use in your projects for
free from video blocks on that seven day
free trial so click the link in the
video description first of all let's see
how we get on trying to play a ram
preview of the comp with CPU only at
full quality and less than a second into
the playback were already struggling
obviously not usable interestingly if we
select Auto then After Effects goes for
half quality but that's still
unwatchable now let's switch to GPU by
going file project settings and then
selecting user mercury GPU acceleration
I also deleted all pre-rendered preview
files to ensure we're starting from a
clean slate and we'll start by trying a
ram preview on full quality
disappointingly that doesn't make it
play much better even on half or even on
quarter if you bring up windows task
manager you can see the CPU is still
getting used a lot or they're not fully
and the GPU isn't really doing much at
all after effects are still somewhat
behind Premiere Pro when it comes to GPU
acceleration so hopefully this will
continue to improve going forward and it
can start to take advantage of the GPU a
better CPU with more cause would make
much more of a difference here moving to
export the After Effects complex see how
things fare with that this took one hour
17 minutes and 17 seconds to export
using the CPU only and exactly the same
settings using the GPU produced an
identical mp4 file in just one hour and
56 seconds
that's a 21 percent improvement which
isn't to be sniffed at
so on this graph here we can see the
difference using a GPU makes for video
production work firstly we saw the
anecdotal evidence of how we were able
to playback the Premiere Pro timeline in
full quality without rendering it even
with lots of heavy effects applied the
same couldn't be said for the
after-effects example though sadly so
hopefully that will improve with later
releases of the software we saw a 21
percent improvement an export time from
After Effects but this was dwarfed by
the huge performance increases in both
Premiere Pro tests a 68 percent
improvement when rendering an
effects-heavy timeline and a massive 77
percent improvement when exporting that
same timeline to h.264 GPU wins games
set and match now it should be noted
that I only performed each test once and
I've only tested the difference on these
two projects so these are hugely
scientific results and you should
certainly take them with a pinch of salt
however they still give a demonstration
of the GPU making a noticeable
difference to the workflow as a side
note they will all perform straight
after a fresh installation of Windows 10
and although there was screencast
software running in the background using
up resources and encoding video itself
this was pretty much constant throughout
all the tests so it can be largely
discarded conclusion time is buying a
good GPU a good investment and a wise
purchase definitely yes it saves you
time and time is money with time saved
you can be more productive and earn more
money but it's the 1080 overkill for
video production work or would you be
fine just with the 1070 or even just a
1060 well sadly our budget here didn't
quite stretch to buying one of each car
to pick them all against each other and
answer that question definitively it'd
certainly be very interesting to compare
exporting the same timelines with all
three cards to see the difference in the
real world the real answer then which is
a bit of a cop-out really is that it
depends on what you'll be using it for
what your budget is and what other
bottlenecks might already be present in
your PC you also have to ask yourself
what the future might hold as 4k and
even 8k come along as well as VR and HDR
video so what might be seen is
extravagant overkill today could be
needed a lot more or even considered
standard in 18 months time so I think
it's better to have only had to buy one
rather than upgrade in the future I'm
certainly very pleased with my gtx 1080
and if you'd like to get one yourself or
even at ten seventy or ten sixty you can
find links in the video description
below as well as the full specs of my
video editing pc so please consider
using those links to help support this
channel i hope you found this video
useful give the video a thumbs up and
let us know in the comments what else
you'd like to see and whilst you're at
it and don't forget to sign up for your
7-day free trial of video blocks using
the link in the video description and
remember that you can keep everything
you download during the trial even if
you cancel make sure you also subscribe
to the switched-on network to see all of
our new videos and you can check out
some past videos to which you should
find interesting in the one two stop
there you can see a time-lapse of us
building our video editing PC so
definitely check that one out thanks for
watching and I'll see you in the next
video