Requirements - Cross Video

[MusicMeister]

I've been eyeing the Cross Video plug in and I'm curious...

Here's the technical requirements as listed:
MAC AND PC:
Windows 7 or Mac OS X 10.6
Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.8 GHz or Intel Core i3 @ 2.1 GHz or equivalent
4GB RAM
Graphics card with 512MB dedicated video memory
+ a secondary monitor output (VGA, DVI, HDMI)
Screen resolution: 1280 x 720 pixels or higher

My question is specifically about the dedicated video memory portion of the specs. My Mac Book Pro, 13" has the Intel HD Graphics 3000 512MB - but unless I missed my mark, that's an integrated card as opposed to dedicated.

How badly is performance hindered by using an integrated card over the dedicated or will it even work?

The remainder of the specs on my MBP:
2.8GHz Intel Core i7 (Dual Core)
8GB 1333 MHz DDR3
OS X 10.8.2
750GB HD
1TB HD
13" 1280x800 Display

In the past I'd drop the resolution to keep up the speed, but the video plug in appears to require 1280x720 at a minimum.

I understand 'supported' and minimum, but I'm curious if I should consider the Video Plug in at all on this computer or wait and look at an alternative in the future (and keep doing my video with MDT in the meantime on a Mac Mini).

[daniel clark]

not shure of thoes answers,,bare minuin support or unc might catch this post with a definitive answer

[MusicMeister]

See, I don't normally ask easy questions. hehehehe....

[bigworm1063]

From my experience, you'll find that not having a dedicated GPU will greatly affect the video performance. The intergrated video chip shares the memory with the computer, while a GPU has it's own memory, therefore, it doesn't need to use the system's memory. I hope this helps somewhat.

[christiankoopmann]

Hey,

on windows you can set for every program which card the program will use. So you can set the extra graphic card for Cross and it will use this card.

Alternative I tested the video plugin also on an Intel iCore with first generation and it worsk also but the quality will not like when using an high performance graphics card.
But the new iCores have better video performance than the older versions. Also the memory I have 8GB and I can set on bios the maximum of memory which is for the graphics card and I can play games like crysis with that but not on high quality but it works

So if you have an extra card you can run better quality than with the internal chip version.

regards
Christian

[MusicMeister]

Just found out that I can use Thunderbolt and hook up an external PCIe card. Might be able to use that to get around the 'internal' graphics issues for when I need to do video mixing.

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/xmacminiserver.html

http://www.sonnettech.com/support/chart ... processing

And a couple other options for hanging a PCIe card on the Thunderbolt bus.

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoe ... assis.html

Not cheap, but interesting.

[Support@MixVibes]

MusicMeister, now I understand why specs are so low on Mac... #troll

[lilin]

Hi !

About "Screen resolution: 1280 x 720 pixels or higher".
It is not about Video out, but about minimum Cross GUI size.

For Video output, any resolution will do.

About integrated video cards, it is really not recommended for Hi quality playback (720p or above), but it will work.

Im testing Intel HD4000 GPU on mac book pro, and I must admit that it works pretty well, even with HD playback.