Edius Broadcast and Cineform questions

[Malcolm Wright]

Hi,

I've been biding my time since I saw that v4 will include keyframing: my mind has been pretty much made up to spring for Edius when this becomes a reality.

I read a thread earlier today (which I would love to link to but can't seem to find right now: I'll post a link when I locate it again) in which Jim Arthurs was asking a bunch of very informative questions from someone at Cineform, as well as posting the results of his comparisons of various codecs.

He said pretty emphatically that Canopus HD was an inferior codec compared to Raylight in the the quality it delivered. Of course, I would rather see some in depth explanation of why this is, or some image comparison to illustrate it before I make up my mind, but it does lead me to wonder if I can use Edius with a different codec such as Cineform? Maybe that's a stupid question, and the answer is 'of course you can' or 'of course you can't' but there you go.

So is it possible to enjoy the wonderful realtime performance Edius delivers while actually rendering with what I am being led to believe is a better codec for a better final result?

There was also the question of Edius setting the lowest blacks to 16 16 16 when rendering out, by default. Is there a way of disabling this?

:dankk2: for your time, Bhiga or anyone who can wash away my ignorance here.

M.

[dregenthal]

I have used Raylight with Premiere Pro 1.5 (briefly), Avid Xpress Pro HD (extensively), and Edius Broadcast ver 3 (probably somewhere in between). I would not argue with Jim Arthurs findings because he is quite knowledgable and thorough, but I will say that I am viewing my 720p and 1080i footage on the Panasonic BT LH-1700W monitor and they all look like candy (and visually I am not seeing any difference between Avid & Edius). I have not used Raylight recently so I am unable to comment on it.

[Malcolm Wright]

Jim sent me a message letting me know that he revised his opinion of the Canopus codec. So the only remaining issue seems to be the color space shift when rendering from Edius.
I'm also wondering whether it is possible to combine the use of cineform with Edius. Can Edius deal with the 10 bit color depth? Can I batch encode all my clips to CineForm avi's and then bring these into Edius and benefit from the 10 bit advantage?

Thanks for sharing your experience, D!

M.

[Andreas]

Malcom,
CineForm codec is 8 bit when using Conect HD and Aspect HD. And yes you should be able to work with Edius according to CineForm. The 10bit you mention comes with Prospect HD, and of caurse I don't think that you will want to use Edius having this 2000$ Premiere 2 plug in. About the real time performance of Edius, you will have that with Premiere and AspectHD, working in real 16:9 1 square pixel ratio and 4:2:2. My experinance is with the trial versions and some 720p 24p over 60p footage.
Bottom line is that Premiere and CineForm work like charm, if one wish to go with Edius that has nothing to do with real time anymore.

Andreas

[Malcolm Wright]

Malcom,
CineForm codec is 8 bit when using Conect HD and Aspect HD. And yes you should be able to work with Edius according to CineForm. The 10bit you mention comes with Prospect HD, and of caurse I don't think that you will want to use Edius having this 2000$ Premiere 2 plug in. About the real time performance of Edius, you will have that with Premiere and AspectHD, working in real 16:9 1 square pixel ratio and 4:2:2. My experinance is with the trial versions and some 720p 24p over 60p footage.
Bottom line is that Premiere and CineForm work like charm, if one wish to go with Edius that has nothing to do with real time anymore.

Andreas

Andreas, thank you. I really do have to take at Premiere before I make a decision.
What machine did you use when trialing Premiere and AspectHD?
My 1.7 centrino Dell m60 is getting old and tired: you probably tried it on something faster?

Thanks,
M.

[Andreas]

Laptop
1680X1050
Pentium 4 660 3.6ghz 64bit
2GB RAM
nVidia GeForce Go 6800 256 MB PCI Express 16x
4X 512 DDR2 533
2X 80GB Hitachi 5400 SATA RAID 0

I consider this setup minimum for editing HD. I just upgraded from 3.0Ghz and althought there is no real diference in speed, everything apears more stable. Thats my initial feeling, we will see. My question to anyone that has the expirience is what machine one needs for doing composite, special effects in real time without rendering, cause mine is not the case and rendering take ages :(

[bhiga]

Careful not to confuse Canopus HD with Canopus HQ.

The Canopus HD codec is DVCPRO HD, which as most folks here know, does have its limitations in terms of sampling and such.

The Canopus HQ codec, on the other hand, is currently capable of 1440x1080 resolution with 4:2:2 sampling, and will be capable of full 1920x1080 resolution with 4:2:2 sampling when EDIUS version 4 is released.

Is Canopus HQ perfect? Of course not... Remember that it is designed for realtime HD editing performance as well as quality.

Is it worse than DVCPRO HD? No. It's better.
It it worse than (standard) HDCAM? No. It's better.

The Canopus HQ codec was designed to be a quality preserving codec for HD editing.

It's like putting your shoes in the gray plastic bin before you put it through the X-ray at the airport. It doesn't make your shoes easy easier to X-ray, but it sure as heck doesn't make your shoes worse, and it keeps your shoes from jamming in the conveyor.

Yes, there are better codecs - but the question is how they perform in realtime, especially in terms of WYSIWYG capability.

Brandon

[bhiga]

Forgot to mention that come EDIUS version 4, the Canopus HQ codec will also support an 8-bit alpha channel.

[Malcolm Wright]

Thanks for posting your specs. My machine is considerably slower. Edius was able to playback real time but of course, that's just one stream.
I think I'll be able to limp along until the end of the year when real editing kicks in, at which time I'll pick up the latest greatest.

Bhiga, thanks for the explanation of the Canopus HD and Canopus HQ. So am I correct in understanding that HQ is like a proxy codec, and all final rendering operations are in fact performed on the HD data? If you can link me to a resource that explains your codecs thoroughly, we could spare you the time it takes to explain it all!

Many thanks!

Malcolm

[bhiga]

Hi Malcolm,

The Canopus HQ codec is a bit different from most intermediary or proxy codecs. Instead of serving as a lower-quality version of the video to work with, it actually preserves the quality while being easier to process. The trade-off is not quality, but is simply larger filesize.

While your typical HDV stream is 25 Mbps, the Canopus HQ version would be between 100-160 Mbps. Between 4 and 7 times larger data-wise. Some of this is due to the HQ codec's intra-frame nature, which makes it far easier to work with from the NLE's perspective. The rest is just "headroom" in a manner of speaking, which also makes the HQ codec suitable for higher-quality HD sources such as DVCPRO HD, HDCAM and even uncompressed.

More info in the Technology section of our website:
http://www.canopus.com/canopus/technology/canopuscodecs.php

[Andreas]

Hi Brandon

Any improvements in Edius 4 keyers ? If you remember I was very impresed with Edius keying capabilitys, but in the meenwile I tryied several other solution that I find better/more acurate. Strangly Edius seems more versalite but the final outcome is comparable to any NLE keyer, wich is average. Since Edius is still by far the quickest in rendering and the only one that I could do keying in real time with 720p footage, I am wondering if Canopus took the time to pay more attention and advance it. That would make it very very competitive. Anyhow I can't wait to try Edius 4 trial.

Thanks
Andreas

[bhiga]

Hi Andreas,

With the exception of the ability to select multiple non-contiguous ranges, I find EDIUS's keyer very flexible. One thing it is not, unfortunately, is easy to understand.

One thing you'll probably like and make use of in EDIUS v4 is the ability to "apply" a grayscale or alpha key file to another file.

For example, let's say I made an excellent grayscale key matte in After Effects or something else - we'll call this clip Alpha.
In EDIUS v4, I can load that file into the Bin, then select another clip in the Bin, say clip Beta and Convert | Alphamatte.
This will create a new clip, clip Result which is the content of clip Beta with the mask from clip Alpha applied.
This essentially "applies" an alpha channel from one clip to another clip.
This uses the alpha channel in the HQ codec, which is new in v4.

Then you'll have the best of both worlds.

Brandon