Andrew Clark
Active member
KarlSoule said:
If I purchase just the DVCPro HD Decoder, does the same still apply for this Core 2 Duo / 2gb RAM problem?
AC
Serious Magic Announces the DVCProHD Decoder for Sony® Vegas® and Adobe® Premiere®
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If I purchase just the DVCPro HD Decoder, does the same still apply for this Core 2 Duo / 2gb RAM problem?
AC
KarlSoule
Active member
No, it shoud not affect the DVCProHD Decoder.
One correction on the problem - it is literally just a RAM issue. Anything over 1 GB of RAM in the computer can cause it. Core and Core 2 chips expose the problem sooner, but it can happen with any Intel processor when the system has more than 1GB of RAM.
We've isolated it specifically to a flaw in the universal driver used in just about any IEEE 1394 chipset. I won't get too deep into specifics, but it has to do with something called DMA (direct memory access) and a limit how much data can go directly from the FireWire port into RAM. The flaw has evidently been in the driver for years, but the 100Mb/s stream from the HVX exposed it. If you have over 1GB of RAM, the FireWire port cannot transfer the video into the higher memory addresses, and DV Rack can't buffer like it should.
Ideally, the device driver should be the place to fix this type of problem, but since we don't have control over that, we have already come up with a fix. We'll get it to all 2.0 owners as soon as it's fully tested.
Also, be aware that this is not likely to affect DV or HDV recording.
One correction on the problem - it is literally just a RAM issue. Anything over 1 GB of RAM in the computer can cause it. Core and Core 2 chips expose the problem sooner, but it can happen with any Intel processor when the system has more than 1GB of RAM.
We've isolated it specifically to a flaw in the universal driver used in just about any IEEE 1394 chipset. I won't get too deep into specifics, but it has to do with something called DMA (direct memory access) and a limit how much data can go directly from the FireWire port into RAM. The flaw has evidently been in the driver for years, but the 100Mb/s stream from the HVX exposed it. If you have over 1GB of RAM, the FireWire port cannot transfer the video into the higher memory addresses, and DV Rack can't buffer like it should.
Ideally, the device driver should be the place to fix this type of problem, but since we don't have control over that, we have already come up with a fix. We'll get it to all 2.0 owners as soon as it's fully tested.
Also, be aware that this is not likely to affect DV or HDV recording.
No, the problem involves the video feed freezing altogether, after about 30 seconds in most cases. Basically, the buffer fills up and the program then stops receiving new frames.
Stuttering while monitoring the live feed typically results from the CPU not being fast enough to handle the data stream. On playback, both the CPU and the hard drive come into play. There are a few things you can do to reduce or eliminate the choppiness:
* set the Visible Lines property in the Field Monitor to Odd or Even rather than full
* close any components that you're not using (or can do without at the moment). The Waveform Monitors and Vectorscope are the most CPU-hungry.
* at least defrag your drive, and ideally, if you're recording to an external or secondary drive, erase everything from the drive before each project so that DV Rack has a contiguous, wide-open block to write to, thereby avoiding all seeking when writing and reading.
Incidentally, this info is covered in the online help under Recording & Reviewing > Preserving Headroom for Recording.
Stuttering while monitoring the live feed typically results from the CPU not being fast enough to handle the data stream. On playback, both the CPU and the hard drive come into play. There are a few things you can do to reduce or eliminate the choppiness:
* set the Visible Lines property in the Field Monitor to Odd or Even rather than full
* close any components that you're not using (or can do without at the moment). The Waveform Monitors and Vectorscope are the most CPU-hungry.
* at least defrag your drive, and ideally, if you're recording to an external or secondary drive, erase everything from the drive before each project so that DV Rack has a contiguous, wide-open block to write to, thereby avoiding all seeking when writing and reading.
Incidentally, this info is covered in the online help under Recording & Reviewing > Preserving Headroom for Recording.
lpcvideo1
Veteran
KarlSoule said:
Thanks, Karl. That clarification is helpful. I was concerned that I went down a more expensive path by getting HDV Rack, but that clears things up.
You guys have been nothing but helpful and fair in all my purchases, and your products are suprisingly solid and a great deal.
Can i edit DV rack quictimes recorded from the HVX in 1080/25 in FCP 4.0.1?
I dont know if i have the right settings, but the files open and play in the viewer window. When i dump them on the timeline, i need to render, which FCP does in a blink of an eye, but in fact the files are are not actually rendered, so i cant view them.
What am i doing wrong?
I dont know if i have the right settings, but the files open and play in the viewer window. When i dump them on the timeline, i need to render, which FCP does in a blink of an eye, but in fact the files are are not actually rendered, so i cant view them.
What am i doing wrong?
I can't vouch for 4.0.1. We did our testing in 5.0.3. In that version, the trick is to make sure all project settings are correct for the video--mainly resolution, frame rate, and (if memory serves) pixel aspect ratio. If any properties are different between the clip and the project, FCP shows "Unrendered."
Barry_Green
Moderator
HVX2006, did you have a typo there? You can't do HD in 4.0.1, can you? I'm pretty sure that HD support first appeard in 4.5, so perhaps you meant 5.0.1?
HVX2006 said:
You must be referring to 5.0.1?
If not, you need to upgrade atleast to 5.0.4. V.4 did not support DVCProHD.
I am in the middle of a project that exposed the lack of DVCPRO HD in Windows problem big time. I received my film scan in .mov coded to DVCPRO HD. Of course I could not use it with Premiere, and Cineform didn't know what to do with it. I ended up transcoding to Avid DV100. What a mess. So, Mark & Mark, if I buy your codec, and bring that original DVCPRO HD file (that was output from a MAC using their DVCPRO HD codec) onto my timeline, will I be able to edit it and output it natively to another .mov DVCPRO HD file that a MAC can then read to output to HDCAM? The biggest problem I have is editing things in Premiere and not being able to deliver on a hard drive a file the service companies here in Denver (all use MACS) can then output to Digibeta, HDCAM or D5.
You can edit, but then what can you do with it...?
You can edit, but then what can you do with it...?
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MrPolarBare
Well-known member
As a Cineform Aspect HD and Raylight user, I am confused about what additional benefits this new DVCProHD Decoder tool is bringing to me? What are the selling points over those already established products? I browsed their website and have read every post in this thread. I must be missing something here. Or is the excitement over the $800 DV Rack 2.0 HD program and all of it's features?
I use windows, and I want to be excited too!!
I use windows, and I want to be excited too!!
I haven't worked with the Cineform or Raylight products, so I can't tell you what the differences are. What I can tell you is that we originally wrote the decoder to work internally within DV Rack 2.0 HD and then adapted it into a decoder that works for Vegas, Premiere Pro 2.0, and other programs. Since it comes as part of the 2.0 HD upgrade and full install, that saves customers from having to buy a codec from a third party. Though it's bundled with DV Rack, it's a separate install package, so offering it as a stand-alone product for customers who were not interested in buying DV Rack seemed like the logical thing to do.
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Barry_Green
Moderator
Raylight and Serious Magic's decoder seem to be doing the same basic job.
CineForm is something entirely different, but aimed at solving the same problem.
Raylight and Serious Magic both unwrap the MXF file and re-wrap as a DVCPRO-HD .avi file, with absolutely no recompression and no loss of quality at all, and install a DVCPRO-HD decoder. Serious Magic creates a fully-integrated .avi that stands alone; Raylight creates a proxy .avi with pointers back to the original .MXF. There are bonuses to both approaches; with SM you can copy the files to a new directory no problem; with Raylight you can't do that, if you move or delete the original MXF files then you have to re-run RayMaker and re-create them. But, Raylight gives you low-res proxies that can make for substantially faster playback rates; SM doesn't do that. (in full quality mode they both seem about equally fast)
CineForm transcodes away from DVCPRO-HD and recompresses in CFHD, CineForm's own codec. So you will not be working with the native DVCPRO-HD data. To some of us that's undesirable, to CineForm they believe it's the only way to go. There would be some benefit if you were constantly recompressing your files, maybe if you were exporting to After Effects and then compositing and then re-exporting from After Effects back to your NLE, etc. If you continually re-render like that, CFHD reportedly holds up better to recompression than DVCPRO-HD does. However, I don't work that way and I don't know too many who do -- we pretty much slap the footage on the timeline and edit away, never rendering until the final output stage, and in cases like that I fail to see any substantial benefit for going with the CineForm approach.
If your editing style is recompressing and heavy grading, CFHD may offer advantages. If your editing style is cuts & dissolves, CFHD would be an unnecessary recompression IMHO.
For a Raylight user, I don't see much benefit in spending additional dough for the SM decoder, as it does the same basic job at about the same speed. SM has a nicer user interface, but overall the job is the same.
Of course, there may be differences on dual-core or dual-processor systems that I haven't encountered yet since I am still in the Luddite Stone Age when it comes to computer hardware...
CineForm is something entirely different, but aimed at solving the same problem.
Raylight and Serious Magic both unwrap the MXF file and re-wrap as a DVCPRO-HD .avi file, with absolutely no recompression and no loss of quality at all, and install a DVCPRO-HD decoder. Serious Magic creates a fully-integrated .avi that stands alone; Raylight creates a proxy .avi with pointers back to the original .MXF. There are bonuses to both approaches; with SM you can copy the files to a new directory no problem; with Raylight you can't do that, if you move or delete the original MXF files then you have to re-run RayMaker and re-create them. But, Raylight gives you low-res proxies that can make for substantially faster playback rates; SM doesn't do that. (in full quality mode they both seem about equally fast)
CineForm transcodes away from DVCPRO-HD and recompresses in CFHD, CineForm's own codec. So you will not be working with the native DVCPRO-HD data. To some of us that's undesirable, to CineForm they believe it's the only way to go. There would be some benefit if you were constantly recompressing your files, maybe if you were exporting to After Effects and then compositing and then re-exporting from After Effects back to your NLE, etc. If you continually re-render like that, CFHD reportedly holds up better to recompression than DVCPRO-HD does. However, I don't work that way and I don't know too many who do -- we pretty much slap the footage on the timeline and edit away, never rendering until the final output stage, and in cases like that I fail to see any substantial benefit for going with the CineForm approach.
If your editing style is recompressing and heavy grading, CFHD may offer advantages. If your editing style is cuts & dissolves, CFHD would be an unnecessary recompression IMHO.
For a Raylight user, I don't see much benefit in spending additional dough for the SM decoder, as it does the same basic job at about the same speed. SM has a nicer user interface, but overall the job is the same.
Of course, there may be differences on dual-core or dual-processor systems that I haven't encountered yet since I am still in the Luddite Stone Age when it comes to computer hardware...
for_mlove
Well-known member
Barry,
Does this development from SM or the recently announced update to FCP cause you to want to look at Vegas or FCP as a better all around solution than Edius? I've been looking at FCP Studio for some time now and think that's probably the route I'll go. I know Edius has the best P@ implementation, but I'm not too excited about having to invest in multiple programs from multiple companies to be able to edit, composite, author DVD's etc. Studio keeps it nice and simple, seems to just work, letting a person spend more time on producing content than figuring out workarounds and keeping up on a slew of different products.
Just wondering if I should rethink before pulling the Mac trigger.
P.S. For what it's worth, I've been using Liquid for the last year and would probably ride it out a little longer if I KNEW they were coming out with DVCPRO-HD support.
Does this development from SM or the recently announced update to FCP cause you to want to look at Vegas or FCP as a better all around solution than Edius? I've been looking at FCP Studio for some time now and think that's probably the route I'll go. I know Edius has the best P@ implementation, but I'm not too excited about having to invest in multiple programs from multiple companies to be able to edit, composite, author DVD's etc. Studio keeps it nice and simple, seems to just work, letting a person spend more time on producing content than figuring out workarounds and keeping up on a slew of different products.
Just wondering if I should rethink before pulling the Mac trigger.
P.S. For what it's worth, I've been using Liquid for the last year and would probably ride it out a little longer if I KNEW they were coming out with DVCPRO-HD support.
rogar-Smoke(DBG):Barry_Green
Moderator
It certainly did, but I'm in flux now because until I have adequate hardware to run it on, I don't know exactly how viable it is.for_mlove said:
I was all set to go the FCP route, but I just don't like some things about it. The workflow is too limited for my tastes. I don't want to shell out $2800 for a MacBook Pro system that's slower, has no SD card slot for editing scene files, no P2 card slot, no Core 2 Duo processor... those are all things you can get better on the PC. Plus I can't tolerate the idea of "the glitch", which happens when importing cards on a Mac. So I'm very tempted to go with a PC laptop, for $1800 I can get a maxxed out Core 2 Duo system that includes a proper PCMCIA slot as well as an ExpressCard slot, as well as an SD slot, and a 4-pin firewire port that won't blow up my HVX's firewire port. And it'll never suffer from "the glitch". And I can offload cards to two drives simultaneously. With DV Rack 2.0 and P2 Viewer and EDIUS it's the only way to go. Captured footage through DV Rack can be directly imported into either EDIUS or FCP; offloaded cards on a FAT32 disk can be directly ingested into either EDIUS or FCP...
Actually, now that you've made me think it out, there's no doubt that's the way I'll go. So I'm still thinking about replacing my desktop, maybe with a 24" iMac. For field work the PC laptop with EDIUS etc., for desktop work EDIUS and FCP both...
I downloaded (demo good for 3 days) and installed SM's new DVCPRO HD codec and immediately used it to bring in the .mov file I received (output from Final Cut) from the HD Scan house. I saw images from my film in HD for the first in DVCPRO HD on my Premiere Pro machine.
I discovered two interesting things. One, it reported my 95 minute movie as a 75 minute movie, and two; the 23.976 frame rate as 29.97. On the Premiere timeline then, it was playing the 24 frames as 30.
I will be the first to admit I am using it for purposes not intended, but as I said earlier, we have to come up with a way to output from MAC and input to Premiere and then output to MAC again wihtout losing anything.
And speaking of ouput, what surprised me the most was the install of the codec didn't appear to add a DVCPRO HD export option as I thought it should. I am editing a comedy special shot on the HVX that I will have to output to a final cut system for distribution. Is there a method of export in Premiere that leaves the native codec (in this case DVCPRO HD) unaltered?
I discovered two interesting things. One, it reported my 95 minute movie as a 75 minute movie, and two; the 23.976 frame rate as 29.97. On the Premiere timeline then, it was playing the 24 frames as 30.
I will be the first to admit I am using it for purposes not intended, but as I said earlier, we have to come up with a way to output from MAC and input to Premiere and then output to MAC again wihtout losing anything.
And speaking of ouput, what surprised me the most was the install of the codec didn't appear to add a DVCPRO HD export option as I thought it should. I am editing a comedy special shot on the HVX that I will have to output to a final cut system for distribution. Is there a method of export in Premiere that leaves the native codec (in this case DVCPRO HD) unaltered?
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Barry_Green
Moderator
Premiere is the wrong tool for that job. It just doesn't do it. Look to EDIUS instead; it can read and (I believe) write FCP-compatible .mov files losslessly.
Barry,
We are dumping cards to a Dual Core Laptop in the field using Edius. WE spot check shots for sound, picture, and continuity in Edius. The external hard drive we use for storage in the field can be taken back to post and used by Edius immediately or by FCP after some transcoding. Best of both worlds off one hard drive.
jim
KRON-TV, San Francisco
We are dumping cards to a Dual Core Laptop in the field using Edius. WE spot check shots for sound, picture, and continuity in Edius. The external hard drive we use for storage in the field can be taken back to post and used by Edius immediately or by FCP after some transcoding. Best of both worlds off one hard drive.
jim
KRON-TV, San Francisco