Barry_Green said:
From what I've read, the performance different between Core Duo and Core 2 Duo are about 5%.
Is there something I'm missing?
Also, some indications that MBP with Core 2 Duo might be here by Tuesday.
Serious Magic Announces the DVCProHD Decoder for Sony® Vegas® and Adobe® Premiere®
- Thread starter videoguys
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From what I've read, the performance different between Core Duo and Core 2 Duo are about 5%.
Is there something I'm missing?
Also, some indications that MBP with Core 2 Duo might be here by Tuesday.
David Newman
Well-known member
Barry_Green said:
Barry,
You need to learn more about our products. There are many advantages other than just mulitple generation compression quality. 1) We are faster, both in full quality and in preview modes because are wavelet compressed -- wavelet allows for automatic decoding to multiple resolutions, whereas in DCT based compression all the entropy coding must be decoded no matter the target resolution, slowing previews down (RayLight does something a little different at its lowest quality mode to address this DCT limitation -- that is why the files + MXFs are bigger.) 2) We aren't limited to the "odd" 960x720 and 1280x1080 resolutions, and we allow upsampling before editing -- something impossible for a native DVCPRO-HD. This improves the quality of your post as all the post elements are at the full export resolution (no one distributes 960x720, so you going to upsample to 1280x720 at some point.) You can run your timeline at 1280x720 with DVCPRO, but now you are requiring the NLE to scale on the fly -- reducing your editing performance -- removing the ability to render previews in "native" mode (given that DVCPRO-HD needs to resample back down to 960x720.) 3) We have many pre-processing tools (above just being a codec.) M2 lens adaptor users can flip their images before it hit the timeline -- we can de-interlace and remove pulldown -- we can change frame rate with audio pitch correction -- we can convert 720p24 to 720pN24 (removing duplicate fields) -- and more -- plus we can do all this for HDV (so it is a two for one deal.) This is all in our Connect HD ($199), many more features are offered in Aspect HD and Prospect HD.
We don't believe the Serious Magic decoder is a competitive product, rather they are advantages in having both installed. We use the free DVCPRO-HD decoder that comes with the P2 Viewer to convert to CineForm AVI, but the P2 Viewer is yet to work on Windows x64, so we will be recommending Serious Magic for our x64 customers. Plus the new DV Rack and our products we see are common partners.
bbalser
Veteran
Ok, I'm a tad confused. As an FCP user who has no problems at this point with P2 and DVCPRO-HD, what will this new "DVCProHD Decoder" do for me? How will it make my life better? Is it doing what FCP does when ingesting P2 data? Or is something different happening? I'm being FCP specific.
KarlSoule
Active member
The Serious Magic DVCProHD Decoder is mostly geared toward Windows-based NLE's, like Vegas and Premiere Pro. In beta testing, we discovered one side benefit that some FCP editors reported. I'm not sure of the specifics, but several of our beta testers mentioned that there are some "workarounds" necessary to work with the MXF files, and our Batch Converter avoids those by converting the files directly to QuickTime files.
Please keep in mind that the Batch Converter needs to run under Windows, so in most cases our FCP editors already had Boot Camp installed. Whether the ability to work directly with QuickTime is worth the trouble is up to you.
Please keep in mind that the Batch Converter needs to run under Windows, so in most cases our FCP editors already had Boot Camp installed. Whether the ability to work directly with QuickTime is worth the trouble is up to you.
bbalser
Veteran
Ok, that's a very vauge answer. What workarounds are you talking about? What is the one side benifit that some FCP editors reported? I'm still confused. It's just re-wrapping MXF into QT like FCP does, right? I still don't understand what the benifit is for FCP users.
What "workarounds" are you talking about? I'm more confused now.
What "workarounds" are you talking about? I'm more confused now.
Jim Arthurs
Well-known member
Ben, I'm not yet a Mac guy, so I might be wrong, but I think in order to use 1080 24PA in FCP, you need to jump through two hoops to do so... see this link and the tutorial PDF...
http://www.235studios.com/html/tutorials.html
With this decoder on BootCamp, you can get your proper 23.976 QT in one step. I think this is the woraround mentioned...
Regards,
Jim Arthurs
http://www.235studios.com/html/tutorials.html
With this decoder on BootCamp, you can get your proper 23.976 QT in one step. I think this is the woraround mentioned...
Regards,
Jim Arthurs
Jim Arthurs
Well-known member
David Newman said:
Barry, David forgot to mention the most important ability, IMO... CineForm downsampling the HVX's mediocre 1080 to great full raster 720p for editing. This is the best possible HVX workflow on any platform, so far. There's no question if I was doing a longform project and I wanted the max that the HVX can deliever, I'd go this route;
1.) Shoot 1080 24PA with the HVX... reap the 15% to 30% improvement in horizontal resolution over shooting HVX 720.
2.) Use CineForm to strip pulldown and resize to true 1280 by 720 in one step. Now you can edit with the reduced bandwidth of a 720p project vrs. a 1080 one with a single stand-alone file.
bbalser
Veteran
I do 1080pa24 in FCP, and I don't waste all that time as outlined in that tutorial. I don't even touch Cinema Tools. Even if I did, I'm still not understanding what this product is actually doing to help. It shows on the Serious Magic web site a version of this software for FCP. What does that version do that will save me time/make life easier? I'm still not getting it.
I only need one question answered very clearly; what exacty is it going to do for me? And I mean the FCP version, not the Windows version in BootCamp.
Let's clarify, here's what Serious Magic claims on the web site, "Pull your Panasonic footage directly off a P2™ card or a hard drive and quickly convert the file to QuickTime..."
How is it doing anything different than FCP does when it converts MXF to QT files? It seems to just do the same thing. Or am I missing something?
I only need one question answered very clearly; what exacty is it going to do for me? And I mean the FCP version, not the Windows version in BootCamp.
Let's clarify, here's what Serious Magic claims on the web site, "Pull your Panasonic footage directly off a P2™ card or a hard drive and quickly convert the file to QuickTime..."
How is it doing anything different than FCP does when it converts MXF to QT files? It seems to just do the same thing. Or am I missing something?
Barry_Green
Moderator
I've heard more like 30%, it'd be interesting to see some benchmarks.David S. said:
Core 2 Duo, an SD card slot, a PCMCIA card slot to plug cards into, and the rock-solid reliability that you can import a card without getting the "glitch". I was all gung-ho for the MBP when it was first announced, but I don't think I'm comfortable living with the limitations imposed.
That would be fantastic. Now if they'd just add the slot back in, I might just flop back over to the MBP camp!
Barry_Green
Moderator
What FCP version? There is no Serious Magic Mac program, is there? I haven't seen one. The only one I know of runs in BootCamp.BenB said:
And as such, it will do the same basic job that FCP does.
The main thing it does for you is allow you to use the rack/scopes/monitors/DDR all on your MBP, and save the files into FCP-compatible MOVs, or, you could import the cards using the more reliable Windows import and then convert the files to FCP-compatible movs. So you stay in one OS while working in the field, then can swap to the other when ready to edit.
Well, offhand, the main benefit would be that IT WORKS RELIABLY. The "glitch" that happens when importing the files off the card on a Mac is completely unacceptable to me, and the dual-mode process of having to make a "disk image" and then importing off the "disk image" is a workaround I find completely silly. There's just no reason to put up with that, when on the PC side it works 100% reliably. So if you were to run SM's decoder using the PC side, offload/import files from the card there, you could be guaranteed that you'll never get "the glitch".
Barry_Green
Moderator
Jim Arthurs said:
Okay, now there I'm with you -- that does seem like a great one-step thing. I agree that 1080->720 does deliver just about all the res the HVX does, but lets you work in the 720 mode; I've done that many times.
Since getting EDIUS I don't bother with any of these things anymore, I can edit native 1080 in realtime and output 720 scaled on output, but I can see that if someone needed an intermediary program (like SM, Raylight, or CF) that this one benefit alone would be reason to take notice of the CF product.
Jim Arthurs
Well-known member
Barry, what is this "glitch"?
Are you saying that there is a potential for error in just the act of copying a P2 from the PCMCIA slot to a harddrive on a Mac so equipped?
If so, this gives me a very sick feeling, as I'd been advising a friend who has shot dozens of cards on location with an HVX/G4 laptop to do this very thing. He didn't have FCP installed on that system and no way to review... in other words, he was/is copying "blind" on faith that data was copying correctly.
Yet on the crappy little PC laptop I take into the field, I've done this without error countless times. I didn't even remotely imagine this could be an issue on a Mac.
Ye gad... I've also been waiting with cash in hand for a Core2 Duo PowerBook pro (I've heard rumors that they'll show on the 25th), but this along with that firewire port issue you mentioned and a few other things is souring me. I've also heard that SATA HD's don't work at full speed under BootCamp and that there's only a very painful workaround to get that fixed.
Jim Arthurs
Are you saying that there is a potential for error in just the act of copying a P2 from the PCMCIA slot to a harddrive on a Mac so equipped?
If so, this gives me a very sick feeling, as I'd been advising a friend who has shot dozens of cards on location with an HVX/G4 laptop to do this very thing. He didn't have FCP installed on that system and no way to review... in other words, he was/is copying "blind" on faith that data was copying correctly.
Yet on the crappy little PC laptop I take into the field, I've done this without error countless times. I didn't even remotely imagine this could be an issue on a Mac.
Ye gad... I've also been waiting with cash in hand for a Core2 Duo PowerBook pro (I've heard rumors that they'll show on the 25th), but this along with that firewire port issue you mentioned and a few other things is souring me. I've also heard that SATA HD's don't work at full speed under BootCamp and that there's only a very painful workaround to get that fixed.
Jim Arthurs
Jim Arthurs
Well-known member
Barry_Green said:
Edius sounds great, I have only tried the previous version's trial, but wasn't attracted to it in the same way as Vegas. One question, if you need to send your source material off to After Effects, or a 3D program, does the Edius codec allow that? Or is it still internal to the program? This is another advantage of the Raylight/CineForm methods... universal access on your system to your files. Raylight is even more direct, and why I got it in the first place, as you're working straight from the MXF's.
Regards,
Jim Arthurs
Barry_Green
Moderator
That's probably true. I don't know that much about it, I only looked into it long enough to see that it wasn't what I was looking for, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be appropriate for others (as Jim Arthurs pointed out).David Newman said:
Faster than SM or Raylight perhaps, but are you claiming you're also faster than EDIUS? EDIUS is full realtime even on a slow system. I should download and try it.
Well, what you refer to as "odd", some of us choose to view as "native". I'd much rather work in the native resolution and only scale once, than have everything automatically scaled for me whether I wanted it to or not. (which, frankly, I'm disappointed in by Raylight, which always scales the footage; I prefer the SM and Apple approach of giving you the raw data as it came in).
No one? What about everyone with a DVCPRO-HD tape deck? Lots of people distribute to broadcasters and post houses at 960x720. And I'd rather stay in the native codec throughout, than transcode & scale upon ingest, and transcode and scale upon export. There are benefits both ways. You've made your point, and for many it will be valid, but it's certainly not a universal one-and-only way to go; for someone mastering out to DVCPRO-HD (whether on tape or on the cards) your method would involve a minimum of two scale and transcode/recompress stages. That's not ideal for all workflows.
The flipping thing is nice for those who use the adapters, and where you do it is probably the ideal stage in the production chain to do it. Everyone else does the 24pN conversion and removes pulldown from 24pA, so that's nothing new. (But does yours remove pulldown from 3:2 24P also? If so that's unique.)
Yes, yours is unique in that it supports HDV, but that may or may not be of value to those looking in this thread to choose a DVCPRO-HD codec for Premiere or Vegas. For multi-platform users who use HDV as well, that's obviously a big point in CineForm's favor.
Clearly, since AspectHD is priced 2.5 times higher. Obviously you're aiming at different users.
Interesting -- I was wondering how you got around the lack-of-codec issue, and that's rather brilliant -- just tie into the existing freely-distributed P2 Viewer one. On other boards someone keeps complaining about the licensing fees for DVCPRO-HD, yet I haven't found one developer who's paid a penny to license it... clever going there.
I commend you for coming up with the product, and for some users I think it definitely fills a valid need. Especially for those who continually render out their images for transport between programs; in cases like that the 10-bit wavelet with no scaling is probably of benefit.
I hadn't looked at your website recently; frankly you know that I was rather turned off by the way you had marketed your product before; we had a bit of a to-do about it as I felt it was borderline dishonest (you know that to which I refer, and I believe you disagree so be it.) But I wish you would just go for more open disclosure instead of portraying things in ways that just aren't true. For example, there are some factually incorrect things on your website, specifically when you say "do you need 24p workflow for your HD100 or XLH1" and then answer that it's ONLY available in cineform; that's not true, both Vegas and EDIUS support 24p from both of them right now, and FCP will have it in the next 20 days. You also claim that HVX support in Premiere Pro is only available with CineForm, that also is not true, Raylight and Serious Magic and Matrox Axio all offer shipping solutions today that work with Premiere Pro. I think if you'd go in and remove such statements it'd go a long way towards me seeing you & your company in a better light.
Barry_Green
Moderator
Every once in a while a frame will get corrupted a bit, it looks just like a DV tape dropout. Only happens on a Mac.Jim Arthurs said:
Well... maybe. Nobody's truly sure exactly what causes it, or when it happens, but we know that it happens if you import footage into FCP directly off the card. Apple's recommended workflow is to not do that, they instead recommend to do a "disk image" of the card. Perhaps that helps minimize the glitch. But there's something wrong that happens there, somewhere along the chain. And it doesn't happen on the PC. And it's not FCP's fault inherently, because I've worked on projects that have had hundreds of cards copied on the PC to external drives, and subsequently imported from those hard drives into FCP, and that works fine - never a glitch ever. So it's somewhere in the using-a-mac-to-offload-the-card part of the chain. And as such, I don't trust a Mac laptop to do it anymore, until we narrow down exactly what it is and when it happens.
It may have been. How was he copying? Was he using P2 Genie, or doing a disk image, or just copying the files in the finder? I don't know which is most reliable for sure, but in order of reliability I suspect that I would rank 'em:
1) ingest on a PC laptop, that always works
2) ingest on a Mac using the Disk Image
3) use P2 Genie
4) do a Finder Copy
5) import straight off the card into FCP.
To me, until someone announces that it's definitively fixed, option 1) is the only one I'll consider. Either ingest on a PC, or use BootCamp on an Intel Mac to ingest.
Me too. I know I've done at least a terabyte's worth of cards with no error ever. Card copying on a PC is solid.
Somewhere along the way there's something amiss with the Mac import, and nobody seems to know what it is and it hasn't been fixed yet. I don't know if it's Apple's PCMCIA driver, or Panasonic's P2 Driver. Or the hardware that Apple uses in the slot. Or what. Does it happen when importing cards out of the slot, but not happen when importing through the camera (using the camera as a card reader?) If so, that points the finger at the slot. If it happens in both, that points the finger at Panasonic's driver. Or is it just related to Fat32 somehow? Apple systems are less reliable with FAT32 than they are with OSX, that's just the way it is. So maybe it's the process of reading FAT32 that's giving it a problem and nobody ever noticed because nobody ever really used FAT32 all that much on a Mac, but now with P2 they're doing hundreds of gigabytes of FAT32 file transfers? It only takes one corrupted bit somewhere along the way to cause "the glitch", and it only affects one frame at a time.
So I don't know where the error is. But somebody should do some testing and find it and fix it!
Me too. That was exactly my plan, but now I'm not gonna do it, not unless a) they introduce the PCMCIA slot, and b) they announce that they've found and fixed the glitch.
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Barry_Green
Moderator
Haven't tried. I would suspect that it's internal to the program.Jim Arthurs said:
Agreed.
Don't know if it's been expanded upon in version 4, as I don't have 4.0 yet.
Barry_Green said:
Barry,
Every time I convince myself I should buy the sexy MBP that I really want you come up with a new logical reason why I should go with the stodgy old PC for field use. Please cut it out.
Anyway, if I were to go with a PC laptop to use with DV Rack, I would have to use a Firewire Express Card adapter, rather than a built in FW port (due to the PC laptop available to me). The adapters come with the powered 6-pin ports. Can I fry the HVX200 with any powered FW port, or is it specific to the Mac?
Thanks,
Jeremy
Barry_Green
Moderator
Don't know, but I would suspect it's possible on any six-pin.
The problem is not specific to Macs, it's about having a powered Firewire port. However, very few PC laptops have 6-pin (powered) Firewire ports, whereas Mac laptops all seem to have them. They can be a real asset when you try to power an external hard drive, but they clearly are also a liability.
Firewire can deliver up to 30V DC and 45 Watts of current -- that's pretty significant. I know of lots of Panasonic consumer camcorders that had their DV ports blown by powered Firewire ports. Somehow people are able to cram the 6-pin connector into the powered Firewire port backwards, and in some instances bad 6-pin to 4-pin cables are causing current to be delivered on the data pins.
One last possible source of blown DV ports is static, and this obviously affects both powered and non-powered ports.
Firewire can deliver up to 30V DC and 45 Watts of current -- that's pretty significant. I know of lots of Panasonic consumer camcorders that had their DV ports blown by powered Firewire ports. Somehow people are able to cram the 6-pin connector into the powered Firewire port backwards, and in some instances bad 6-pin to 4-pin cables are causing current to be delivered on the data pins.
One last possible source of blown DV ports is static, and this obviously affects both powered and non-powered ports.