MXF files, platforms and editing oh my

I think the PC lineup for cutting DVCProHD is Avid, Pinnacle, and Canopus. I know the current version of Avid Express Pro HD will cut DVCPro HD, but I'm not sure if Pinnacle and Canopus are currently shipping anything. Pinnacle is a division of Avid anyway, so I'm not sure where that's headed. I'll be pretty surprised if I don't see DVCPro HD support in Premiere and yes--even Vegas in the next 6-8 months.
 
nateweaver said:
That's what I'm talking about. You need to see it connected to an HD source, and not judge it based on spec. The very best Sony broadcast HD CRTs don't resolve full resolution.
Click to expand...

Oh, yeah, I noticed when I was putting together my edit suite. I ended up with an older PVM monitor since I got it for 300, it did 16:9 and Blue only, and in the days of SD that was all I needed. I think the res was 600 lines or so, which was plenty to see DV's compression artifacts, but also plenty to do a reasonable off-line color correction. That's what I'm looking for, a solution that will be "pretty good' and allow me enough precision so that I can correct it enough so that people can watch at home on HDTV's and SD's as well. So the question is Dell 24" or the Sony L5. I don't have an HDTV at home, that's why the dell seemed appealing. If I eventually get big distro for a doc I do, I can easily online it at any local facility. I have heard of print folks calibrating the dell, I suppose we could hack together a blue-only tool in FCP by dropping the red and green channels, then making the result greyscale. The advantage of the sony, I suppose, is no herky-jerky hacking required. I wonder, too, about the dell, since it seems that I'll be living the 720P realm, how that will look full screen. HMMMMM.

Oh yeah, and at NAB a couple years ago, I saw the JVC and Panny demos, and their pro HD CRT monitors looked pretty damned bad, esp. compared with the Sony monitors. When I first saw them, I snickered to myself about how noisy the Varicam looked, but after more time, I realized it was the monitoring system, not the varicam itself.
 
doccutter said:
So the question is Dell 24" or the Sony L5. I don't have an HDTV at home, that's why the dell seemed appealing.
Click to expand...

Oh my god, there's not even a comparison there. I bought the Dell for monitoring a FX-1 project at my old work. I recommend the Dell only if you have no other choice. It's a tremendous computer monitor, but for component HD monitoring, it was really terrible to look at.

Mine in fact had the same component in banding/noise that Mike Curtis (HDforindies) experienced. It made that input useless. If I had bought it with my own money I either would have bugged Dell until they fixed it, or returned it. As it wasn't mine, it eventually got relegated to the main comp monitor.
 
Nate, do you really feel the Sony is resolved enough for critical HD work? I guess you do from your comment, but it is only resolving 600 lines in 16:9. That is less than 720P.
I have yet to see one myself but that would be my first choice if were viable.
 
Mannnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!

This forum is like a never-ending constantly updating book! I've already learned enough to frikin take some MXF files and some DVCPRO-HD stuff and put in a blender and make some AVIDS!!!!!!!!! =)

nice. I keep learning.

Didn't know about color-correcting with an HD monitor via D4 conection from cam [on shoot] to minimize pain and headaches in post. Wouldn't these HD monitors have to be rather 'smallish' if the shoot is in like,. a jungle? =)

Ah' LIKE it! Ah Like it OLot!
 
In my case, you don't use the monitor in the field. The monitor is for post, when you're making edits and color correction for the offline edit. There are a wide variety of field monitors out there, the standards are the 5" and 8" sony PVM monitors, and they can be powered with NP1 batteries. They don't have the best resolution, but if you have a large crew in the jungle, they beat the viewfinder on most consumer cameras. If you want field monitoring for the HVX to be useful, you're going to need something small, but with excellent resolution...
 
So ummm.,

What would be the more logical answer - for my umm, "jungle" shoot. I guess one wouldn't use the big expensive HD monitors for that 'special' shoot. I guess you would take little monitors instead. But then you wouldn't be able to do the color correcting stuff. Hmmmm. Those little 5"and 8" monitors could technically allways be atached to the HVX - alas Zacuto style (http://www.zacuto-rentals.com/HVX_2000267lg.jpg)

By the way... on that shot... what's that little thingy on top right?... Looks like an oversized Creative MP3 player.

???
 
Konrad said:
I'm curious why Panny is not playing nice with Cineform, when Cineform claims every other vendor is playing nice?
Click to expand...
Seriously? Take a look around CineForm's site; it'll probably become pretty obvious why Panasonic might decide to not go out of their way to do anything for Cineform. Look at Cineform's test articles: it seems like they're trying to make a name for themselves by bashing the Panasonic codec, including setting up a wildly unrealistic squashing/unsquashing test just to try to discredit DVCPRO-HD. Cineform has positioned themselves as Panasonic's competition. If I was Panasonic, I wouldn't give Cineform the time of day, much less give them one of the ultra-rare HVXes out there. (Note: I am not Panasonic, so this is not personal -- I have no problem with David Newman or Cineform, other than thinking that that test is grossly unrealistic of course... I'm just trying to explain that I can easily see why Panasonic could be righteously indignant against them.)

Basically if you're using the Panasonic product, you have no need for anything Cineform offers. Cineform is for HDV users who want to get away from the HDV codec as soon as possible. Panasonic's codec does not need to be "gotten away from". What exactly will Cineform do for a Panasonic user, when the HVX user can edit six to 12 streams of native-codec DVCPRO-HD in real time on a G5? Adding Cineform in the mix just means spending money and getting a transcode, which means an inherent and unavoidable loss of quality. So why would Panasonic rush to give Cineform one of the few engineering cameras in the world, when they could instead give that camera to VariZoom or Century Optics or Serious Magic or Apple or Canopus or Avid or Focus/FireStore or someone who would actually produce something that would be useful to the HVX customer?

Cineform's hitched their wagon to HDV, and they will prosper or suffer based on HDV adoption. There's no reason for Panasonic to give Cineform anything, and there's plenty of reason for Panasonic to be ticked at Cineform, if they so chose to be. Kick somebody in the teeth a few times, and then ask them for a favor and see what kind of response you get... <shrug>
 
contentlab said:
veering things back to platforms, it seems as if there is no editing solution for a PC and the HVX at this moment, only promises that things will be ok sometime early next year. is my conclusion correct?
Click to expand...
Canopus and Avid work today. Canopus is going to repackage/rebundle their offering soon to make it a one-stop, affordable, integrated package.
 
doccutter said:
In my case, you don't use the monitor in the field. The monitor is for post, when you're making edits and color correction for the offline edit. There are a wide variety of field monitors out there, the standards are the 5" and 8" sony PVM monitors, and they can be powered with NP1 batteries. They don't have the best resolution, but if you have a large crew in the jungle, they beat the viewfinder on most consumer cameras. If you want field monitoring for the HVX to be useful, you're going to need something small, but with excellent resolution...
Click to expand...

If you have a large crew, you can have a real HD monitor...either high rez lcd or crt....regradless of location.

For run and gun no budget, then go with a small low res lcd to help give you an idea, or just get used to the camera lcd.

But if you have a budget and crew...then there really is no excuse not to have some sort of monitoring, in my opinion.
 
It didnt list the lines of rez...but something like that would work....you would need to convert the D4 to rgb or SDI to go into it.
 
Barry_Green said:
Canopus and Avid work today. Canopus is going to repackage/rebundle their offering soon to make it a one-stop, affordable, integrated package.
Click to expand...

i'm actually waiting about 2 more weeks when all my CES prep is done before i load a trial version of Edius3 on my edit station that is currently using PremierePro/Vegas & Decklink HD. Knowing that Edius and Decklink won't work with each other how would i get my edited projects out, perhaps render out uncompressed from Edius and play that back in Premiere to my HD-SDI outs?

not that i expect you to answer since i'm also asking Edius the same question but i figure you or someone else will answer before i hear back from Edius.

thanks barry
 
No clue yet -- I got a demo disk of Edius but haven't even installed it.

Try at the Canopus forums -- they seem quite active, I'm sure someone can answer.
 
Adobe Premiere and 24pn

Adobe Premiere and 24pn

I thought when the Panny techs created the idea of 24pn-30pn on the HVX, it was to clean away the duplicate pull-down frames that would be discarded in most NLE's including Adobe Premiere 2.0. From that, can Premiere Pro 2.0 handle MXF in 24pn?? I have had to purchase the DV Rack & HD Decoder to convert the MXF to AVI (Type 2) but there is currently a patch for the decoder needed to correct an audio timing issue with 24pn-30pn. I recently completed a short doc shot in 720/24pn with the HVX and used a DVX100A in 24p (4x3) unsqueezed for a future SD DVD version. I am hoping to down-rez the HVX footage to SD 4x3 (4x3 guides were used for the entire shoot) for the SD DVD version as well. I may also decide to up-rez the DVX footage to insert cutaways in the HD version with letterboxing. If anyone has any knowledge of this combination, please reply. PS I have ordered a new PC tower loaded with all the Premiere 2.0 specs and then some and the Premiere 2.0 program but it's not too late for me to return it and jump to Avid if I have to since the tower specs would suffice for either NLE . Help!!:dankk2:
 
Premiere Pro, by itself, has no MXF support at all.

However, if you're buying a new system and don't mind spending some coin on the Matrox Axio, it *really* shines with MXF/P2 material. Extremely good P2 integration.
 
Thanks, do you mean Matrox Axio as a complete NLE replacing Premiere Pro 2.0 since Adobe seems to be asleep at the wheel on MXF?? I thought Premiere/Cineform was able to handle MXF when I purchased it but you would know better.
 
Axio is a support board set designed to work with Premiere Pro. And it totally integrates P2 within the Premiere/Windows environment. I'm a big fan of EDIUS' tapeless workflow integration, but in some ways Axio surpasses it. Axio, for example, can integrate the clip metadata right into Windows Explorer, so when you examine the contents of a folder you can see the normal columns ("name", "date modified", etc) but in Axio you can add P2 metadata columns too, so it can show whether a clip is marked, who the shooter was, what the scene number or user clip name is, etc. Very, very slick.

It's not inexpensive, but then again it can handle a whole lot of streams of HD in realtime including effects like stretching or shrinking or PIP or color correction or whatever. And that acceleration and integration carries over to other programs too, like After Effects.

If I was dead-set on using Premiere, and I could afford it, I'd definitely get the Axio/Premiere bundle.

As for CineForm, it transcodes the MXF files into CineForm AVI files, which will then work with Premiere Pro. It's another way to get Premiere to work with the HVX; there's also Raylight and S.M. DVCPRO-HD decoder.
 
Thanks, I will check into Axio and think about keeping the Premiere 2.0 since I'm used to it and it was just an upgrade purchase. Besides, the Avid site appears to be spotty in P2 format support for certain frame rates generated by the HVX200. Cheers:)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top