Very impressed with DVC Pro HD codec

A

Aron Peterson

Active member
Wow. I'm starting preliminary tests with the codec and my 2 year old 12 inch PowerBook 1.5Ghz. A year ago I discovered that my oldish notebook was able to playback 720P h.264 video smoothly but not 1080P.

Today I tested the PowerBook with FCP. I started by dropping the trailer for Illegal on to the timeline. The trailer is a 72MB .mov file and the video is 640x360. I exported it from FCP to full 1080P using the DVC Pro HD codec. 14 minutes later I had a 1.8GB (big!) file ready on my desktop. Double-clicking on it I didn't expect it to playback smoothly but it did!

Not only did it play smoothly and allow me to scrub through the video without a hiccup it also had amazing quality for images that were blown by three times.

So I'm happy to discover that not only can I use my PowerBook on the road to offload footage from the HVX but I can also edit on it (though the 12" screen is small)! Looks like I won't have to buy a new machine after all. I'll just need a big external firewire HDD and then rent a Mac Pro when I need to compress my final cut.
 
i just did the same thing as you. but with the illegal trailer which is 23.9mb. you must have done it with the "teaser" which is 72mb. it's the best example of what the HVX is capable of that i've found. i can't wait till it's on dvd.

i have an iBook G4 1.2ghz 12 inch with 768mb RAM
i've tried playing HDV stuff but i doesn't work. i get about 1 fame every 3 seconds.

i converted 1 minute exactly of the trailer to 1080 60i at 24fps
it took about 7 minutes to convert. it sped up after a minute. i'd say there's a 6 to 1 ratio on my computer.... it takes 6 minutes to render 1 minute of footage on average

i played the file in quicktime and it played smooth. it fluctuated from 18 - 24 fps the whole way. once or twice it dropped to 12 for a split second. it can play 720p footage at 24fps the whole way!!!!!!

i opened up the files in FCP 5. put them in a 1080 60i at 24fps custom timeline. it worked... I didn't need to render anything YAY!!!!!
i let it do it's automatic real time thingy. after that i messed around in there for a while. no frames dropped. i seemed to work flawlessly.

i did do a 3 way colour correction and messed with everything. it took 6 min to render 1 min of footage. i usually get a 3 to 1 ratio in normal DV. 6 to 1 seems pretty good.

i thought i'd need to get a 1gb ram chip for this stuff. it's says 1gb min for HD in the final cut book. it seems that's for HDV. DVC is awesome. i'm sold.
 
I have a paltry 768MB RAM too.

I imported the 72MB teaser into FCP. Rendered it out to 1080/24p with the DVCPRO HD codec. The file played flawlessly in Quicktime. 24FPS all the way. I have a faster CPU and a better GPU than you.

Then I imported the 1080/24p file into FCP. Scrubbing through it was flawless. I applied the razor blade to every cut, color corrected scenes too. Previews were real time and rendering was 30 second to a minute at most. I'm very pleased.

I thought I'd need a 2.3-2.5Ghz CPU to be able to play with 1080 video but the DVPRO HD codec works fine with a lowly 1.5Ghz G4. But, big BUT, it can only handle one video stream at a time smoothly. Any more than that and there's a slow down. Doesn't matter anyway because I'm a straight forward crop, cut and connect editor.

More RAM and a nice large firewire HDD is all I need. For final full renders, burning to HD-DVD or compressing to other formats I can take the firewire HDD with the video and FCP project files to any company renting FCP seats with latest Mac Pros.
 
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I heard, however, that editing on powerbooks, or G4's, degrades the finalo output quality of the footage. There were tests about this. One thing funny about this aspect is that I edit something on my g5, export as quicktime, bring it to my powerbook and it struggles ( g4 1.67). If I edit natively on my powerbook, it plays fine. The thread discussing this was waaaaaay back on the beginning of the HVX shipping period. No one talked more about this since.

I just dump files to my powerbook. Its good for emergency editing, but I won't trade quality if I have the time...
 
SPZ said:
I heard, however, that editing on powerbooks, or G4's, degrades the finalo output quality of the footage.
Click to expand...

I don't see how that is possible. Digital data is rendered out to a file the same way on any machine, the only difference is in rendering times. It's the same thing as rendering 3D CGI. Data is data. It can't differentiate if it is being rendered out by a G4, G5 or Intel CPU.
 
Do you wanna try some raw mxf data on your laptop? You'll have to give me a few days, but I can upload the contents folder of maybe 30 seconds of 720/24pn footage for you to look at. It would probably be about 200 megs or so.

Let me know.

Jason
 
Jason Ramsey said:
Do you wanna try some raw mxf data on your laptop? You'll have to give me a few days, but I can upload the contents folder of maybe 30 seconds of 720/24pn footage for you to look at. It would probably be about 200 megs or so.

Let me know.

Jason
Click to expand...

Yes please! I, and others in the same situation, have been asking for MXF files in another thread.
 
Aron Peterson said:
I don't see how that is possible. Digital data is rendered out to a file the same way on any machine, the only difference is in rendering times. It's the same thing as rendering 3D CGI. Data is data. It can't differentiate if it is being rendered out by a G4, G5 or Intel CPU.
Click to expand...

Yes, but don't forget FCP "wraps" the MXF file to a quicktime file. Just do a search for this topic. You should find this thread.
 
SPZ said:
Yes, but don't forget FCP "wraps" the MXF file to a quicktime file. Just do a search for this topic. You should find this thread.
Click to expand...

"wrapping" is just a transparent "container" that allows FCPro to use the MXF file.

It does NOT degrade the dvcpro files at all.
 
mcgeedigital said:
"wrapping" is just a transparent "container" that allows FCPro to use the MXF file.

It does NOT degrade the dvcpro files at all.
Click to expand...

And video quality depends on the camera, footage and codec, not the CPU the video is edited and rendered on.

An MXF file is basically the same as a Quicktime movie using the DVCPro HD codec, right? And Final Cut wraps it like this --> (Quicktime (MXF (DVCPro HD codec)MXF) Quicktime) ?
 
Not exactly guys... QT files contain both audio and video. So, while the video ones and zeros are the same, the conversion into QT files requires merging 5 separate files into one. You can, as we demonstrated with P2Log et al, use a QT pointer to display MXF contents unwrapping on the fly without doing a full conversion.
 
Well Dan, that's the $64,000 question then. Can you do what FCP refuses to do? Can you do what RayLight did for Vegas and Premiere? Can you make a plug-in that translates MXF into QT on the fly so that FCP editors can import MXF files directly to the timeline, without having to import/convert to QT? That would be phenomenal.
 
Barry_Green said:
Well Dan, that's the $64,000 question then. Can you do what FCP refuses to do? Can you do what RayLight did for Vegas and Premiere? Can you make a plug-in that translates MXF into QT on the fly so that FCP editors can import MXF files directly to the timeline, without having to import/convert to QT? That would be phenomenal.
Click to expand...

I can look into this once someone puts up some MXF files and can show me how MXF is encoded (source, sdk, etc).
 
Check out www.mxf.info.

SMPTE specifies the standards; MXF in general is SMPTE 377M. The particular operation pattern type of MXF file you're looking for is MXF Op-Atom, which was specified by SMPTE as SMPTE 390M. You can get the full specifications from www.SMPTE.org for $90: http://smpte.org/shopping_cart/cart.cfm?function=add&productid=1681

www.dvfilm.com has a small sample Op-Atom MXF file (actually a P2 card image) available for download here:
http://www.dvfilm.com/raylight/FlareContentsUnzip.exe
 
Barry_Green said:
Check out www.mxf.info.

SMPTE specifies the standards; MXF in general is SMPTE 377M. The particular operation pattern type of MXF file you're looking for is MXF Op-Atom, which was specified by SMPTE as SMPTE 390M. You can get the full specifications from www.SMPTE.org for $90: http://smpte.org/shopping_cart/cart.cfm?function=add&productid=1681

www.dvfilm.com has a small sample Op-Atom MXF file (actually a P2 card image) available for download here:
http://www.dvfilm.com/raylight/FlareContentsUnzip.exe
Click to expand...

Thanks, Barry. I'll get a Mac developer on this ASAP. It should be SMPTE 390M, right? I have to give the developer some incentive. How much should I tell him Raylight costs? Also, have there been any rumors that Apple is building native MXF support in a future FCP update?
 
Well, that's the danger -- if they do, then any 3rd-party work is wasted. With that said I've nagged them until they pointed a gun at me and got a restraining order, and they've never yet indicated that they were going to do it.

But we're due for FCP 6 soon; maybe as soon as NAB in April. So it's risky.

Raylight is $200. But Raylight does something that a simple FCP plug-in doesn't; Raylight gives Vegas and Premiere the ability to use HVX footage *at all*. Without Raylight (or some other plug-in, like CineForm) those users can't use the HVX at all. FCP can; FCP includes conversion tools.

What Raylight does above and beyond CineForm and Serious Magic's decoder is, Raylight allows MXF editing directly in the application. I think that's a killer app; not necessarily for today when card capacities are small, but as cards grow, it's going to become mandatory.

So your plug-in wouldn't be quite as valuable to an FCP user as Raylight is to a Vegas user, because FCP already has a patch or workaround (the "import panasonic P2" dialog box).

Accordingly, I'm thinking maybe $49? I can't imagine FCP users wouldn't find it well worth $49, especially the first time they try it. And, as an added incentive, for every potential Raylight customer, there are actually four potential Mac customers. Right now the HVX editing scene appears to break down as 80% Mac, 20% PC. So there's a much larger base of potential Mac customers, and they're the ones stuck with no access to direct MXF editing!

(unless Apple comes through, and your guess is as good as anyone's as to whether they'll actually do it or not).
 
Barry_Green said:
So your plug-in wouldn't be quite as valuable to an FCP user as Raylight is to a Vegas user, because FCP already has a patch or workaround (the "import panasonic P2" dialog box).
Click to expand...

If there's already an import P2 workaround then I'd have to predict native MXF support in FCP6. Just has to happen because of the demand for it and because Premiere Pro is coming back to the Mac offering some competition.

I'm having a problem with the MXF footage I downloaded from that link, Barry.

The file unzips to an image of a P2 card, basically a folder called 'Card0001' with all the usual P2 subfolders. I've gone into import Panasonic P2 in FCP 5.1.2 and directed the import tool with 'add custom path' to the Card0001 folder. Video and audio plays back fine. When I add the clip to the queue I'm not getting any progress. A little red warning sign appears under 'Status' next to the clip's thumbnail in the queue. What's the problem here?
 
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