CineForm

What you say about Axio could become true...eventually...I'm thinking not as soon as you suggest, but obsolescence is the eventuality of every NLE--every computer.

But before that time comes, and speaking of my current system--

Premiere Pro can improve their multi-threading a lot in ways that will benefit Axio and AMD64 Opteron dual-cores. Right now on my HPxw9300 dual dual-core system, its incredible how poorly the (4) processors are used during timeline rendering. 64-bit Windows recognizing 4GB RAM instead of 2GB will come along soon...and 64-bit NLE apps with it. My system is optimized for that already. Current transfer speed of 411MB/s from my Rorke Galaxy HDX says I'm fairly future-proof for some time to come; and finally, you'd be amazed at how far they've pushed the AxioUtils in just a year!, which to me is proof that there's not an immediate ceiling to the feature set on the existing hardware. Yup...guess what...my AxioHD breakout box is already obsolete! I haven't used it for anything but 1394 captures :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG) which can also be DVCProHD, and now that MXF support is nearly complete, the BoB is dead. Oh well.

GridIron Nucleo gives After Effects and incredible boost, maximizing all four procs to 100% on each render, so in a sense, software already IS working to increase horsepower on a system like this. If Adobe will follow suit, there's more speed gains coming.

Can't argue about PCIe, but again, it's anyone's guess as to how soon that will become an issue against PCI-X.

I guess I'm not too worried about multiple licensing schemes vs Axio...doesn't seem like it applies.

All I'm saying is a current Axio config is fairly future-proof, and while you're paying premium prices for all that new software-driven capability 2 years from now, I'll be enjoying the return on investment for years 2, 3, 4, (5?, not likely) and overall it'll wash out pretty close. Current system cost is right near $30k, but only $7k of that is Axio hardware. All the rest can be considered part of your "software only" scheme, and if I can get 1 to 2 more years usefulness out of this current system than I could with a current Cineform or BlackMagic system, then I've covered my cost and broken even with your scenario. And what's the value today of the features I now enjoy that other systems can't provide just yet? Gotta factor that in too.

Like you say...we both could be wrong!
Cheers,
John
 
tomk358 said:
This might be a question for the cineform website, but since it's HVX specific, I thought I'd post it here- anyone know a way to keep the audio files with the video files that I convert with HDLink to get from HVX/MXF to Premiere Pro/AVI?
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HDLink converts the first stereo pair of audio and embeds it in the AVI as uncompressed PCM. The audio channels 3 & 4 are stored as a stereo WAV file. Is that what you are asking?
 
What AJA XENA card will work with AspectHD?

Does anybody have a Xena card and is using AspectHD? If so I have some questions for you. I'm getting annoyed with my Edius->Premiere->Decklink hack/solution.
 
contentlab said:
What AJA XENA card will work with AspectHD?

Does anybody have a Xena card and is using AspectHD? If so I have some questions for you. I'm getting annoyed with my Edius->Premiere->Decklink hack/solution.
Click to expand...

Aspect HD does not currently support the Xena cards, however Prospect HD supports the Xena-HS, Xena-LH and the Xena-LHe cards.

What are your questions?
 
Thanks Jake,

I want to know how painful/painless it is to import content from the HVX to the Premiere timeline and have it play out the Xena HD-SDI port. Currently I hav e to use Edius to capture HVX content, place it on the timeline to render uncompressed, then import to Premiere and let Premiere render before it will playback in real time. For about 5 minutes of HVX footage it will take me about 30 minutes before I can look at it in realtime on my HD-SDI outs on my Decklink card.

Sorry if this discussion is potentially hijacking this thread but I'm trying to see if Aspect or Prospect HD with a Xena card will improve my workflow so I can start editing footage without a 6x prerender overhead.
 
I can answer that one.

With Prospect HD the HDLink tool will convert MXF to CineForm AVI in an HDSDI compatible resolution (i.e. 1280x720 or 1920x1080). This operation is faster than RT for 720p for most single core systems, and around RT for 1080i/p for dual-core systems. These clips can than be dropped in a PPro timeline (running Prospect HD) and play over HD-SDI in real-time, no rendering. Believe that will be several times faster than you current workflow and use about one tenth of the disk space.
 
I just tried Aspect-HD with PPRO2 and some 1280x720 24p files. Editing and simple transitions worked like charm. Keying is an other story ! No real time preview of a simple green screen STILL 1280X720 image (with Edius trial I did had real time preview and no need to render). It even needs rendering in simple motion keyframe and before anyone starts to make profound questions, yes I did work with a 3 Ghz CPU and I was wondering if a 3.8 ghz will do the trick. So Adobe mentions 3.4 ghz minimum for HD and CineForm 3.0 for real time streaming, what are the REAL minimum Ghz in order to key, color corect etc ? Again, will 3.8 ghz do the trick. If yes Aspect-HD and PPRO2 is what i need !
 
thanks David,

that is one of the main things I HATE right now. on my 2TB raid what started out as 20GB of DVCPro100 content turns into a 100GB uncompressed file and then Premiere uses up another 100GB or so with its temp render files.

but like others have said recently the one licencse issue is kind of prohibitive. especially if I have to use ProspectHD at $2k per license will make my boss unhappy with me.
 
Andres,

We don't offer and RT keyer, mainly because many user prefer professional keyer plug-ins for AE. I understand there is value for a quick and dirty keyer -- something we could consider adding.) Motion key-frames are real-time however. We don't support Premiere's splines yet, but the previews are it real-time without the splines (it will play RT with a red 'x' in the corner it indicate this is only an approximation for the control points it can't do the splines for.) Color correction with the Aspect HD filters is real-time (even on a 3GHz PC running 720p.) These days minimum clock speed is not so import, add more cores and faster memory, and performance is very high. Even a 2GHz Yonah (core duo) does wonderful things.
 
contentlab,

Licensing is going to become less and less of an issue, as we are adding automatic licensing transfer, so you can jump from PC to PC as you need. Plus you currently need a Premiere license (which is single seat license) and an AJA Xena card (you can't easily share that across PCs) we doing our best to not resticted the workflow. The time and disk savings alone, should make your boss happier I would think.
 
David, is 3.4 dual core faster then 3.8 hyper-thread in real world situation ?

Shooting DVCPRO-HD 1080i 25p and convert to CineForm intermediate plus down-resize and deinterlace to 1280X720 25p is the way to go ? Or what else ? Just shooting in 1280X72025p and don't ask for trouble maybe ? :)

Thanks
Andreas
 
Andreas said:
David, is 3.4 dual core faster then 3.8 hyper-thread in real world situation ?
Click to expand...

The dual core is much-much faster. CineForm tools are extensively threaded. For example: We did an high prefermance encoding test on a Glidewell Dual proc, dual core, HT Xeon system (8-cpus in the task manager.) When encoding we can all use all 8 cpus at 100% -- this result in a encoding speed over 200 frame per second HD. That is an extreme example, but if you are using CineForm your extra cores are more valuable than virtual cores (i.e. HT.) A HT system we buy you 15% improvement, whereas second core is up to 80% improvement.

Shooting DVCPRO-HD 1080i 25p and convert to CineForm intermediate plus down-resize and deinterlace to 1280X720 25p is the way to go ? Or what else ? Just shooting in 1280X72025p and don't ask for trouble maybe ? :)
Click to expand...

Don't deinterlace. 1440x1080p25 (i.e. progressive) scaled to 1280x720p25 requires no de-interlacing operation. This would produce a 10%-15% more detailed output than shooting 960x720p25, and reducing DVCPRO-HD artifacts. But due to the P2 limitation, save this type of shooting for effects shoots.
 
You mean the storage capacity limitation ? I intend to shoot directly to laptop and use P2 only for the VFR. Do I get much bigger files following the down convert proccess, do I need more mbps from the hard drives ?

I tried color corecting/balance and both are indeed real time. HD,Pan,zoom,rotate also real time, the noise filters need rendering when aplyied and I wonder if they do something drasticaly. Force Render... whats that ?

Is there a plug in for Premiere you can sugest that will help to do green screen work real time ?

By the way gongratulation for your product, it does exactly what it promises to do !

thanks
Andreas
 
Andreas said:
You mean the storage capacity limitation ? I intend to shoot directly to laptop and use P2 only for the VFR. Do I get much bigger files following the down convert proccess, do I need more mbps from the hard drives ?
Click to expand...

To capture directly to a laptop (I haven't tried that) should give you the freedom to shoot 1080p25 all the time. The drive should be keep up with the 13MB/s.

I tried color corecting/balance and both are indeed real time. HD,Pan,zoom,rotate also real time, the noise filters need rendering when aplyied and I wonder if they do something drasticaly. Force Render... whats that ?
Click to expand...

Noise filters are good for the early HDV cameras that were noisy in the chroma channel -- you don't need that. Force Render is when you stack so my RT layers that you disk can't keep up, so it turn a real-time segment "red", so can be simply rendered out.

Is there a plug in for Premiere you can sugest that will help to do green screen work real time ?
Click to expand...

No. We didn't set it up that way. If you need to do RT keying open the desktop edit-mode in Premiere and handle you key segement with any AE or Premiere plugin (your choice.) Most of our customers use AE for keying.

By the way gongratulation for your product, it does exactly what it promises to do !
Click to expand...

Thanks.
 
timelapse to CFHD files

timelapse to CFHD files

I've been shooting some timelapse sequences with a digital still camera, and want to bring them into my CFHD Ppro system. So far I take them into AfterEffects, and render out a CFHD file from the image sequence. Is there a way I can do this on another machine so I don't have to tie up my edit station with this mundane task? Do I need to purchase another copy of Connect HD to do this? or is there a codec I can install on the conversion machine that will let me render CFHD files?
 
tomk358,

Encoding it what we charge for, decoding is free. So you might only need the one Connect HD license, partly if you are using Sony Vegas.
 
Hi David

1) Having upgraded my CPU to 3.6Ghz and seting up my system again, I found out that the AVI made with HD link are no longer playble with windows media player without handreds and handreds of thin colored vertical lines. I havent installed Aspect-HD trial again, something I guess will solve the problem but I thought the avis suppose to be viewable without any special codec instalation. If so that means that if I want to view an CineForm avi. I have to do what ? Have Connect or Aspect-HD installed to my system or is there any free codec pacage I didn't noticed on your website. Other avis I have that have been exported from a PPRO2 timeline in Adobes CineForm export codec work just fine.

2) Do you think 3.6 ghz from 3.0 Ghz will make a diference ?


Thanks
Andreas
 
Andres,

You do require a more recent codec installed to be compatible with the new encoder. What is happening is it is playing with the old decoder that Adobe ships. If you only need the lastest decoder for VfW work and MediaPlayer, download Connect HD and install that -- it upgrades the decoders for free. When you uninstall Connect HD, it ask you if you wish to leave the decoders for compatibility (and you should.) Of course purchasing Aspect HD will also solve this issue.

We are going to have a free downloadable decoder kit (so you don't have to install Connect HD), but we are wait on the completion of the Quicktime support. Then CineForm will simply be the easiest to use, multi-platform digital intermediate.
 
David - when doing a mxf SD - DV / AVI conversion, do you end up with a stand alone DV compatible file within premiere, or do you need the cineform codec and presets on the destination machine to play the clip back. I.E is your DV codec proprietary? It seems this way on the demo.

When I launch a converted clip in premiere and use a standard DV preset, I get a "need rendering" red bar across the top of the timeline.
 
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