PC/Windows NLE Mess - Jan - what can be done?

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well.. we all seem to agree or at least agree to disagree here :)

Lets try and keep it on NLE's and away from the mac vs pc thing at least.
 
Jarred Land said:
well.. we all seem to agree or at least agree to disagree here :)

Lets try and keep it on NLE's and away from the mac vs pc thing at least.
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I agree - mac vs pc is a the ultimate no-win. Both platform are far more alike than different and have fast, nice machines available blah blah blah.

I would really like to discuss this more:

http://www.dvfilm.com/raylight/index.htm

This concept of a "universal HD" codec is one I floated to Jim about the RED camera. This is really the long term solution to all the NLE grief every time a new camera tech is released.

We need to encourage camera, NLE and other companies to move to more open standards. Just imagine your are a small post house that wants to provide full support for HD, HDV, DV, NTSC and PAL. Just think how many decks, apps etc. you are going to need.

The fact the Raylight looks like it will provide all sorts of workflow flexibility(moving files from AE to Vegas to whatever including easy cross-platform) in very encouraging.

Marcus and Cineform are folks that appear to have user satisfaction at the #1 priority. I can't say the same for most (if not all) camera or NLE companies. (The camera division of Panny does work hard, I will say that, but they are part of larger corporate stuff). Sony, Microsoft, Apple, JVC, Canon all will agree to standards when their arms are twisted to

I've heard the term "open source film-making" and it's not a reality and may never be. But clearly, we, the people plunking down cash, would greatly benefit from better standardization and compatibility across camera and NLE systems.

My bottom line - this needs to be much higher up the priority list than it is right now.

No cam is an island...:cheesy:
 
Excellent point bklyndv.

I bought high quality parts for my PC when I built it 3 years ago and last month I was able to upgrade to a Dual Core X2 2.2ghz with a gig of dual channel RAM for $500.

That is insanely cheap.

-Justin O'Neill
www.podsafeaudio.com
 
robroysyd said:
Lets inject a bit of reality here.
Firstly no one can just up and add DVCProHD support the their NLE, they need both a licence and the SDK from Panasonic.
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Not necessarily true. Canopus developed their CanopusHD codec, which is bitstream compatible with DVCPRO-HD, without paying any license fee or getting an SDK. And as I understand it, MainConcept is doing exactly the same thing.

Secondly, the DCProHD content on the P2 cards comes in a MXF wrapper. To Sonys credit each and every XDCAM disk comes with a free, gratis, no cost, easy to install viewer and very basic editing application.
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Panasonic does include a free viewer. No editing app though. JVC also bundled a free editing app with the HD1, which was a good thing because no mainline NLE supported the format for a couple of years.

But would you really want to actually work with a free bundled editing app like that? When there are choices available now for full-featured top-of-the-line apps like FCP?

At the moment to view the footage you've got to load it into a NLE,
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Why would you have to do that? Why not use the free P2 Viewer program that comes with it?

that for my money is a huge step backwards for any cameraman compared to XDCAM when the client wants to see what you just shot.
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Might want to evaluate where your money's going then, as there's a free app that shows the footage at full-screen full-frame-rate (presuming your video card's fast enough of course).

Even switching to FCP doesn't address this issue, why should you have to lug around a power book with FCP on it just so the client can view the footage, and then what, when the client wants to show the footage to someone else, are we going to buy him a Powerbook with FCP on it?
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What are you talking about? How else do you propose to see footage? Are you going to stare at an XDCAM disc really, really hard until you see images on it? ;) Or are you going to put it in some sort of playback device? Yes, I thought so -- you will have to put it in some sort of playback device. Now are you going to buy a $7,000 XDCAM player for your client, and one for each of their friends who wants to see the footage? And, keeping in mind that the $7,000 XDCAM mobile player is for standard-def only; we don't even know what the XDCAM-HD deck will cost.

I don't follow the logic here. If you want to see the footage, you play it on something. If you shot VariCam footage, how would you propose to see it? You'd have to play it on a $25,000 deck. If you shot HVX footage you'd have to play it on something too, probably a $1500 PowerBook or a desktop or from a card back in the camera or from something else, but -- where's the disconnect here? Obviously you have to play it back on something...
 
robroysyd said:
why's that, well what we're mighty interested in is the InfinitCam VCR (and camera if we can afford it) from Grass Valley. But shock horror, although it doesn't use DVCProHD natively it does use the same MXF wrapper.
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That's Vegas' fault, not Panasonic's. Panasonic and Grass Valley and Avid and Ikegami are all using the same MXF wrapper. Sony of course decided to be "like.no.other" and use their own MXF wrapper. And Vegas, being a division of Sony, implemented support for only the Sony "the.one.and.only" variant.

I cannot fathom Vegas not giving full support to Op-Atom, but time will tell.
 
SPX Studios said:
Although I have not given it much time, I have not been having a problem editing the bar scene footage with Avid Xpress Pro HD

Go here: http://avid.com/products/datasheets/XpressPro_HD.pdf

On the third page, read under Streamlined interoperability and workflow
it's the 4th bullet down. "Native DVCPRO HD"

Does anyone else have Xpress pro HD for the PC that can confirm that the clips work?
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Louis (and Greenheron),

I've been lurking here, watching everyone in this thread sling it far and deep. Yes, I have Xpress Pro HD and edit DVCPro HD footage on my workstation and my laptop. Multiple layers, multi-cam and different resolutions (HDV, DV, DVCPro 50, DVCPro HD) all in the same timeline.

Sigh. But no one seems to be excited about the fact that you can do that TODAY.

Yes, Avid has yet to provide support for all 60 flavors of what the HVX will do on this $1500 platform, but does provide support for all on its upper level products.

But I plan on editing in 23.976p, 24p, 30i, 720p/23.976, 720p/29.97, 720p/59.94 and 1080i/59.94 for 99.9% of my clients and can do that TODAY.

Support for the other HVX format flavors will come soon to Avid. Then I can incorporate the other 0.01% of the footage I might want to use. The ONLY issue I have today with my setup is monitoring HD. I can use Mojo to view an SD downconvert in realtime, but I'd prefer HD (like all the upper level Avids can do).

Good luck and let's remind everyone once more that we are working with DVCPro HD on PC desktops and laptops and making money TODAY. :thumbsup:

Regards,

Cre8tive
 
thanks for the update cre8tive.. yeah xpresspro can do it for some time.. but the new dvcpro HD is a little different, p2 card and MXF wrapper. Have you attempted to ingest a P2 card yet?
 
Jarred Land said:
thanks for the update cre8tive.. yeah xpresspro can do it for some time.. but the new dvcpro HD is a little different, p2 card and MXF wrapper. Have you attempted to ingest a P2 card yet?
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No, I haven't Jarred, but I plan to this month. Keep in mind that Avid Newscutter has been using P2 for a while now, and Newcutter is just Xpress Pro with some extra tools TV news folks want.

I hope to get my hands on P2 (and maybe the HVX?) at Sundance later this month.

Regards,

Cre8tive
 
yeah.. I had xpress pro HD at the DVexpo and when I put a card into it it kinda looked at me funny and told me to piss off. At that time there was no public drivers for it though from Avid.. so just like the recent FCP update, im sure there has been one for avid as well.
 
Does anybody have an idea about whether FCP could run via Mac OS emulator on Windows ? Running here means really working and virtually no bugs. Some Mac OS emulators:

SoftMac Xpress v8.20 http://www.emulators.com/

and mostly Emulators Zone, there are some 10 - 15 different types of Mac emulators:

http://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/mac/

If this is not too crazy Idea a lot of people, who would not abandon PC for one or another reason could use the benefits of FCP and still keep up with the low PC price.
 
Osmicata said:
Does anybody have an idea about whether FCP could run via Mac OS emulator on Windows ? Running here means really working and virtually no bugs.
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No. If you read carefully, you'll see these only emulate REALLY OLD versions of the MacOS (vintage 1997 or so), and only 68K hardware. FCP won't run on those. Anyway, emulation for video work would be wretched-slow!

On the other hand, buy a Mac and Virtual PC or something similar, and you can run all your Windows software (wretched-slow).
 
Hey, waitaminute!
Apple is rumored to announce their new line of brandnew intel Macs next week at MacWorld in San Francisco. An updated version of their current OS X 10.4 will run of these new Macs with Intel processors.
I would bet Apple will soon release updated versions of their Final Cut Studio suite, too, to run on these new machines.
And, as Phil Schiller, Apple's No. 2, last year confirmed after Apple's announcement to switch to Intel processors, they won't do anything to prevent Windows from running on their new Intel based computers.

Both worlds in ONE computer. Stop whining boyz. A perfect solution is just round the corner. :thumbsup:

Any comments?
 
i think you are misinterpreting what is happening with the intel hardware. Just because intel is producing the hardware doesnt mean it is the SAME hardware used in a PC. It will prob still be locked down. In addition, FCP would need to be modified and recompiled to work on the windows OS - using direct x and/or whatever APIs are available on a windows platform.

Frankly , i dont think that the intel hardware announcment means anything at all for the end user - they will not know the difference. You will still need to buy a mac but the chips will happen to be made by apple.

Maybe I am wrong - anyone else knoe.
 
It has indeed been confirmed that you can dual boot Mac OS X and Windows on the new Mactel computers. you will need a separate drive though for the windows installation. You WON'T reliably be able to run Mac os X on any old windows box though.

An interesting note, The other day I had to run a 10.3 only application, so I hooked up an empty firewire drive and installed the OS on it. It ran FCP just fine off of the firewire hard drive with all my video files on another firewire drive daisychained. this was on a Mac Mini.
 
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