PC workflow

ChuckS said:
Barry your right PPro can not currently edit DVCProHD, that’s why the performance on your laptop was so bad. But as soon as it does, and I believe Cineform’s AspectHD will accommodate this within the next month or so, PPro2 will be as responsive on a PC as FCP on a G5 – this is a software thing not a hardware performance issue.
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dude....Premiere Pro is a very good app. It is all I have used for the last 2-3 years of editing. I wish it was able to do DVCPROHD. But it can't. I have used cineform codec with premiere pro (for HDV) and while it speeds it up significantly it is still slow as hell compared to the FCP solution. I don't see what makes you so confident that when Cineform releases a new version with support for DVCPROHD that the performance is going to magically become 10-20 times faster than it is currently. I hope you are right but I just don't see it magically changing just like that.

And keep in mind I am comparing a dual Xeon 3ghz vs. a MacMini. And for DVCPROHD the mini walks all over the PC solutions handily.

Oh...I wish my PC performed like this!
 
Barry_Green said:
Not sure where you're coming from Chuck. I'm talking about editing DVCPRO-HD. On the PC I've tried Avid, I've tried Raylight in Vegas, and I'm about to try Canopus.

Right now nothing comes within a hundred miles of the way the lowly G5 handles it. It literally is night and day.
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Barry,

I hope you will be in Vegas for NAB and can stop by the Avid booth. Hopefully the folks there can sort out the issues you've been having and show you how transparently Avid edits DVCProHD. I have some individuals in mind for you to talk with if it's helpful.

Regards,

Cre8tive
 
icicle22 said:
...I have used cineform codec with premiere pro (for HDV) and while it speeds it up significantly it is still slow as hell compared to the FCP solution. I don't see what makes you so confident that when Cineform releases a new version with support for DVCPROHD that the performance is going to magically become 10-20 times faster than it is currently. I hope you are right but I just don't see it magically changing just like that.

And keep in mind I am comparing a dual Xeon 3ghz vs. a MacMini. And for DVCPROHD the mini walks all over the PC solutions handily.

Oh...I wish my PC performed like this!
Click to expand...

Look, as I mentioned earlier I'm not trying to stop people from drinking the Apple cool-aid, I am however trying to get people to drink the sugar free version. When you say that a Mac Mini edits DVCProHD 10-20 times faster than PPro on a PC, when PPro doesn't edit DVCProHD period, what the hell does that mean?

That's like comparing Discreet (NLE) Smoke editing uncompressed HD on a PC to trying to edit the same with FCP on a Mac Mini, there is no comparison to make, the Mac Mini will not edit full bandwidth (192MB/s) HD when Smoke on a PC does just fine.

Was your experience editing HDV with PPro 1.5.1 or AspectHD? PPro with AspectHD is considerably faster than PPro 1.5.1.
 
ChuckS said:
When you say that a Mac Mini edits DVCProHD 10-20 times faster than PPro on a PC, when PPro doesn't edit DVCProHD period, what the hell does that mean?
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All I mean by it is, if I use Raylight/Vegas (as I intended), I get about 12fps at the most. If I use Vegas with the Avid codec, I get about 2 fps. Whereas icicle gets multiple streams of realtime full-res HD including transitions, on a mac Mini.

No kool-aid involved. Just saying that for some inexplicable reason the mac platform is handling HVX footage extremely superior to how the PC is. The difference is jaw-dropping. And we're talking about native codec, not some transcode to some other format.

I'm looking forward to getting Edius Broadcast and trying that out.
 
I hear what your saying, and I'm not trying to throw any bombs. I think one of the most exciting concepts regarding the HVX is P2 which if you use it puts you directly into an IT workflow.

I think everyone will be much better served if we stop thinking of this in terms of Vegas vs. FCP vs. PPro vs. Mac vs. PC and think in terms of aquisition, post-production and distribution. Aquire in the format of your choosing DVCProHD, convert to a digital intermediate (DI) for post production, Cineform, Raylight or Mainconcept for example and then encode to multiple or which ever media is required.

Here's a link to an article I co-wrote, although we wrote this about the effects industry, Kevin Gary and myself were the first (that I'm aware of) to demonstrate a full working digital intermediate at NAB, IBC and SIGGRAPH.

http://millimeter.com/mag/video_visual_effects_industry/index.html

One of the most important aspects of the DI is not only its ability to scale up, but its ability to scale down. Which means it can become a very powerful and affordable tool for independent film makers. But not if we continue on debating the merits of Mac vs. PC's.

I don't care about Mac's or PC's, by the end of next year I bet you can run Windows on a Mac and OSX on a PC and Adobe will run on both. So what difference does it make. I think with the most recent release of the Adobe video suite brings them much closer to working in a digital intermediate environment. Although I have not seen it yet I'm sure Apples new more expensive suite of production tools will move in this direction as well. Its all good. But us little guys would be wise to figure out how this all effects us... If you know what I mean.
 
Chuck,
Just to put this in perspective....the Mac-mini I am using is getting me better realtime with DVCproHD than I could get using premiere pro to edit DV. In my honest opinion Premiere has never been coded very well. On a dual xeon I cannot get realtime playback from the timline with just a simple color correction in DV. However in Vegas on the same PC I could apply 2-3 effects on that same clip and watch it realtime. In that case Vegas is more effecient.

USing FCP on the MAC-mini on a DVCPRO format that is 4x as much data throughput as DV is giving more realtime results. And it renders faster too.

I think the Cineform codec is superb. It has sped up my little bit of HDV work on premiere by 3-4 times. But that is still nowhere close to what I am seeing on the Mac-mini.

I hope you really are right and in the next 2-3 months the PC platform will be on pace with the MAc. Because I have 2-3 PC workstations and a Mac-mini. Which one do you think I'd rather see working faster amd efficiently? Obviously the PC.....I have so much more invested in that route. Also while I am :raving: about the performance of FCP I haven't mentioned how I can't get used to the interface....it is driving me bonkers....I jsut want premiere to perform like this.....then I will be happy!

Peace!
 
I know what you mean. Have you tried PPro2.0? Im not suggesting that its the answer, I haven't been brave enought to upgrade yet. I have heard some very good things about it but I've also heard some not so good things.

I might upgrade soon and I'll let everyone know how it goes. I wouldn't be surprised to see all of Adobe's products running on the new mac.
 
Raylight (http://dvfilm.com/raylight) is not ready for a Windows/Mac comparison. Apple has been fine-tuning their DVCPROHD/Varicam and HDV support for the G5 with a vast team of people and years of effort and probably millions of dollars. Too bad for them IBM is shutting down the G5 fab (dry chuckle).

Raylight is presently not multi-threaded, and large, time-critical parts of it are written in high-level language and not yet hand-optimized for the Pentium processor. Not yet.

Comparing Cineform Aspect HD on a qualified system, with FCP5/HDV is probably more fair.
 
I've been using Avid Xpress Pro HD 5.2.2 for the last month with 720PN footage and I can't be happier with the results. I've got over 15 hours of footage on my hard drives and even with color-correction filters and dissolves everything plays smoothly real-time in DVCPROHD or Avid's proprietary DNxHD formats.
If you want to see my setup goto www.noladoc.com and check it out. I've got some info cataloguing my experiences with a PC & Avid workflow for the HVX200.
I'm chronicling my adventures on the PC side of things seeing as most people I've heard are using FCP as the HVX200 NLE. I've also got some clips up encoded with different codecs for your viewing pleasure.

NOLADoc
A Cinematic Social Inquiry
 
tak1108 said:
FCP has been resolution independent from the get go. From version 1 you could edit uncompressed SD. in version 3 I believe people were editing uncompressed HD on the desktop with the Cinewave, which was the first NLE that worked in HD. FCP was the FIRST to offer HD editing in an NLE.

Stop spreading FUD
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Actually thats completely UNTRUE HD editing was areound way before FCP could do it.
 
I was in best buy today, and I almost bought their new intel pentium d processor dual core. I was going to put premeire 2.0 and try to edit with raylight.

Unfortunately, the store was closing, and I was talking to the store manager to see if I could return it it if couldn't do what I expected it to do.

My thoughts are that with the latest hardware, dual core, and onboard graphic memory built in, I feel like it should be able to edit HD with multiple streams.
 
Yeah, I doubt a pentium D would give you multiple streams with raylight.

Hopefully we can get some user reports on here to let people know how it performs on various hardware platforms.
 
Here is a review of several hadware system benchmarks:
http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q4/opteron-254/index.x?pg=3

In short, AMD single and dual beat everything by intel.
In fact, the Xeon usually is the worst.

From that article and others like it, the problem for us HVX200 users is that the hardware seems to be more than up to the task, but the software is not.
Raylight is not written to utilise multi-threads, nor is premiere, even 2.0.
I hung out in the premiere forum yesterday, only to learn that there were numerous persons who spoke of changing many things hardware related, and obtained little if any speed improvements while using premiere.

I hate to say this guys, but premiere, raylight, or other PC based solutions
(outside of AVID, and Canopus) don't seem to offer the punch (pun intended)
for editing HD. I think it may be a long time waiting on the PC solution.
I am speaking for myself, and from my own gathered conclusions.

Unfortunately, I love premiere 2.0 for many reasons.
I used the Canopus accelerated cards in the past, and that made premiere very fast in the past. Today, Canopus wants you to use their software, which seems to be coded to take advantage of accelerated hardware out today.
I like canopus, but I just can't get use to their interface. I don't want to use edius, because I don't seem to get their layout, look and that sort of thing.

I would not mind paying for a codec from Canopus to use premiere. That would be the win all solution for both. Unfortunately, I do not believe them to make such a thing.

What I am saying here folks, is that I am climbing the fence between PC and Mac.
I am so close to buying a mac...something I never thought I would do.
Mainly I hate one button mice, I hate spending way more for things than the sum of their parts ( with the new pc macs, if i bought it as a pc, it would be a thousand dollars less...the top end dual core system at best buy was $1400 with 2 gigs of ram, dual core, dvd-r essentially these are the same parts in a mac nowdays. In a mac, they are about $2,500) I didn't want to learn a new system, I didn't want to spend "another grand" on software.

In the old days, they nickle and dimed you, now they one and 2 thousand you!
 
Your not really planning on buying a CPU from best buy are you?
I know that they and circuit city and comp usa and some other retailers surely have some very nice kickin systems. BUT if your getting a cpu designed specifically for Video editing and the like, don't you think you should purchase a system that was designed specifically for that purpose? Its just a thought. Many of these systems your talking about need dual bus segments. Thats real important for things like hooking up drives on seperate segments so not only do you have drive space and power but also so you can hook up a Avid mojo if necessary. (or something similar) You may want to do some research out there on what Cpu's or at least motherboards are designed for high end use in the video editing world. The only reason I point this out is that I on a regular basis used to get calls from people who bought a cpu at a local retailer and tried to do video editing on it and it would crashe or have "issues" on a regular basis.

Grant
 
Grant said:
Your not really planning on buying a CPU from best buy are you?
I know that they and circuit city and comp usa and some other retailers surely have some very nice kickin systems. BUT if your getting a cpu designed specifically for Video editing and the like, don't you think you should purchase a system that was designed specifically for that purpose? Its just a thought. Many of these systems your talking about need dual bus segments. Thats real important for things like hooking up drives on seperate segments so not only do you have drive space and power but also so you can hook up a Avid mojo if necessary. (or something similar) You may want to do some research out there on what Cpu's or at least motherboards are designed for high end use in the video editing world. The only reason I point this out is that I on a regular basis used to get calls from people who bought a cpu at a local retailer and tried to do video editing on it and it would crashe or have "issues" on a regular basis.

Grant
Click to expand...

Actually I was not trying to buy one of these for that purpose.
I was going to get the highest end one, to "see if it would run" the way I wanted.
If it did, then I would build one custom myself based on the highest end hardware. IN fact, I have already started to do so buying the case, power supply, 6 swapable hard drives, a system drive and 2 one gig sticks of sdram.
I was holding out based on going with AMD or pentium dual core.

My latest research has lead me to thinking that premiere pro 2.0 will not run real time with any system in HD. That leads me to buying a mac...I guess.

I like canopus, but I don't want to edit with canopus.

Final Cut seems nice, I just didn't want to buy a mac, because I won't use other mac applications, where buying a PC would allow me to use other applications on the PC side, even though this new system would be mainly a dedicated system.

I also didn't want to buy a mac because I wanted removable 51/4 trays for hard drives. Why does the mac only have one case with one 5 1/4 drive..kinda silly.
 
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