F55: Sony Catalyst Browse & Catalyst Prepare review, comparison and write-up

WOW - playing around some more today, this time installed Prepare on my macbook pro and ingesting Sony F3 footage - ISO preserved and very fun applying Sony Look Profiles to some old F3 footage…

Note: in order to get the LOOK menu to appear in Catalyst with Sony F3 (or Slog1) footage you must select "S-GAMUT/S-LOG2" as your source and then adjust your exposure index accordingly. Slog1 and Slog2 are the same curve, except slog1 has higher grey value mapped.

Old Sony F3 footage in Catalyst Prepare v1.1 !!!
ScreenShot2014-12-23at21323PM_zpsd066e081.png
 
Now exporting Sony F3 footage to ProRes 4444 1920x1080 24p.

30 second clip transcoded in 10 seconds. macbook pro, late 2011 model, i7, 16GB.

I'm really digging this light running new software…

Screen-Shot-2014-12-23-at-225_zpsc2ef85b6.jpg
 
Exactly How will an SSD help me with video editing and color work. I'm on the last pre Retina Macbook Pro 15" with an Nvidia GT650M card & 1 G Vram. (whatever that means) - Also has an Intel HD Graphics 4000
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.7 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 16 GB
 
SSDs are faster and more durable. The boot-up time is significantly reduced as is the time it takes opening an application. That's about it.
 
Ok quite novel, but this weekend because I could, I used Catalyst Prepare to transcode some of my old Sony F3 footage into ProRes so I could import the XML file from my NLE and re-link with new ProRes clips. (Davinci Resolve does not support XDCAM footage as far as I know). It worked very well, and it was nice to grade some of my slog1 footage in Resolve to see what I could do with it now that I have much more experience with Resolve.
 
Lenilenapi said:
Exactly How will an SSD help me with video editing and color work. I'm on the last pre Retina Macbook Pro 15" with an Nvidia GT650M card & 1 G Vram. (whatever that means) - Also has an Intel HD Graphics 4000
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.7 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 16 GB
Click to expand...

In computing you have several frequent places for bottlenecks:
- the main processor(s) - (too many computations requested in too short a time period)
- the video card processor(s) - (too many computations requested in too short a time period)
- the memory(RAM) - (too little of it, or too slow, if not enough, extra memory space generated on storage media, slower)
- the storage media(hard drive/SSD) - (too many read/write requests in too short a time period)
- interconnecting data pipes - (too much data requested for send/receive in too short a time period)

If any one of the above components gets overloaded, the performance of the rest suffers. Think of it as if you have an assemby line of widgets being put together by workers. If one worker is slower than the rest, the whole assembly line has to slow to his or her rate, or the product (data) gets lost/broken.

Yada, yada, yada.

The short of it is, an SSD has a faster read/write than a hard drive. For small compressed formats this never comes into play, but for less compressed and uncompressed video formats, particularly at 4k, it's a bottle neck. Codecs like ProRes don't require heavy computation by the processor because they're not as heavily compressed - but that means they take up more disk space. So when you're editing or color grading it's conceivable the slowest part of your assembly line is the read/write from the hard drive. The solutions to this involve faster hard drives, mirrored RAIDS, or SSDs.

EDIT: Also, some video editors use the multi-camera edit features of the NLE, playing multiple video streams in real time. This is particularly challenging on storage media for less compressed codecs like ProRes.
 
All good points.

And if you're a PC Windows user you will really appreciate the turbo boost of your operating system aside from the obvious benefits of working on large files and having quicker access and transfer speeds.. like I said before its like your OS is on steroids. MAC OSX seems to be more efficient than Windows so the OS doesn't gain "that much" but yes even it is still way faster.
 
Thanks, that was useful info.
Here's a question that involves a dumb admission. How will it affect the NLE if I keep the web connection open while working so I can periodically distract myself by surfing? e.g checking DVXUser constantly because I'm addicted.
 
I "surf" while rendering all the time, or building previews with filters/effects on RED footage on my NLE… its a good way to kill time while waiting. SSD won't really impact this distracting surfing business. ;)
 
Is there any trick to getting this software to run on Windows 7 64-bit?

I've tried it on two PCs so far with unacceptable and worse results.

Only my general office PC, it works, sort of.. that is, I get the screens I see in the reviews, and I can play footage from my FS7. But when I try to transcode footage to another format, it goes nice and fast until it reaches 5% and then it just does nothing after that. CPU use drops to 0% and I end up with a 0-bytes file.

I tried installing Catalyst Browse on my more powerful editing PC, but it won't do ANYTHING at all on that PC. The window appears, but it won't load or display video, just an arrow chasing its tail. It's like 3/4 of the program code didn't install. Besides having more resources, the NLE is not connected to a network or internet. Maybe it's cloud based and most of the software runs off an internet connection? But no errors about needed to connect to the internet. Just no worky.

In short, I can't transcode my footage, so I can't do anything with the footage I shoot with the FS7. :(
 
basspig said:
Is there any trick to getting this software to run on Windows 7 64-bit?

I've tried it on two PCs so far with unacceptable and worse results.

Only my general office PC, it works, sort of.. that is, I get the screens I see in the reviews, and I can play footage from my FS7. But when I try to transcode footage to another format, it goes nice and fast until it reaches 5% and then it just does nothing after that. CPU use drops to 0% and I end up with a 0-bytes file.

I tried installing Catalyst Browse on my more powerful editing PC, but it won't do ANYTHING at all on that PC. The window appears, but it won't load or display video, just an arrow chasing its tail. It's like 3/4 of the program code didn't install. Besides having more resources, the NLE is not connected to a network or internet. Maybe it's cloud based and most of the software runs off an internet connection? But no errors about needed to connect to the internet. Just no worky.

In short, I can't transcode my footage, so I can't do anything with the footage I shoot with the FS7. :(
Click to expand...

I'm running it on Windows 7 x64 SP1 no issues. You might have to allow it through firewall, etc. . also update your video card, and Direct X for a few ideas. I'm running NVidia, and if you are running ATI then "maybe" that's related, again hard to say.

Here is the older v1.1 Browse if you want to try it instead of the newest one from Sony: www.starcentral.ca/forums/CatalystBrowse_1.1.zip
 
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morgan_moore said:
Download Resolve for free and transcode, delete the unused sound tracks, and add a lut if you want, even edit!

S
Click to expand...

I tried Resolve Lite, but apparently it needs an internet connection to install and activate the license.
So I decided to try it on my backup pc, which i use for online. The installation activation went well, but upon launch it generates a crash report.

Running nVidia GTX680 4GB card on the NLE and same but 2GB on the ackup machine. Drivers updated in the past 2 weeks.

I'm baffled by it. Adobe apps run beautifully on both machines, as does Maya 2015.
 
Initially, I downloaded the wrong version, and then uninstalled that and downloaded the Lite version and installed that. But there was still some activation thing that required an internet connection.

The system meets the minimum requirements, but I can't get it to run.

I see there's now an 11.3.1 version, so I'm downloading that now.
 
Can Catalyst Prepare read uncompressed slog 10bit RGB DPX from the F3 or only compressed material?

I looked in the manual and it appears it doesn't, unless I missed it.

thanks
 
I got the 11.3.1 version of Resolve Lite to install on the main NLE. I ignored the create account thing and just choose Admin and set up my project. I played with it for almost an hour, and the program crashed 30+ times at various stages. I found I could get further if I changed from thumbnail view to detail view for the media, because when thumbnails start to display, Resolve crashes. After the 30th try, I got as far as creating a timeline, but the program crashes with my DCI 4K footage from the FS7.
I tried some QFHD footage (also XAVC) and managed to create a timeline, but as soon as I played the timeline, Resolve crashes.
No GPU warning. It's showing that it detects a nVidia GTX 680 (4GB version) and the system RAM meets the minimum requirements. I'm stumped.
 
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