Steve Kahn
Well-known member
Just a suggestion: Since you are encoding with CS5 anyway why not abandon DVCPRO HD for something like Jpeg2000?
Which editing software will you use for AF100 projects?
- Thread starter Mike@AF
- Start date
Just a suggestion: Since you are encoding with CS5 anyway why not abandon DVCPRO HD for something like Jpeg2000?
Shooter
Veteran
I guess I am familiar and satisfied with DVCPRO HD. It edits like hot butter and it fits my current workflow thru to Broadcast. It is also a standard digital film codec of high regard ( eg Varicam still uses it)
Currently I use the camera codec ( DVCPRO HD) as acquisition, backup source archive and edit.
With AVCHD and the tiresome need to transcode it ( AVCHD is only an acqusition codec) ...I will now have to go AVCHD > DVCPRO HD and use that as edit /ackup archive.
Basically AVCHD forces a more FCP type intermediate workflow upon Premiere Pro users who thought they were well beyond that. ( A general slow down from my current direct workflow)
Rick Burnett
Section Moderator
Yeah, now I remember why I can't use it on any of my macs, you need at least 768Mb on your graphics card and CUDA support. I only have 512Mb on both systems.
That said, after looking at the benchmarks with using CUDA and not on CS5, they REALLY beefed up the system even without the CUDA support. MUCH faster than CS4 it appears to me. (Though I never used Premiere CS4 so I can't really say from my own experience).
That said, after looking at the benchmarks with using CUDA and not on CS5, they REALLY beefed up the system even without the CUDA support. MUCH faster than CS4 it appears to me. (Though I never used Premiere CS4 so I can't really say from my own experience).
Barry_Green
Moderator
The difference between CS4 and CS5 is night and day.
scapsinger
Well-known member
My thoughts....
- I long ago switched to an Adobe-only workflow. The main force was my pleasure working inside Premiere Pro starting with version 1.0 (the previous versions were workable, but nothing compared to FCP at the time). Another issue was cost...I came up against a need to purchase a new editing workstation, and the cost to build my own PC workstation was a fraction of the cost to buy a Mac Pro (and building a workstation, if you've never done it, is absolutely simple, especially nowadays). I've stuck with PC since, and I would say that my Win7 x64 system that I built just a couple months ago for under $2,000 absolutely screams. I wouldn't want to do major compositing work on it every day of the week, but for everything else I do, it's super fast.
- I'm on CS5 now, and as Barry just pointed out, as much as I enjoyed CS3 and CS4 (even with the bugs, and EVERY software has bugs at some point)...CS5 is an entirely new monster. AVCHD isn't even really an acquisition codec, it's more of a delivery codec, so of course it makes a pretty aggravating editing codec compared to almost everything else out there. That being said, if you WANT to edit AVCHD natively and you WANT to avoid transcoding once in a while or all the time, PPro CS5 makes that possible and even quite nice. I have a modestly powered workstation with a GTX 470 GPU (not even a Quadro card), 24 GB of RAM (and RAM is cheap) and a decent RAID setup, and even still I can run a 3 camera multicam edit with AVCHD and there is no rendering necessary. It can get a little sluggish after adding titles to the raw cuts, but by that time I've probably already rendered out the edit. And keep in mind that "sluggish" in this case is relative to a single layer of AVCHD in CS5...compared to editing AVCHD natively in CS4, it really is a hot knife through warm butter in CS5.
- To the person who wanted good specs for a machine that would do NLE and also gaming, I'd say that's completely foolish. But...if you want to do that...get a system with eSATA and be sure to have 2 completely separate drives for your NLE and gaming. You'll need two Windows 7 installations and two separate drives, just power down and plug in the one you want to use each time (NOTE: it is no problem to run your OS on an eSATA drive, I've been doing it for years, it's identical to a direct SATA connection...however, make sure you don't accidentally unplug your OS drive while it's on). If you decide to install games on the same system with your NLE, you will get no sympathy WHEN you start having problems. A good editing system is one that is dedicated to the task of media production....NOT e-mail, NOT games, NOT web browsing, NOT iTunes. If you limit your system to just the task of media production apps, then you will likely be very happy over the long term. Adding more tasks isn't going to murder your machine, but it's going to give you more trouble than necessary since it seems like EVERY application nowadays insists on running at startup and in the background persistently.
- Lastly, regarding the Mercury Playback Engine and approved CUDA cards...the Adobe approved cards all work, and obviously the list is a lot longer for PC than it is for Mac. The hack that is floating around is both easy to implement (it's a .txt file) and works just fine. The approved cards all are flawless, tested to have 0 issues with playback. For non-approved cards, your minimum specs will be about 1 GB of on-board GPU memory and CUDA. Anything less than that, and the hack won't even work on your card at all. Of course, with my previously mentioned GTX 470 card being on the approved list and costing less than $300 right now, it makes no sense to bother with other cards if you're in the market for a new one and working on a budget. The Quadro cards allow a greater number of simultaneous layers before hitting a render limit, but they cost a good bit more. Also, keep in mind that SLI (which allows you to gang multiple graphics cards together) has zero impact on Mercury Playback and is just a waste of money for editing. They may harness that capability in the next version, but for now, having an SLI setup is not useful when running Premiere.
- I long ago switched to an Adobe-only workflow. The main force was my pleasure working inside Premiere Pro starting with version 1.0 (the previous versions were workable, but nothing compared to FCP at the time). Another issue was cost...I came up against a need to purchase a new editing workstation, and the cost to build my own PC workstation was a fraction of the cost to buy a Mac Pro (and building a workstation, if you've never done it, is absolutely simple, especially nowadays). I've stuck with PC since, and I would say that my Win7 x64 system that I built just a couple months ago for under $2,000 absolutely screams. I wouldn't want to do major compositing work on it every day of the week, but for everything else I do, it's super fast.
- I'm on CS5 now, and as Barry just pointed out, as much as I enjoyed CS3 and CS4 (even with the bugs, and EVERY software has bugs at some point)...CS5 is an entirely new monster. AVCHD isn't even really an acquisition codec, it's more of a delivery codec, so of course it makes a pretty aggravating editing codec compared to almost everything else out there. That being said, if you WANT to edit AVCHD natively and you WANT to avoid transcoding once in a while or all the time, PPro CS5 makes that possible and even quite nice. I have a modestly powered workstation with a GTX 470 GPU (not even a Quadro card), 24 GB of RAM (and RAM is cheap) and a decent RAID setup, and even still I can run a 3 camera multicam edit with AVCHD and there is no rendering necessary. It can get a little sluggish after adding titles to the raw cuts, but by that time I've probably already rendered out the edit. And keep in mind that "sluggish" in this case is relative to a single layer of AVCHD in CS5...compared to editing AVCHD natively in CS4, it really is a hot knife through warm butter in CS5.
- To the person who wanted good specs for a machine that would do NLE and also gaming, I'd say that's completely foolish. But...if you want to do that...get a system with eSATA and be sure to have 2 completely separate drives for your NLE and gaming. You'll need two Windows 7 installations and two separate drives, just power down and plug in the one you want to use each time (NOTE: it is no problem to run your OS on an eSATA drive, I've been doing it for years, it's identical to a direct SATA connection...however, make sure you don't accidentally unplug your OS drive while it's on). If you decide to install games on the same system with your NLE, you will get no sympathy WHEN you start having problems. A good editing system is one that is dedicated to the task of media production....NOT e-mail, NOT games, NOT web browsing, NOT iTunes. If you limit your system to just the task of media production apps, then you will likely be very happy over the long term. Adding more tasks isn't going to murder your machine, but it's going to give you more trouble than necessary since it seems like EVERY application nowadays insists on running at startup and in the background persistently.
- Lastly, regarding the Mercury Playback Engine and approved CUDA cards...the Adobe approved cards all work, and obviously the list is a lot longer for PC than it is for Mac. The hack that is floating around is both easy to implement (it's a .txt file) and works just fine. The approved cards all are flawless, tested to have 0 issues with playback. For non-approved cards, your minimum specs will be about 1 GB of on-board GPU memory and CUDA. Anything less than that, and the hack won't even work on your card at all. Of course, with my previously mentioned GTX 470 card being on the approved list and costing less than $300 right now, it makes no sense to bother with other cards if you're in the market for a new one and working on a budget. The Quadro cards allow a greater number of simultaneous layers before hitting a render limit, but they cost a good bit more. Also, keep in mind that SLI (which allows you to gang multiple graphics cards together) has zero impact on Mercury Playback and is just a waste of money for editing. They may harness that capability in the next version, but for now, having an SLI setup is not useful when running Premiere.
Hmm? Why are people suggesting so elaborate schemes if you want to do gaming and edit?
I regularly do both with my system and I don't have any "dual os" boots or the like and everything is working well. I'd actually even wager my system is running more smoothly than most other systems and it has nothing to do with the fact that there are games on my drives or that I can access the internet...sheesh. If you want to talk foolish, I'd say its impossibly foolish to NOT have access to the internet/emails on your media workstation. What is there so unbelievably hard about editing that you can't keep a system running?
I'd suggest keeping editing files on a different drive than games but other than that, if you have a powerful system for editing, it will also run games with no problems. Provided you have a good graphics card.
One thing that's essential is to have backups of your system disk though. This is essential even if you are not gaming or doing anything else than media work.
I regularly do both with my system and I don't have any "dual os" boots or the like and everything is working well. I'd actually even wager my system is running more smoothly than most other systems and it has nothing to do with the fact that there are games on my drives or that I can access the internet...sheesh. If you want to talk foolish, I'd say its impossibly foolish to NOT have access to the internet/emails on your media workstation. What is there so unbelievably hard about editing that you can't keep a system running?
I'd suggest keeping editing files on a different drive than games but other than that, if you have a powerful system for editing, it will also run games with no problems. Provided you have a good graphics card.
One thing that's essential is to have backups of your system disk though. This is essential even if you are not gaming or doing anything else than media work.
scapsinger
Well-known member
The issue with internet and e-mail isn't the tasks themselves...thing is, everything seems to have a background process these days, and by not installing something like Outlook on your computer, you avoid those issues 100%. Also, viruses and malware and the like are not always easy to stop even with an up-to-date protection package (which, of course, uses background services to track everything coming and going). I've never once had an issue with that on my editing machines. But the logic states that if you aren't web surfing and checking e-mail, you aren't going to be downloading viruses at all. If you do those things and you're fairly diligent about what you open or what sites you visit, you'll avoid issues as well (more than likely). But you can't deny that there is SOME exposure to those hazards that doesn't exist if you're not web surfing or checking your e-mail. Viruses and malware kill machines...they come from web surfing and e-mail....thus my recommendation.
I run no anti-virus on my editing computers, and I've never had any bad junk cropping up, but I limit my web browsing on those machines to the Adobe forums and help files and little else. I realize most anti-virus software will make but a small dent on my beefy system, but I can avoid it by limiting my web-based work to my laptop or smartphone.
The issue with games is the same...most games install their own background processes that run all the time, and some of them are a little more invasive than others.
So yeah, I never said you COULDN'T do both gaming and editing on the same system. It's my recommendation that you split them up - at least onto separate system drives - and certainly the safest option for me when my editing work is absolutely mission critical (it is how I make a living, after all...). My system runs smooth as can be, and I only ask it to do one thing. Besides, if I wanted a gaming system, I'd build it completely differently...I'd have 2- or 3- way SLI, I'd have a different GPU and I would have a different RAID setup. The system I built for editing is probably underpowered for a good FPS (at least for the graphics).
And it's really not an elaborate scheme...just shut down when you're done gaming or editing, plug in the other drive and boot back up. What does a good hard drive cost these days...$100 for a really good 500 GB drive? Or maybe you only need a 160 GB drive for your purposes? And you can use a single copy of Win7 for 2 installations, so no problem there. Pay another $20 for an eSATA enclosure and you're done.
My recommendation stands...I don't claim it to be necessary, or even the best (I'm sure there are those out there who are more purist than I am) but it's certainly not elaborate or unusual. If anything, I'd suggest that gaming is foolish because it's nothing but a time and money vacuum. Oh, how many hours and dollars I've wasted setting up elaborate schemes designed to kill imaginary terrorists...........
I run no anti-virus on my editing computers, and I've never had any bad junk cropping up, but I limit my web browsing on those machines to the Adobe forums and help files and little else. I realize most anti-virus software will make but a small dent on my beefy system, but I can avoid it by limiting my web-based work to my laptop or smartphone.
The issue with games is the same...most games install their own background processes that run all the time, and some of them are a little more invasive than others.
So yeah, I never said you COULDN'T do both gaming and editing on the same system. It's my recommendation that you split them up - at least onto separate system drives - and certainly the safest option for me when my editing work is absolutely mission critical (it is how I make a living, after all...). My system runs smooth as can be, and I only ask it to do one thing. Besides, if I wanted a gaming system, I'd build it completely differently...I'd have 2- or 3- way SLI, I'd have a different GPU and I would have a different RAID setup. The system I built for editing is probably underpowered for a good FPS (at least for the graphics).
And it's really not an elaborate scheme...just shut down when you're done gaming or editing, plug in the other drive and boot back up. What does a good hard drive cost these days...$100 for a really good 500 GB drive? Or maybe you only need a 160 GB drive for your purposes? And you can use a single copy of Win7 for 2 installations, so no problem there. Pay another $20 for an eSATA enclosure and you're done.
My recommendation stands...I don't claim it to be necessary, or even the best (I'm sure there are those out there who are more purist than I am) but it's certainly not elaborate or unusual. If anything, I'd suggest that gaming is foolish because it's nothing but a time and money vacuum. Oh, how many hours and dollars I've wasted setting up elaborate schemes designed to kill imaginary terrorists...........
I would really avoid taking the full 1920x1080 frame size from the AF100 and downscale it to 1280x1080 @ 60i or 1440x1080 @ 50i since DVCPRO HD cannot be full raster, ie 1920x1080. You get the same issue with 1280x720 > DVCPRO HD.
Try the CineForm codec if you want/prefer the transcode workflow since it is full raster and no downscaling will occur.
/Roger
Rick Burnett
Section Moderator
The limit is 768Mb for the CUDA cut-off with the hack, not 1G. (At least on the Mac, I cannot comment on the PC).
If you are on on the Mac side, it's pretty easy to know what things are running in the background and what has installed runnable items. As I listed earlier all the things I do simultaneously on my Mac, it's a question of just knowing the software you are using. Even on the PC side, I think it is a great idea to test software on another machine first, see what it starts, what it does, then try it on your editing system. I do this sometimes when I am worried about intrusive programs.
But, the OP is about what software you will use. Sounds like CS5 Premiere Pro is the way to go. I have it and have used it and can attest that honestly, at this point, the process of using it is very nice. Color me impressed. I edited some in Final Cut Pro as well, just MAKE SURE if you are starting with AVCHD that you use Log and Transfer and not clipwrap at this point. Or, transcode in clipwrap to ProRes and then into final cut.
If you are on on the Mac side, it's pretty easy to know what things are running in the background and what has installed runnable items. As I listed earlier all the things I do simultaneously on my Mac, it's a question of just knowing the software you are using. Even on the PC side, I think it is a great idea to test software on another machine first, see what it starts, what it does, then try it on your editing system. I do this sometimes when I am worried about intrusive programs.
But, the OP is about what software you will use. Sounds like CS5 Premiere Pro is the way to go. I have it and have used it and can attest that honestly, at this point, the process of using it is very nice. Color me impressed. I edited some in Final Cut Pro as well, just MAKE SURE if you are starting with AVCHD that you use Log and Transfer and not clipwrap at this point. Or, transcode in clipwrap to ProRes and then into final cut.
Steve Kahn
Well-known member
Since we are all such Premiere fans (and I too have upgraeded to CS5) could someone tell me if OnLocation is of any use at all?
Laptop recording is not a possibility until USB3 comes around.
Adobe Story seemed like a great idea until I tried importing scripts. Boy does that not work. I thought this would be a great way to log shots. I have several short film scripts and I was hoping to use OnLocation to keep track of b-roll footage as we shoot these projects but if I can't import I have no desire to retype them. Plus the Air interface is... a bit like Flash in the way it hesitates. (Oh, I hate ActionScript)
Any use from the scopes? Anything here that the AF100 doesn't have?
Laptop recording is not a possibility until USB3 comes around.
Adobe Story seemed like a great idea until I tried importing scripts. Boy does that not work. I thought this would be a great way to log shots. I have several short film scripts and I was hoping to use OnLocation to keep track of b-roll footage as we shoot these projects but if I can't import I have no desire to retype them. Plus the Air interface is... a bit like Flash in the way it hesitates. (Oh, I hate ActionScript)
Any use from the scopes? Anything here that the AF100 doesn't have?
OnLocation is a fantastic tool, even if you're not actually using it to record. The scopes and tools are far better than the on-board AF100 tools.
But why do you need to wait for USB 3.0 (which already exists) to record?
But why do you need to wait for USB 3.0 (which already exists) to record?
Barry_Green
Moderator
Because you can't get from point a (the camera) to point b (OnLocation) at all. USB3 won't help either. Blackmagic makes the Intensity Shuttle with USB3, except a) it doesn't work with any USB3 laptop on the market, and b) even if it did, OnLocation doesn't have support for external capture cards anyway. The Intensity Shuttle does work with some desktops though. BUt again, OL doesn't read from capture cards, it only captures from firewire.
And the AF100 outputs HD-SDI and HDMI only, so ... no way to get from here to there.
About the only thing you could do is get a Canopus HDMI->HDV converter and use that, but then a) you're degrading your footage to HDV, and b) there would probably be horrible lag, at least a half-second if not more.
Well, that's what I thought, which is why I found the point confusing.
RieniO
Well-known member
When I moved from PC to Apple, I started with Premiere. But when Adobe dropped Premiere for Mac I moved to FCX and later FCP. Later Adobe picked up development for Premiere for Apple again, but upgrades from earlier versions were not possible. If FCP stops doing what it does for me now (which is sufficient) I'll move back to the PC, with Avid. For now I'm happy with FCP though and I can't imagine Apple stopping proper development for this software.
RieniO
Well-known member
Just to let any Mac users out there know, you don't have to worry about this. Install anything you want and if you don't run it and it's not listed in System Preferences/Accounts/Login Items it's not in the background. I even regularly am editing and have Mail and Safari open at the same time with zero issues. I'm not trying to turn this into a Mac vs Windows discussion. Just letting Mac users out there know this isn't an issue for them.
So back onto discussion about editing apps....
Premiere Pro CS5 is definitely intriguing. I just wish there was a simple way to take a project from PP to Apple Color. I researched it and there really doesn't seem to be a good, simple, fool-proof way to do it. I haven't tried it myself, so I think exporting a FCP XML file from PP CS5 deserves some experimentation, and if it works then I might try it. It would require somehow reconforming a PP project to ProRes HQ files first though (since FCP can't work with native AVCHD), and I don't know what that process is. To me that kind of defeats the purpose of going to PP CS5 though. Everything else I can do in FCP already.
Rick Burnett
Section Moderator
True, if you are using color, and are going to ProRes anyways, I agree.
RieniO
Well-known member
This is what I like so much about the Mac, it's so clean, and never a system crash or lock-up. But Windows7 seems to be a huge improvement.
We don't want a Mac vs. PC debate here, or general assessments of either OS. The topic is which NLE people prefer to use with the AF100; let's just stick with that. Thanks . . .