Avid opinions
 

(Ed: Referring to Cineform codec; this was moved as the beginning of off-topic discussion in Cineform thread) It has the best price-speed-quality ratio, yeah. Avid DNxHD's codec is serious too, but Avid is not.

c'mon eugenia. I use avid, i love avid.for all the nle's i've tried, only avid works time after time, once learned has the most efficient workflow, and has allowed me the fastest editing i've ever done. avid has gotten a bad rap. give 'em a break.

You didn't get what I wrote. I didn't write anything about Avid's editors, I talked about Avid's DNxHD. Avid is NOT serious about the PC implementation of their codec. The UI for the codec comes with a hideous visual bug that it's so glaring, that makes me think that either not enough testing goes into this thing, or no one cares over there about it.

I even talked to an Avid employee about it months ago, he said he will pass it on, but nothing was fixed!

So yes, I stand by my words to say that while Avid is a serious company, they are not serious about their PC DNxHD codec.The PC port feels to be a side project that some engineers put together during lunch time. And given that we are talking about intermediate codecs over here, that to my eyes, tells me that it can't compete with Cineform. Not because they don't have the manpower or money or expertise, but because they don't believe in their codec. The Cineform guys do.

avid codec mess
 

100% with you Clyde.

so if you want a REAL implementation of DNxHD codec, you have to :
- use own avid software ($2000) + add $9000 to have SDI output.
- use broadcast implementation of DNxHD (telestream pipeline HD for $11 000), or EVS Xs video server ($80 000)
- use third party implementation (merging Vcube with avid option + AJA card for $11 000)

so $11 000 minimum to play out realtime SDI... thanks Avid.

if only they make the free Decoder multithread able, we could use premiere + blackmagic for less than $1500! this is their politic of codec widespreading lol.

Eugenia...
I gotta admit, you make a valid point. If you're referring to the chronic dropdown box overlay in the properties window. it's pretty amazing that that persists. For a while, I thought the problem was with my video card, but, now I know better. Isn't it a QT problem, tho'? It persists into other apps.

I consider Avid a top company, right up there with General Motors, IBM PC/Laptop Division, AIG, and the California State Government.

Avid opinions
 

What are we talking about here? Can someone please explain?

I've never heard of any of this before, which certainly doesn't mean it's not valid. But I run DNxHD 220x (ten-bit) on a Pentium 4 w/ 2 gig and no external hardware. It works exceedingly well. I haven't experienced any codec problems.

As for the quality of DNxHD, I've read tests that show it does a somewhat better job than Apple's ProRes. I've seen 220 compared to uncompressed and could not tell the difference.

That said, I believe Cineform is a better codec than either DNxHD (or ProRes). But that the 220x version is a legit mastering quality codec for 4:2:2 material.

But please do share what you guys have discovered, and if there is a problem with the PC implementation of DNxHD thank you very much trying to point this out to Avid.

Peter...

IMHO this is a rather trivial thread. Not sure why it was broken out...really not worth the trouble. Some people love to slam Avid, I love to slam vegas. In the end, none of it really matters, but, the faithful always react rather violently.

I think what eugenia is referring to is the OPTIONS window when DNxHD is selected for export, on a PC. The codec options window has shown a corrupted display for as long as I've used MC. It's no big deal except that the problem has persisted over several versions.

There's always a lot of intensity related to any discussion of NLE choice. Avid has never let me down, unlike other NLE's I've used. But then, that's my personal experience and others feel differently. The one thing I can't accept is the release of a new version of software that brings my production to its knees. Premiere has done that and Vegas has done that. Guess I've learned to test the new release of any mission critical software.

On the subject of Cineform and Avid, Avid will allow importing of a Cineform DI, but, it will transcode it, as it will with anything except DNxHD, into the DNxHD DI. The beauty of the Cineform DI is that it imports and needs no other transcoding, like importing XDCAM does. The Cineform DI has new features that allow "raw" image processing via the metadata. I've found this to be a great workflow that doesn't damage the original files. I'd love it if Avid adopted the Cineform DI as one option for an internal (to Avid) DI.

Okay, I found the bug. After some settings are changed, "Avid DNxHD Codec" gets kind of chopped off and reads "Avid DN." Never noticed it before. Also surprised that it hasn't been fixed. But it has absolutely nothing to do with the performance of DNxHD.

Cineform DI sounds nice. I do think that Avid is going to have to come up with some type of native 4:4:4 and RAW solution for MC and Symphony. DS is $60K.

But for some people in this thread to make it sound like you need $11,000 to effectively use DNxHD is unadulterated BS. I pinch myself everyday at Avid's amazing performance on my old PC. Every now and then I try using Vegas for more than the ocassional capture, and I'm startled by how slow it is by comparion.

You guys crack me up. On our Avid here at Jacobs/NASA I have over 10 projects with about 70 interopened bins between them linked to a total of 72 hours of HD/SD footage right now and not even one instance broken media offlined clip. Not too serious.

I have lost zero hours of editing due to downtime.

I'm in the process of training 2 Vegas guys on Avid. One of them realizes that he will be able to get a job at a post house a lot easier if he knows Avid.

We're having fun cranking out a lot of good serious work.

After all, it is about the work.

You need to read the original thread to understand what was talked about. This thread should not have been split up like this, because the original thread contained a link to my benchmark testing which actually showed the bug mentioned here and compared Cineform to Avid. Anyway, that's the article: Eugenia’s Rants and Thoughts Blog Archive Intermediate Codecs: the face-off

And if anyone of you works for AVID, please fix the visual bug. I mean, look, I am a software gal myself (was working as a developer before I became a tech journalist), but this is such a glaring 100% reproducible bug, that I really don't know how it got slip through the cracks and got shipped in that state. To me, that screamed "not tested".

Eugenia and Bill, that's EXACTLY why it WAS split off -- the other thread was ONLY about Cineform performance and it was hijacked with off-topic discussion of Avid. Comparisons are fine when they help to illustrate a point, but this discussion was far afield from that. This Avid forum is your place to discuss Avid and its virtues and woes if you wish to do so. If you find it trivial, then simply ignore the thread.

Now back to your Avid discussion...

Eugenia,

I very much appreciate that you took the time to do this comparison, but I want to reply to some of the statement you made and how they apply to Avid.

"Normal users would usually use it in 1/4 HD preview windows on their home PCs, but professionals are more likely to use full HD preview second-monitors, so I thought it would be good to test both."

Are you aware that Avid can playback FULL resolution (only 8-bit color though) on any properly confgured modern computer? I do this all the time on a six year old Pentium 4 system w/ 2 Gig of RAM, no RAID, no hardware accelerater. And MANY effects and color corrections playback full time w/ no quality hit; no frames drop. Sure I can change to 1/2 or 1/4 resolution in Media Composer, but I have no reason to. No other NLE that I've come across can do that.


"I should also mention that Avid installed its codecs to work under the Quicktime .MOV container rather than the AVI or MXF containers, which has a speed impact under the PC (just because Quicktime under Windows sucks goats)."

Like I mentioned above, Avid is blazing fast. Using a Quicktime wrapper does not seem impact performance in Media Composer.

As for your interface bug, I can replicate it in Vegas. But it seems like a Vegas problem. Attached is a screen grab from doing a DNxHD export from inside Media Composer. You can see that "Avid DNxHD" gets truncated but that's it. I've also attached a screen grab from a TMPGEnc Xpress 4.0 export dialogbox. There are no problems with it at all.

Now as for the most important part of your observation, I have to do more testing. I just don't have an answer as to if DNxHD does not properly handle interlaced material. I have to think that's not the case, but you do clearly show your results. If they are indeed a bug or just setting that needed to be swithced, IDK, b/c I use DNxHD with mostly progressive footage.

Thank you for your input and I hope I cleared up misconceptions about Avid' and I will look into what you've discovered and hopefully get an answer.

HTH.

Hi peter...


Thought I'd jump in and add that the pictures you posted must show the OPTIONS menu from the latest version 3.5 release. I say this because the display problems in earlier versions were much more corrupted than this shows. So, it would appear that Avid is already working on this issue. Thanx for your help.