Cineform codec a necessity?
 

Hi I am new to HDV editing and have found my pc (Athlon X2 4400, 2gb ram, 600gb HDD) to be struggling slightly when editing HDV m2t files.. I have read a lot about cineform codec but I can not find out if this would solve the problem of sluggish performance or if it is for pc's that simply to not regognise HD video in the first place.. in the same way as for example a Divx codec would be used for specific avi's.
Also is the codec expensive?
Thanks in advance

David,

Is it necessary? No. Will it help you out and make your life much easier? YES!

The CineForm intermediate codec allows you to edit and scrub in real time without the jerkiness. Makes editing a lot fast and easier. The cost is $499.00, but it is available for a free trial at their site: It is not necessary for normal HDV capture, but it allows you to capture with scene detect. As the footage is captured, it is converted into a CineForm codec and this codec requires much less computing power to view, scrub and edit. Check out their site.

http://www.cineform.com/index.htm

One thing you may want to do is the change your hard drive set-up. From your description you state a 600gb HDD. If that is one hard drive and not the total of several on your system you will have problems. When editing DV and HDV especially, you should have your operating system on the computers main drive and then save the video and audio to separate drives. Three drives are about the minimum for good performance. You would be MUCH better off with 3 200gb drives than one 600gb drive. That way the computer can pull data from more than one drive at a time. It is much faster.

Good luck---Mike

excellent, thanks for that Mike. All is clear, I will certainly download the free trial and see how I get on.

Yes I have 3 serperate drives and for some reason performance seems to have improved this afternoon, but I do still occasionally get slow down so I'll check out cineform.

Thanks again

If you find cineform helps, you only need the $250 version, which is £125 .. not so much money. I'll certainly improve your performance more than the same amount of money spent on hardware, and obviously if/when you upgrade your hardware you'll still be getting the benefit of cineform.

We use it and highly recommend it.

One caveat- if you edit in Vegas, don't have a need to go back and forth with aftereffects a lot, AND aren't working in a time-critical production environment, then there is another way...... Vegas7 comes with a cut down version of the cineform codec. This allows you to re-render your M2Ts into Cineform AVIs, but you have to do it manually (render from timeline, or batch render regions). With the cut down version you don't get to set quality/compression rate, plus it's a slightly older version, but it will sure as hell still get you the cineform boost in performance if you don't mind jumping through the re-rendering hoops.

We paid the $250 for the full version (and will almost certainly be buying another license), as we need to capture *direct* to cineform with 'scene splitting', can't be hanging around for time-consuming re-renders. Plus it allows us to 180degree rotate our Brevis footage on capture, etc.

Keep in mind that if you go with Cineform you have to use their tools. Color Correction, ETC. Which are not the best. If you use Premiere for color correction and effects you loose the speed increase.

Todd,

that applies to our color correctors, but we also accelerate motion, titling, opacity, dissolves, i.e. many standard Adobe features. We find most use will gain a lot of performance benefits from Aspect or Prospect HD.

David Payne:

I know you have the FX1 from another thread. I got NeoHDV about two months ago, and was using primarily to do pull down removal on my HV20 footage on the fly at capture, and to ease editing in Vegas 7.

I recently experimented, after reading a thread here, with converting the fX1 footage to 24p at capture, and I am surprised that it looks pretty good. I am talking about shooting straight 60i, without Cineframe being turned on, and then converting at capture. I don't know how its done, or whether its considered true 24p, but it definitely gives your FX1 footage a more filmic feel.

David,

Do you think that Cineform will ever incorporate curves??

Yes, we will support curves one day when the the dust settles with updates from Adobe, Microsoft, AJA and BlackMagic -- all sucks up engineering time.