Marty, I was using CS4 and went back on CS3 until Cineform gets CS4 working.

Encodeing times. I did a test and found that the encoding times are almost exactly the the same. The only time CS4 was slower was if you select "maximize rendering" option. Then it was WAAAAYYYY slower, but did product better quality when downsizing from HD to say 720x480 dvd.

I took a 60 second 1440x1080i HDV clip and exported as follows:

CS3 to BluRay 70 Sec
CS4 to BluRay 65 Sec

CS3 to DVD 41 Sec
CS4 to DVD 44 Sec

CS3 to iPod 86 Sec
CS4 to iPod 58 Sec

I have a quad-Core2 2.83ghz, 4GB Ram, Vista x64. I read and wrote the files to the same dedicated drive.

Format.............MPEG2-DVD
Multiplexer........None
Video Size........720x480
Video Bitrate....CBR-7mb
Video Quality....4.6
Audio................PCM

Format.............MPEG2-BluRay
Multiplexer........None
Video Size........1440x1080
Video Bitrate....CBR-35mb
Video Quality....4.6
Audio................PCM

Format............H.264
Input...............Crop 4x3
Output............Scale to Fit
Multiplexer.......iPod
Video Size........640x480
Video Bitrate....VBR 1pass 1.3 to 1.5
Video Quality....N/A
Audio................AAC 128

Where do you access the maximize rendering option? Hopefully mine is checked on and that is what is causing this horrible rendering performance.

Edit: Nevermind.....I found this and it is not checked. Why am I seeing such long render times?

Well I ran additional tests similar to yours and I still get a disparity, but not as great as before. I loaded a 30 second HDV 1080/24P clip in the timeline. Added the brightness and contrast effect and increased the contrast to +10. I first built a preview which took about 1 minute. Then I exported it using the CS4 media encoder to Blu-ray mpg2 1440x1080 at 15mbps CBR. This took 1:30 for a 30second clip

Repeat the exact same process in CS3 and I got the preview to build in :58 seconds....about on par, but the encode to Blu-ray mpg2 1440x1080 took 1 minute also. So it is 30 seconds faster on a 30 second clip....or about 33%.

So a full 10 minute projects would take about 20 minutes in CS3 and about 30 minutes in CS4. Keep in mind, this is the best I have seen it....there is usually a much bogger gap between them.

I'll keep pluggin away. Thanks.

I'm probably missing the obvious, but without the RT engine I can't think of any reason to do my upgrade for either PPro or Prospect. I've got CS4 sitting quietly on the shelf and I upgraded to Prospect within the right time frame, so I'll get the Prospect for CS4 upgrade at some point, but until Prospect and CS4, via updates, are both ready for prime time, I'll stick with CS3 and the final build of the last Prospect.

That's where I'm at as well Adam.

Marty- I'm curious what OS you re using, and how much RAM you have.
One reviewer who was very enthustiastic about the performance of CS4 AME was using Vista 64 with 16 GB RAM. He was pretty emphatic that it takes 64 bit + mega RAM to get the advertised performance.
Since I am just on the cusp of upgrading to CS4 and a new system, reports like yours are key info for me.
Thanks

intel quadcore 3.2ghz
4gb ram
Windows xp 32bit
Geforce gtx 260 with 896mb ram

Wish I had CS3 to test since I'm running an 2.6GHz i7 processor over clocked to 3.2GHz with 16GB of memory and a Nvidia 260 graphics card. I'm getting pretty decent speeds. Not to mention all 4 cores (8 threads) get pegged at 100% usage when exporting from Premiere into AME. So the machine is cranking.

Yeah- That's what I'm planning for CS4: Intel i7, Vista 64, 12-16 GB RAM.
That is encouraging news Brant.
Some of you may be interested to read the article about CS4 & Vista 64:
http://blogs.adobe.com/genesisprojec...ucts.html#more
I always thought that 32 bit apps like Pro CS4 could only access 2 GB of RAM no matter what the OS, but this article insists that with Vista 64, both Pro and AE can access up to 4 GB per CORE- so, quad core = 16 GB for Pro CS4.
That would be a very big deal, if it's really true.

I am in the process of updating my XP box to dual boot to Vista 64. As soon as I get it up and running, I will update you on any performance increases I see in CS4 encoding. I have my doubts that it will speed up a single video clip sitting on the CS4 timeline, but I will try it. There are too many other advantages to Vista 64 running multiple apps so the timing is right.

This blog was written by one of the developers of MS Flight Simulator (RIP) and it explains the IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE flag that allows 32 bit programs to use up to 4GB RAM in Vista x64 and up to 2 GB in 32 bit Windows:

PTaylor's WebLog : FSX and Win32 Process Address Space

Actually, After Effects CS3 also used more than 2GB of RAM by spawning multiple copies of itself.

Below is a listing of the exe file header flags for Premiere CS4 and it indeed can use > 2GB per running copy.

Just fyi, we get good results on our 32bit XP Pro workstation with CS3, using the "/3G /Userva=2560" switches in the boot.ini. Helps the mem probs a bit, without pushing too close to the limit.

Our 64bit XP workstations don't need any help...with CS3 or CS4.

These are all quadcores with only 4 GB RAM. So far, so good. If when CF finally gets things going with the CS4 versions of Prospect HD, we'll probably discover that more mem is better too. But for now, we're doing okay with 4 GB...for now...for now...

Well, I was so happy that I could finally import the converted files... so I tried the new neoscene to convert all my new canon 5D II videos... it stopped after five...
Now It doesn't work anymore... the same error I got other times with the old versions. It works one time and then the program gets corrupted.
But CS4 works fine now with the cineform files (the few I managed to convert).

Curious how you got 16GB on your i7 platform. What's your memory configuration. Did you abandon triple channel?

Ok So the outstanding problems that i'm still facing with Neoscene and CS4 are

1) In Premiere, you cant import files bigger than 4gb in size. It truncates the video. This has been identified by Cf support , but Im stuck now since the past week waiting for an update to the situation

2) All of a sudden video thumbnails have dissapeared in Adobe Bridge for Neoscene Avi file. Previously they were showingup. No amount of purging cache etc is solving it. (Still not a major drawback as compared to point 1)

My setup is a Laptop HP HDX Quad core, Seagate e-satat, Vista 64bit, 4 gb ram. 1 gb Nvidia 9000 series card.

With this setup can't yet play two HD video tracks in realtime at 50% opacity and no other effects.
They do play back however at draft quality on Premier timeline.

I guess need more power under the hood and raid? even with the otherwise excellent CF codec to play two tracks of video in realtime?