Prospect HD version 4...before NAB?
 

How about it Dave, are you guys going to release your beta of the Prospect HD/4K Version 4 to us before NAB?

It's getting close...

God I hope so!! Newman replied to one of my posts in the winter asking why I didn't upgrade (I have/use PPro 1.5), because Prospect wasn't supported officially on PPro 1.5 anymore. So, now I've "upgraded", to what Adobe Store had available (CS4), which of course screwed pretty much all the plugin-developers (from what I hear from Cineform, anyhow--I haven't tried my one Red Giant plugin yet) due to radically changed APIs.

So, now I'm waiting for the Prospect HD 4, which Cineform's Web site said, until recently, will be available at the end of January 2009... I have a couple of projects that at this point are not yet critical, but each week going by brings them closer to criticality..

I saw another post from David Taylor indicating that a Prospect beta should be available in days, and I think that was Friday or Saturday. Fingers crossed....

Thanks,
Matt

Yes!!
I'm sitting on a brand new i7/ Vista 64/ CS4 only system that keeps eyeballing me from across the room. All it needs is Prospect 4.0.

I hope that's not the empty echos of vaporous silence we're hearing!

Maybe those 3D Hollywood guys are eating up all CF's programming time...

I gave up waiting. I am actually using Edius right now and loving it. Very smooth editing, just a little to get used to.

I was happy with my Aspect HD, but when they announced that inexpensive upgrade to prospect and that CS4 edition would be released soon I jumped. Alas, that was months ago and I have since become disgruntled. I wonder if they will return my money for the prospect upgrade? I really don't believe I will be going back after Edius.

Steve

I still have faith.

Very soon for sure - I am waiting too! Just got a new system and am dying to try it out!

Simon

I'm in the same boat.

Ive heard its any day now.
To be honest I'm glad they are taking their time with it and not rushing it out.
I prefer a product that works than for one that you can always get disillusioned with.
I think they have made a wise decision and getting it right as I think they would loose their reputation if it didn't work.

Well we can give them the benefit of the doubt for sure but just because it is taking so long to release does not guarentee that it will not have bugs that still need to be worked out. Sometimes it just takes a long time to actually write the code......it does't necessarilly mean that any extra time has been given to debug it over previous releases.

I sure hope you are right though!

Gary, if you scan back through the last few months' posts, there have been a number of times they've said ... right now we're busy with other stuff. Just sayin' ...

I just hope there's not too many CF irons in their 3D/First Light/? fires (allowing them to muscle into Hollywood/Bollywood pro circles), thus channeling the majority of their needed/trusted/capable programmers into those directions.

I've seen it happen many times in 25 years of this software/hardware game. There could well be even more ambitious goals appearing for them from the whole direct download scene or ???.

If any of the above is true, my only hope is that we are not left with a dead-ended product line, abandoned for greener pastures. I've felt that acid taste in my mouth before.

Let's just keep hoping NAB is stealing their time, and soon we'll be back to running betas and actually getting some work done from the CS4 workstations many of us have currently sitting idle and waiting. That is a lot of money spent on trust.

Middle of April is certainly a long way from the end of Jan...

Update for Neo HD/4K and Prospect HD/4K
 

Hi Guys - I'm sorry we've been quiet. Please don't interpret that as sinister or devious in any way. We have been extremely busy working on Neo HD/4K and Prospect HD/4K Beta releases plus prep for NAB and many other things.

But I wanted to take this opportunity to give you an update. Let's face it, the CS4 integration has taken much longer than we anticipated, and that we led you to believe previously. Adobe changed the SDK in a big way for CS4, and it *still* has bugs in it. Adobe doesn't use their SDK in the way third parties do, so we're still reporting bugs to them.

Nonetheless, we are preparing the first Beta builds for Neo HD/4K and Prospect HD/4K. Our hope (fingers crossed) is that they are available tomorrow (Friday). If we miss Friday it might slip to just after NAB, but they're very close.

The first Beta builds will not be feature complete however, so let me lay out for you what this will look like:

1. The first Beta build will have our CS4 importer and (for Prospect HD/4K customers) our filters. But it will be without our RT engine until after NAB. (By the way, the importer should be in pretty good shape because it's been shipping in Neo Scene for a while now). This release will also add compatibility for AVCHD and Canon 5D Mk II within HD Link.

2. Separately, probably right after NAB, we'll have the first public Beta release of First Light. It's taking shape very nicely now, and will be one of our focuses (foci?) at NAB. I know you haven't played with it yet, but I'm confident that all of you will soon come to rely on First Light as an important tool in your post suite. (First Light will be included at no additional charge within Neo and Prospect).

3. Our Prospect HD/4K real-time engine will be a May release, but as I indicated in (1) we'll have our filters as part of the initial Beta.

If we release the initial Beta before NAB it'll be largely unsupported because our team will be in Las Vegas.

Sorry for the delay - I hope this has been somewhat insightful!

Thank you once again for the update. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the beta will be released tomorrow (i'd even accept an alpha, really, I just want to be able to open and work on existing projects, I'm not too concerned about RT capabilities).

Thanks again for keeping us informed though. Enjoy NAB.

Sounds great!

The update does help a lot.

Good luck at NAB!

Simon

Yay!!

What I want/need to know about the beta is this: Currently I have PPro 1.5/Prospect HD 3.4.6 installed (for existing projects, all of which, coincidentally, are finished), and after that installed PPro CS4 (for new projects, but hopefully soon with PHD). In order to use the beta, would we need to uninstall the existing Prospect HD? I'd sure like to see just some brief compatibility-type instructions (do this, don't do that, etc.), if there's time, but I'm sure willing to wing it, if need be...

Thanks,
Matt