Prospect HD
 

Do we feel that PP CS4 and PHD are stable enough to start using together. I'm on a 64 bit I7 920 12 Gigs mem. PC. I realize it's not on Cineforms end.

Are there many success stories out there at the moment. Are the programs compatible enough to trust on a consistant bases?

I am also very interested in hearing any success stories, I am about to start a new project so now may be a good time to upgrade if it's a stable solution.

I'm actually working casually on a 30 min program, 1920x1080 30p, 200-300 clips in the bins with the latest PHD version, CS4.1, Vista 64/i7/12GB RAM. So far it's going well- software is stable & I can really see the power of this system compared to CS3/XP Pro 32 bit, but I've only done rough assembly- trimming, transitions, CC with First Light. No titling, AE comps, etc. at this point.
I've had some playback (preview) problems with a couple of older clips that were converted with PHD HDLink 3.x- but that seems to be more of a "special case" problem.
One nusiance: if I punch the "enter" key to render any "red bar" area, PPro will try to render the entire timeline (yellow bar). The resulting preview is squeezed vertically to about 1/3 of the frame- so I have to remember not to render any previews. On the plus side, I'm getting pretty much RT playback on the red bar areas without rendering.
AME rendering of the timeline to CF.avi movie is good, it's just preview rendering that's whacky.
First Light is working very well & is turning out to be a convienient & efficient method for CC & tweaking.
My overall impression is that this is a near finished editing solution.
I think if you are doing HD editing with 64 bit OS and Big RAM, then CS4/PHD4 is where you want to be & it seems ready enough to get started.

Sounds like your running the same under the hood as I am. That's great to hear! It's been a long wait. And I'm eager to get started.I appreciate your feedback.

Billy,

I have been doing some editing too on Vista 64, i7 920 12gb ram, works just fine. So far better than my previous XP32.

Rick C

I've been editing just fine in PPro CS4 with PHD4, but I have not been able to actually export a movie that takes longer than 45 minutes to render (have a trouble ticket opened on it). Also, HDLink is corrupting my converted AVIs by sticking green frames in there at certain points. This appears to happen on longer videos, which, since I mostly shoot dance events, covers pretty much everything I shoot.

Thanks,
Matt

Thanks for the detailed reponses guys!

This morning I installed a fresh copy of Vista Ultimate 64 SP1 on my Quad Core (8 GB). I downloaded the trial version of Premier CS4 and installed latest updates. I also downloaded a trial of PDH4 (ProspectHD-4.0.5.214b). The problem I have is that cineform templates are not making it into the install of CS4. I see no way to output cineform files or create a new project using cineform templates. The cineform effects are present in the bins and seem to work although there is no real time processing, like in CS3.

I am thinking the PSD4 install paths are messed up somehow and presets and cineform engine are not being installed, did anyone else have trouble installing?

Also will these trial versions play nice together for a while so I can test?
Thanks ~

Rich,

As far as I am aware the Cineform Presets have not been included in any of the Prospect-4 releases. Nor has the realtime Cineform engine. We are all still waiting.

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the info, it certainly seems this way from the way it's installed in CS4 although I thought I that in other posts I saw, presets and the real time engine were working and that we should be able to export a cineform avi too. I don't see away of doing this however, can anyone confirm either way?

Thanks,

Rich

Rich,

What version of Prospect HD are you using? v4.05 b214 is the latest. I believe the "b" in the b214 indicates "beta". I have this version installed. There are no Cineform Presets and the realtime engine does not work.

Perhaps someone can prove me wrong. I can only hope.


Tim

Tim, I am using ProspectHD-4.0.5.214b thge same version.

Cineform have always been great to me with support etc, sometimes quite slow but overall good. Would it not be misleading potential new customers who are using CS4 if the RTE does not work, I am sure it will be fixed soon but it seems like it would be a bit of an ethical issue to sell a product who's major feature is bad. Most of us know how cineform work, they eventually get it right.

Here is what the website says regarding CS3 and CS4.
"Prospect HD delivers unmatched workflow efficiency through its real-time editing engine"

"Real-Time Performance: Unrestricted number of real-time streams enabled by CineForm real-time engine. Typically 4-6 HD streams on modern PCs. Real-time effects: transitions, levels, and color correction, plus titling and motion engine"

Not sure at all now if this is ready for CS4 yet, due to missing RTE and templates but it works great in CS3.

Rich

Rich,

It has been made clear to me, from posts in this forum, that the realtime engine is not ready due to some delay in information form Adobe. I'm not sure what the Cineform website says. However, having watched posts in this forum it is clear that Cineform has been up front about this.

Tim

Hey Tim,

I just spent about 2 hours reading all the past posts made on PDH for CS4 and it does look like issues with adobe not really playing ball with cineform. I know cineform are a hard working bunch of folks and offer amazing direct support to thier customers at a level which is not often found with bigger organizations and I know they have a lot of eggs in thier basket right now, so I am willing to wait. I am using CS3 anyway and so far PHD4 is working great. First light blows me away, what a great piece of software!

Rich

Rich,

I'm guessing that cineform would have rather waited until 4.0 was perfect. However, there was a lot of pressure put on them from folks who had CS4 just sitting on the shelf. They were good enough to provide beta versions which allowed us all to test drive it. It also served as a good way to work out the bugs.

I'm guessing that a version with the realtime engine will be out soon. Have you tried First Light yet? That addition to the the software is amazing.


Tim

First Light is really cool Tim, love it so far - what an increadable tool and the potential is enormous.

Alhough I have had some trouble with first light playback, I just installed cs3 again and removed cs4 and first light playback is not playing video (black windows) tried at half resolution etc. Looking for a fix, perhaps graphics card according to pother posts, may just ghost back my system to my base OS and reinstall again.