Cine form or higher quad

[Ray Barber]

Yes, thanks Guy. That's a few less pennies to save :)

[Steve Pesenti]

Harry - You can download a free trial of any Cineform product from Cineform's website to test out.

I think your setup meets the min Neoscene requirements, but not their higher spec products. That said you may find 2.45 GHz dual core still slightly too slow.

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Originally Posted by Harry Lender

When I finish editing, what format do I render out too? This is a first for me. I've never worked with proxy files before.
Harry

Harry, the proxy is used for editing - PRIOR to editing. You convert your footage to a manageable proxy (temporary) codec and edit. When you finish, you POINT your proxy files to the original files before you render (naming conventions must be strictly maintained) and then Render. The proxy files are replaced by the original files by the NLE.

The proxy files you make depend on your requirements. Other than editing, do you do anything else with your NLE? Do you finish or color correct? Do you add effects? If you're strictly editing ONLY, you can convert your files into DV for editing (note: to transcode H.264 to DV might take a day or more depending on how many hours of footage you have). The most important thing to know is the Naming convention that you'll have to rigorously maintain throughout. Like Dave mentioned, it takes time to render proxies and properly get naming right. More importantly, it takes EXPERIENCE. You might and will screw up a few times before you get it right. If money is tight, this is the only way to go. Dave is right, you have to know what you're doing plus take into account the money aspect for all options.

Another consideration is you could edit your footage by keeping the resolution/quality/whatever at one-half or one-quarter instead of 100%. This way the processing load reduces considerably. Have you tried doing this with your footage directly?

However, if you're color correcting as well, you will want to maintain the same color space as your footage or your output destination. You haven't given details so I can't tell you what to do in this case. Also, what you output to depends on your objective. Your proxy files will depend on this as well.

[Harry Lender]

Originally Posted by Steve Pesenti

Harry - You can download a free trial of any Cineform product from Cineform's website to test out.

I think your setup meets the min Neoscene requirements, but not their higher spec products. That said you may find 2.45 GHz dual core still slightly too slow.

Originally Posted by Sareesh Sudhakaran

Harry, the proxy is used for editing - PRIOR to editing. You convert your footage to a manageable proxy (temporary) codec and edit. When you finish, you POINT your proxy files to the original files before you render (naming conventions must be strictly maintained) and then Render. The proxy files are replaced by the original files by the NLE.

The proxy files you make depend on your requirements. Other than editing, do you do anything else with your NLE? Do you finish or color correct? Do you add effects? If you're strictly editing ONLY, you can convert your files into DV for editing (note: to transcode H.264 to DV might take a day or more depending on how many hours of footage you have). The most important thing to know is the Naming convention that you'll have to rigorously maintain throughout. Like Dave mentioned, it takes time to render proxies and properly get naming right. More importantly, it takes EXPERIENCE. You might and will screw up a few times before you get it right. If money is tight, this is the only way to go. Dave is right, you have to know what you're doing plus take into account the money aspect for all options.

Another consideration is you could edit your footage by keeping the resolution/quality/whatever at one-half or one-quarter instead of 100%. This way the processing load reduces considerably. Have you tried doing this with your footage directly?

However, if you're color correcting as well, you will want to maintain the same color space as your footage or your output destination. You haven't given details so I can't tell you what to do in this case. Also, what you output to depends on your objective. Your proxy files will depend on this as well.

Steve Thanks for the heads up on the free trial. I'll try it out.

Sareesh. Yes I have tried keeping the resolution lower and that seems to help out alot. And yes I do color correct. Also I am upgrading from 2 to Quad core which should help out. If Cineform is successful I'll purchase that also. I'll have too trial and error in order to be successful.

I want to thank you all for your suggestions. It has helped out alot.
Best wishes
Harry

[Alex Raskin]

Originally Posted by Robert Young

you should consider just biting the bullet and upgrading to Win7 64, Intel i7, 12-16GB RAM.
It will change everything :)

Robert, what is your own configuration? Specifically, processor and memory?

Thanks.

[Harry Lender]

Originally Posted by Robert Young

Dave has a very good point.
If you are going to be doing this for the forseeable future, you should consider just biting the bullet and upgrading to Win7 64, Intel i7, 12-16GB RAM.
It will change everything :)

Right now I already have Win7 64, However I only have 6 GB Ram. I am upgrading from 2 core to Quad core which should help for time being. Thanks for the suggestion.
Harry

[Thomas Smet]

Another good lower resolution format to use as a proxy is the photojpeg codec built into Quicktime. I have found it to perform very well and even seems to playback with RT performance a bit better then DV AVI files on both my systems. I doubt you will be able to playback full HD with this format but it is super great for lower resolution proxies. For example I can convert my 1280x720p 60p footage to 640x360p 60p and it plays perfectly in Vegas at best full quality with basic effects. If I down convert to 30p instead I can get multiple layers of effects to play at best quality in RT.

I will typically make my proxies 720x480 interlaced lower field 1.212 pixel aspect ratio. This way When I am finished editing I can use either the proxies or the AVCHD files for final rendering. If I am making a DVD or SD master there is no more conversion needed other then encoding to mpeg2 or dumping to DV tape. If I need a HD master, Blu-ray or HD web format then I can use the AVCHD files.

I should note that you will get better quality DVD's by using Photojpeg as opposed to DV. The reason is the color space and compression of DV. Photojpeg above a quality level of 75 uses 4:2:2 color which makes a much better conversion to DVD then the 4:1:1 color from DV.

If you really want to push the RT performance of your system you can go even lower with your proxies such as 320x180 for 16x9 material. Vegas will slice through this like butter not to mention your proxy files are going to be very small.

[Harry Lender]

See post below

[Harry Lender]

Originally Posted by Thomas Smet

Another good lower resolution format to use as a proxy is the photojpeg codec built into Quicktime. I have found it to perform very well and even seems to playback with RT performance a bit better then DV AVI files on both my systems. I doubt you will be able to playback full HD with this format but it is super great for lower resolution proxies. For example I can convert my 1280x720p 60p footage to 640x360p 60p and it plays perfectly in Vegas at best full quality with basic effects. If I down convert to 30p instead I can get multiple layers of effects to play at best quality in RT.

I will typically make my proxies 720x480 interlaced lower field 1.212 pixel aspect ratio. This way When I am finished editing I can use either the proxies or the AVCHD files for final rendering. If I am making a DVD or SD master there is no more conversion needed other then encoding to mpeg2 or dumping to DV tape. If I need a HD master, Blu-ray or HD web format then I can use the AVCHD files.

I should note that you will get better quality DVD's by using Photojpeg as opposed to DV. The reason is the color space and compression of DV. Photojpeg above a quality level of 75 uses 4:2:2 color which makes a much better conversion to DVD then the 4:1:1 color from DV.

If you really want to push the RT performance of your system you can go even lower with your proxies such as 320x180 for 16x9 material. Vegas will slice through this like butter not to mention your proxy files are going to be very small.

Robert Thank you very much that suggestion. Gives me alot to consider. I have Premiere Pro CS5 and all I've been editing is DV video. I'm very familier with it. Now with proxy editing I've got to start again to relearn things. I'm googling Proxy editing to try to find a Step-by-step tutorial on the subject. Got a few good hits. Once I learn it it should be great.
Thanks again
Harry

[Robert Young]

Originally Posted by Alex Raskin

Robert, what is your own configuration? Specifically, processor and memory?
Thanks.

Win7 64, Intel i7, 12 GB tri RAM, Quadro fx 3800 GPU, Adobe CS5, RAID 0 media drives.

[Alex Raskin]

Processor speed? Mobo? What do you use to backup your RAID0?

[Robert Young]

Originally Posted by Alex Raskin

Processor speed? Mobo? What do you use to backup your RAID0?

This system is a Dell XPS Studio tower. I purchase these desktops from Dell fairly stripped down and inexpensive. Then add all the goodies (RAM, hard drives, BR burners, Hi end GPU, etc.) myself. Seems to work out much cheaper that way.
Processor is Intel i7 920 2.67 GHz
Mobo: whatever Dell gives me.
Media backup: I offload raw files to a seperate drive, then convert to Cineform which goes to RAID and is used for editing. I keep the file names unchanged. If the RAID goes down I can reconvert the footage back onto the new RAID & the NLE doesn't miss a beat.
Project files, scratch disk stuff on yet another drive, with end of day copies of the project file on another HD.
Also, System drive image is kept on the project file drive.
I think if (when) any one of the drives fails, I should be able to recover that drive's critical data without too much hassle.
That's the theory anyway ;-)

[Alex Raskin]

Thanks Bob.

Why do you have RAID0 though. Cineform has relatively low bandwidth, and you could easily go RAID1 (if you have 2 drives), or RAID5 (3 or more drives), and not be in danger to lose your work any second, like you are now with RAID0...

Personally I use Raid10 locally on the editing machine, and a Thecus N8800 backup with Raid6 (Raid5 would be fine too... I'm just being paranoid...)

[Robert Young]

Cineform.avi runs about 100 mbs.
You could get by doing single stream editing with SATA HD, but everything runs really smooth from RAID 0, no matter what the complexity of the editing.
Your back up is much more sophisticated.
If I have a drive go down, it will take some time to restore everything & get the project up and running, might loose part of an editing session, etc., but at least, I would not be totally up the creek without a paddle.

[Alex Raskin]

>> Cineform.avi runs about 100 mbs.

A single 5400rpm SATA drive has real-live transfer rate of around 50MBs (megabyte, not megabit...)

So realistically, with all the overheads and bottlenecks and HDD fill-up issues, one should be able to comfortably run at least two CFHD streams off one 5400rpm drive.

Now, that's a very slow, sad, single drive.

Going up to 7200rpm will likely get you more throughput, and RAID 10 or 5 (or 6) are also very fast with good controllers.

Win 7 reports 140MBs transfer rate on my local RAID10 with my trusted Areca ARC-1220 controller.