Dave, I couldn't get PPro2 or 3 to capture live from the XHG1 via Xena HS. I can see the output image, via monitor from the Xena card. Xena, adobe project and cineform settings are 1080i 60Hz (SDI port is also enabled on the Canon and set to HD, auto). Adobes' HD-SDI edit mode did not work either. Nor would HDLink. It recognizes the card, but there was no image.

I ran out of time, and will reinstall/update the Xena drivers tommorrow.

How are you connecting your Canon via SDI?

Make sure you are using the Xena drivers shipped with Prospect. These are located in C:\Program Files\CineForm\AJAIO.

Cineform specific Xena drivers? Maybe I should have read the instructions first :)

Will do.

Installing the cineform version of Xena drivers did the trick. We're in business. I'm now keying 10bit 4:2:2 HD-SDI material in PPro3.

I'm having some fun with PPro3 and the new Prospect 2k.

I have about eight-hours of soccer video to cut, but decided to do something a little more interesting. A VFX project to put this software through it's paces. (It's been a long while since I've working on something this heavy without one single incident).

I've provided some media here, and I know it does little justice for the original content, which is simply beautiful. Capturing 4:2:2 HD-SDI that keys at uncompressed quality, yet acts and plays at the speed of compressed? A quality that is imperceivable from the original, exported to AE and back again for final edit... amazing.

If you want something higher rez (or different from divX), I'll have to find another means to upload an m2t file.

http://stage6.divx.com/user/peferlin...ineform-plugin

The forum was having issues, and I was not able to load these screen captures in the last post:

(Any recommendations as to where I can load some higher rez m2t clips?)

Dave, is there anything you'd like me to test?

I haven't attempted a "PK2" sized project. I'm assuming it's the upconvering of the 444 from HDSDI 422 that matters, as I'm limited to 1080i. My concerns about stability in my own work have been answered thus far.

For straight capture, cut and render (minus the mpeg stuff), I'm pleased with this 'beta', and it's easy to forget that it's still a 'beta'.

I use YouSendIt.com for large files.

Peter, you been doing so many excellent tests it is hard to think what to add.

Have you tried the 4:4:4 export option with red titles on blue backward or any other difficult color combination. When do the same using 4:2:2, and compare with the source timeline. You can try the 4:2:2 -> 4:4:4 filter option to see it impact on the 4:2:2 material.

Steve, I'll check out yousendit.com thanks.

David, I'll give that a shot.

BTW, I ran into two issues:

In P2k (1080i HDSDI) with PPro3 project. Imported a 979x979 jpeg image, went to apply a title and noticed that the title tool is wayyyy slow in opening vs. an Adobe HD-SDI project (desktop). About a ten-seconds longer.

Also, toggling the safe margins button in the preview monitor more than three times caused the app to crash. I also had to reboot as the safe margin would not go away via the AJA on the external monitor. It was stuck in perpetual memory. The video would redraw correctly, and yet the margins remained on the monitor.

PPro3 reflects the wrong data for image pixel depth (that's already been reported). I have not heard anything about the large tiff issues from Adobe either.

YouSendIt
 

I use you send it to send clients Clipnote previews it works flawlessly, Just like Cineform. Even given the little bugs that Peter has found in the new CS3 prospect workflow.

Peter what are your Computer specs?

Matthew, I use a BOXX 7400 with dualcore opteron 270's, 4gigs ram, Nvidia QuadroFX 3450, AJA Xena HS, Scsi320 raid 0. I also have a video toaster 3 with SX8 BOB for legacy stuff (I may upgrade to analogue AJA Xena card next year and toss the toaster -which, BTW, does handle/edit SD rez cineform media).

I did try to 'demo' a copy of Newteks SpeedEdit (looking for anything to replace PPro2), and it crashed repeatedly upon opening. Shame, I was interested in seeing how it would handle cineform media.

PPro3 is not without issues, nor is it complete, so even my observations could change with an update. I've just done very basic stuff; capture, cut and render (you know, things that crashed PPro2). So far, very good.

The titler within a cineform project is slow to open, but a little faster than with PPro2. Some transitions, such as push and cover, had verticle lines across the screen, but seem to have been addressed in latest plugin.

My recent issue is PPro3's lousy handling of large graphics. Old projects that were primarily still photo montages, etc. would open and then crash in PPro3. My latest, a single medium-size Jpeg is also crashed the app just scrubbing the timeline. I get the following:

AppName: adobe premiere pro.exe AppVer: 3.0.0.0
ModName: imagerenderer.dll
ModVer: 3.0.0.0 Offset: 0003215d

Somethings amiss with the imagerenderer.dll.

It's a cineform issue, I'm going to submit a bug.

Sounds like an Adobe issue to me. Please submit a CS3 bug. With the Playback settings panel, turn off the 32-float which my help avoid image scrubbing/rendering issues.

Yup, that was it. 32bit float off -no crashy (the safe margins are also behaving). Not an issue in PPro2 either. 32bit float works there. Definitely a PPro3 bug. (Bug was already submitted earlier, but I'll readdress in regards to small images and safe margins).

Now, on to that blue/red thing...

Thank you Peter, it is awesome have an outsider do these tests and report bugs to Adobe. Too many coming from CineForm might seem likely we are complaining about features customers don't need. However 32-bit float is the thing they can and need to do better than FCP.

I just did a quick test of red over blue; timeline vs. 422 vs 444. All I can say is holy &*%$!

When double checking my export to AE for FX earlier, I actually rendered with the 444 option enabled, and then back again! (Must of been on by default). Earlier I commented on how this back and forth looked identical to the original capture. No wonder! Granted, when blown up to 100%, you can see a slight difference between timeline and 444, but 422 is huge.

I've uploaded some screen captures into a zip file.

Tried uploading them, no luck. I have to go set up for a shoot, and will try uploading the screen captures tonight.

We all go a little used to 4:2:2 as it is so common, but render a few things in 4:4:4 and can really see why FX work needs the extra chroma resolution.

Scary to think of how many techniques I used to pull a key on 4:1:1 (or 4:2:0). In an earlier post you can see that I used an old roll of green paper for the backdrop. Full of creases and wrinkles, and I used only three lights. My point was to create an 'ok' screen and see how far I could go. Well, the default settings of keylight got it! One click of the eye dropper and bang, key was done! Using 4:2:2 clips I had to apply two keys and use some CC to burn the edges red.

I could have went back to the set and added or adjusted the lights a little and made for a better key, but this equates into less hassle fixing things and more creative time building FX.

Here's the tiff examples I promissed earlier:

http://download.yousendit.com/93408E2B4689696C

Need some opinions.

I'll be providing an m2t of my little experiment in about hour. Gotta put the kids to bed.

Ok, I finally have an m2t file of my little "test" project resulting from the 444 RGB encoding of the new P2K code. I imported the high-rez final into PPro2 and rendered out a standard m2t file. The link will take you to my filefront page, where you can view a low quality, improperly scaled flash file. Best you just download the m2t.

http://files.filefront.com/7404785

The actual media itself is not important, but what's possible with the cineform codec. A marked improvement. Despite the 32bit float issue for large graphics (turning the feature off is a temporary fix), I feel the performance thus far justifies the upgrade. I've completed three small projects (real work) since testing this application, and I'm very satisfied.

I don't work for cineform, and I've never met any of the cineform folks. I'm not on the payroll, or taking a commission. My comments are based on facts and actual work.

If I seem overly upbeat or happy about this software it's because... well, to borrow a quote that all Jeep enthusiasts can relate to (once you own a jeep, you won't own anything else): "It's a cineform thing, you wouldn't understand"

Morning folks. Today I'm starting on my first long form project using PPro3, which involves about 8-hours of HDV material from a weekend company soccer tournament. Not really a test, but a working job so quit is not an option (like it ever really was before).

We've all.. (well, I have) come to a conclusion that PPro2 is not the best option for long form, memory intensive projects. Any project that requires loading more than four-hours of media and/or 100 stills can spell certain death for the project. The only work around is chopping the project up into smaller pieces, rendering in chunks, then reassembling the final renders for yet another final render. Then, and only then, can we embark on the second well know journey of trying to make a decent quality DVD, (not enough beers in the case to cover that topic).

The end result is that one project can turn into many, and if you encounter a change or edit to the original material. It can be become an all-day event.

So, here goes... I'll post back in a few days.

I recommend that whatever you do with the stills, you do it in a separate project and export it into a new DV AVI.

Bring your HDV into a SD project and edit it all there along with the stills (as AVI)

That should help with your memory issues.

Yes. Such was the fix for my last big project. Had one tiff frame grab that I used as five second still. Everytime I encoutered that image, it would crash or hang (jpeg didn't work, resizing nada). I had to open a new project, import the still, render it as a five-second clip and replace that in the original project, (Thanks to optical mice, I no longer have the safety of a mouse pad when I slam my fist on the table).

Let's see if I have to tape up my hand this time.

Going well so far.

I've received my PCIe eSATA card and have stripped two 500GB esataII ata's into raid 0 for a 740Gig disk. Lot's of room to handle fragments. Using a disk test tool, I'm getting about 38megs/sec on the pair (vs. 50megs/sec on my 4disk scsi array).

I captured the first hour of tape three-times. Two times for comparative tests. Using HDLink at HDV 1440 spec medium, a second time in HDLink as scaled progressive to 1920 medium. The rescale and deinterlacing took 100% processing power, and 4x the amount of time to encode. While the HDV was RT on Quad-core, (or 1.5x on a dual xeon bottom end). I couldn't tell the difference on the monitor, so I decided to stick with HDV for cuts and edits, (saving time to deinterlace, etc. for the final render).

I had to create a custom cineform HDV (1440x1080i) project, as I don't have that with Prospect, everything is scaled up 1920. Since I shot this in HDV and intend straight cuts and very little FX, I'm keeping it HDV spec (and with 8-hours of material, I don't have three-days to scale/deinterlace).

I'm now capturing HDV material in CS3 without a hiccup, using 60% processing power.

I have seven more hours of media to capture, tommorrow might prove interesting.

Just a quickie - is the deinteralcing in HDLink motion sensitive or does it just basically blend the 2 fields, therefore pretty much halving the resolution.

Otherwise, can't think of why you'd bother converting your footage from 1.33 pixel aspect 1440x1080i HDV to 1920x1080p HD.

Better off deinterlacing on final render out of PPROCS3 using a decent deinterlacing plug-in that only deinterlaces areas of motion?

That's best answered by David. I've read that capturing progressive/deinterlaced makes for the best material when end result is going to DVD. It was just a test. I agree. Keep with the format shot for edits, and then only deinterlace, etc. for the final media.

BTW, tape two is capturing well. Scene detect is working, I'm using only 60% of the chips, allowing me to do other things (such as posting this message).

Prior to capture I did get one hang up and an error due to camera drive being in a "bad state" (I'm using my XHG1 as my HV10 'deck' is on loan). Restarting the camera fixed the issue and I was able to resume.

David, that reminds me, I can access the capture settings for cineform HDV via the main menu, under 'project'. However, I get the popup with the large cineform logo when trying to changes settings via the capture panel. Clicking the logo on the popup takes me to your web page where I can upgrade to Aspect and get better performance... how much faster is Aspect over Prospect? :)

Oh-oh, things just got interesting. I captured 2nd hour of footage, cineform post process indicated 2hrs required to encode. Should have been RT.
The encoder then quite mid-ways. The last 45minutes of footage wound up being a repeat of the same clip. Some twelve copies. Strange.

I deleted the data, including the encoded files and conforms and restarted the project. This time I did not multi task. Same deal, but with a different clip and the last 15minutes of the tape (11 copies of the same clip). Watching the performance monitor, I could easily and predict the downward spikes that indicated a encode of the same clip, with PPro3 faithfully conforming each as it arrived. Some kind of looping error. I did not have this issue with HDLink. (BTW, the folks at Adobe did mention that background rendering is not possible with CS3).

I'm now capturing again with HDLink, (I did not reboot, I want to see if somethings hung up with the cineform encoder in memory, or if it's with PPro3).

HDlink captured successfully, so it's not the tape/camera/pc, etc. It's PPro3.
I'll have to use HDlink going forward. (The clincher will be what happens when I import the footage into PPro3).

Tis a shame, background rendering would've been a real plus for CS3 :( - especially if I could've set up a render farm using my laptop and HTPC as render slaves...

I s'pose if you are going out straight to DVD, then deinterlacing using a resolution-dropping method won't really hurt the final product - but I always like to keep the fidelity of the project until the very last moment... ie. TMPGEnc going from CFHD avi to mpeg2.

Good news. So far I've imported 7 hours and 4 minutes of Medium quality HD into PPro3. Some 561 clips. Importing took about 5 minutes, with thirty minutes to conform. Some clips are only a few seconds, and a few cover an entire hour. Still PPro3 chugged along without missing a beat and comformed them all.

Just for kicks, I autosequenced all the clips to one timeline, apply a CF transition as the default. Playback with overlay enabled was adequate (there is a slight buffer/sync delay with the Nvidia card -a known issue).

Clip navigation, pan and zoom on the timelines was good. Disabling the header and tail clip icons (removing the need to redraw), and timeline navigation was RT.

I am able to scrub and playback the timeline without issue. Scrubbing was very responsive. Despite that the resources climbed near double of my last huge project (which was painful in PPro2), the application remains stable.

I've started trim the clips from the bin, and the trim window is very fluid.

Another thing I noticed is that when previewing clips in the trim window, and double-clicking another clip to view, I had this issue with PPro2, where the previous clips showing up briefly before the selected clip came into full view (as if the previous clips were stuck in memory). It's working normally.

Reloading the project took about three-minutes, however there were no issues.

I started rendering a CFHD off the timeline, and noticed that the render started immediately! No waiting, no hangs. The window pops up with frames flying!

Lastly, when using two monitors and having overlay. I would have to disable the overlay in order to use the second monitor, or close PPro down. Now I just select a different running app (placing PPro in the background) and the buffer overly is release, (so I can type this message).

Well, wanna hear the big kicker? I'm using my old Dell 650 dual Xeon, which is the bottom feeder recommended system for cineform. Wait till I start cutting this on the BOXX at work!

Want another kicker? I'm doing exactly the same thing on exactly the same system! Prospect + CS3 on an old Dell 650 dual Xeon (3Ghz) with a Matrox 750 card! Ha! And it's working...not fast, but working...(SCSI RAID with Cheetah's).

Too bad the 650's run on a weak 533MHz FSB!

Update:

Moving my soccer project to the BOXX quad opteron I got a little faster performance, and usage for edits and playback was about 50% (vs. 70% on the dual xeon).

In the name of speed, we've always tried to upgrade the cart, while ignoring the horses. The penalty for that has been stability. Make the cart too heavy and eventually the horses will stumble against the strain.

I don't write programs so I'm no expert, but from a working observation, it's obvious that Adobe has change the way memory is handled, and thus created a more stable application. That is, they now use more of it. With full resource utilization, the application has overcome some weaknesses that were evident in PPro2. However, this comes at a price: Image stills.

Load a single 3000px size image and the application practically grinds to halt. A work around, as mentioned on this forum, is to disable the 32bit float option in the playback controls. Still, that only improves scrubbing, and does little for rendering. Add some motion to that 3000px image and crash, crash while dragging or adding the keys mind you.

I and others have complained to Adobe about this (in regards to slow rendering as well.), Unfortunately folks at Adobe say they cannot reproduce the crashing issue and cite that it's a cineform problem. Furthermore, as of this morning, one of the Adobe's forum admins admitted that although this issue is of high importance, fixing the rendering times would only 'criple' other aspects of the program. Our only resolve is to reduce the image sizes down to 2000px or less, which BTW is good management for non-moving stills -but what if you have to PZR? Is 2000px enough creative freedom? Despite crashing, do you really want to put up with 30secs or rendertime for each 4secs of still image?

Don't entirely take my word for it. You'd have to test this out for yourself and on your own system. Also, this is just the beta or preview version, as the actual release version may differ.

My personal take is that for cuts and edits of video, a majority of what I do. PPro3 is more stable and has addressed some of my needs. For photo montages at HD resolution... well...

David, I can emagine that you and Adobe have been at odds over this.

Can you point out who is saying it is a CineForm issue? I have proven that you can crash CS3 in Decktop mode and a single large JPEG file -- nothing CineForm in that. I even had an internal engineer confirm it, so I haven't been following later threads. If they are still saying it is CineForm they need to do some more testing.

wow that may explain some BMP issues for me...

David, when did their engineer recognize that? (Maybe that's why they admitted a fix would not be available in CS3), and I've referring to past responses.
Just browse the site and you'll see several response about trying to repeat the problem X in a non-cineform project, etc. You can quickly judge the tone yourself.

Today Aanarav Sareen asked if anyone was having other issues using Aspect v5 and CS3. I explained to him about my having to use HDlink for ingest due to creating repeat clips via CS3. I asked that he should try this with an unlocked beta.

He responded that he would give it a try, however he wrote that he did not have a copy of Aspect v5! What tha? Why ask the question if you don't even have a copy of the er, uhm software to test with? I politely reminded him that a trial of P2k was available...

Read for yourself:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforu...&enterthread=y

one question:
Add a adobe title over a cineform clip and timespeed it,with some opacity...you hit an issue on after a couple of them CF dissolve cuts?

I'll give that a try.

Still title, time remapped and some opacity, over cineform clip with two dissolves. The processors spike 100% and things stutter. What are you getting?

Same plus mem errors

So, I downloaded the vegas 7.0 trial... what? C'mon, work with me will ya?

I then loaded two identical 2500px size images into both Vegas and PPro3, add a simple transition and render the 10 second timeline to CFHD high quality, with 444 nicety. Both apps rendered their respective timelines in one minute. (So, render speed is not an issue. If I want something faster, I'd have to get a faster PC. However, stability is the issue). But something is different between the two. Vegas is using only 35% of the processors until it hits the dissolve, uses 100%, then back to 35%. Vegas also uses 1.02GB of RAM. PPro3 is using 75%, hits the trans, 100%, things stutter on the PC, goes back to 75% after the transition. It's using 1.75GB RAM. Then it gives me a low memory warning error. What's the problem? PPro3 is dipping into virtual memory? While Vegas is staying well below the 2.0GB ram. (I have 3GB ram, but not switched).

Hmmm.

Talking about Vegas (sorry guys!) - but I just HAD to try this...

Exported an AAF file for my 85 min movie from PPRO CS3 project (40hrs, 1TB of CFHD avi footage - thousands of cuts, plenty of effects applied).

Imported into Vegas... and it kinda worked!! Very surprised - I haven't done any testing - it looks like a mess... but Vegas projects look messy at the best of times to a Premiere user ;)

I 'might' be tempted to finish the video edit on Premiere and then AAF it over to Vegas for the 5.1 audio edit - as an old Sony Acid user, I much prefer their handling of audio to Adobe's.