Mac / PC Workflow
 

Hi,

I'm in the market for a new laptop.

I'm using Adobe on the PC, but was thinking about possibly getting a MacBook Pro.

I'm going to be shooting with my Z1U and my new Sony EX1 once it's delivered.

Just wondering if I should even consider this AND if it would work, how would/could this work with Cineform Prospect?

Or, should I just stick to a PC Laptop.

If you use BootCamp Prospect HD will work fine.

James, as an option, PC wise, Dell now has some very nice laptops that have built in blu-ray writers.....

That setup with cineform and the EX would be a nice combo.........

Any new info on native file support for Sony EX1?
 

Just wondering where that is on your list of things to add?

Thanks,

Jim

Oh yes! We are working on direct *.mp4 conversion within HDlink to CineForm AVI or MOV. We have made progress, so fingers crossed that it will arrive soon after the camera does.

Some folks who are waiting on the camera claim that the first batch of
EX1 cameras have been delivered this week...

They are now being told they may get their cams in the second batch...

EX1 mp4 support Prospect HD
 

Is Cineform Prospect HD supporting mp4 wrap from the sony EX1?
or When?
if not, are there other solutions for converting mp4 into avi?




Thanks

H

Not yet, but "soon"....

To expand, we are already handing the video stream (in house) and now dealing with the various audio options. So very soon.

And is the intention still to have these converted to avi in HDLink prior to editing?

Yes of course, the issues of native MPEG2 editing have not gone away, so the CineForm workflow is to convert to very high quality editing format.

Do we have a rough release date for this? (for Prospect)

many thanks
paul

I've just finished reading through this entire thread. Doesn't look like there have been any posts in a while. I just got my XDCAM EX camera and a new workstation running CS3. I'm very interested in editing footage from this camera on the workstation and so I've started looking at Prospect HD.

I've never had any dealing with Cineform before. Let me say, as a new, prospective customer of their product how frustrating it is to try to ask them a simple question. I went to their web site. There is no phone number to contact them. The only method by which to ask them any presales questions is to submit a support incident. To do this you have to fill out a lengthy form with drop downs for things such as cpu type which (in the instance of cpu's) doesn't even give the option to list a quad core xeon. When you then try to submit your sales question after disguising it as a tech support question it won't let you because it wants you to "list the steps to reproduce the problem."

All I can say is they must have a miracle product to offer such limited options for asking questions by a potential new customer.

My question, having already been asked here but not answered anytime recently, is this...

Can Prospect HD take the .mp4 files of the XDCAM EX directly from the SxS cards and spit out the Cineform .avi's? I read here that it can take the .mfx files that are exported from the Sony clip browser software however as another user pointed out those are reduced to 1440x1080 and so I'm losing my nice, native 1920x1080 files. That alone is a deal breaker.

Travis, you just haven't looked hard enough at our crazy web site. We don't have the time to fix the web-site, but we will happily offer software in exchange for some web work. :)

The telephone number is under the "About CineForm" tab on the left, here is the direct link: http://www.cineform.com/about/default.htm. We are not hiding it, but all the pages contain too much information so people can miss it.

To you question: yes we will support .mp4 directly and enable conversion to .avi within the HDLink utility (included in all our products), with fingers crossed, this could be released by the end of next week.

Thanks, I should have known to look there but just didn't see it. I assume that when it is released that a trial will be available for download just as trials of existing cineform products are? Would you be so kind as to post here when it is released so I can take a look at it?

The DVInfo.net CineForm forum we typically post for every new version. But I would also recommend subscribing to the CineForm News RSS feed here: http://www.cineform.com/CineFormNews.xml

Any news on Cineform for the Sony PMW-EX1 support with NEO HDLINK?

EX1 support will be in all versions of CineForm's HDLink.

Sorry David, I meant to ask if you had an idea when it might be available?

Read a page back on this thread. We are close.

Sony XCDAM-EX support in beta (v3.2.2)
 

It is another weekend, and time to try out a new version of CineForm's tools.

Here are some of the key changes in verion 3.2.2:

Added: Sony XDCAM-EX *.mp4 support to HDLink. This will support all the new cameras shooting modes. i.e. support for all the 1920x1080 35mbs, and all the audio modes.
Added: Count offset for HDLink split scene naming
Added: Improved cross-platform decoder threading.
Added: global controls over RAW metadata.
Fixed: Support on quad core systems for some old clips was broken.
Changed: "Force YUV" now defaults to on as too many cards couldn't support RGB overlays.


Only Prospect HD and NEO HD for now, as these where to first two off the build system. Also these level products are most suitable for testing for EX users.

Links:
Prospect HD http://www.cineform.com/downloads/Pr...147-071214.zip
NEO HD http://www.cineform.com/downloads/NE...147-071214.zip

Update--more Links:
Prospect 2K: http://www.cineform.com/downloads/Pr...147-071214.zip
Prospect 4K: http://www.cineform.com/downloads/Pr...147-071214.zip
NEO 2K: http://www.cineform.com/downloads/NE...147-071214.zip
NEO 4K: http://www.cineform.com/downloads/NE...147-071214.zip
Aspect HD: http://www.cineform.com/downloads/As...100-071214.zip
NEO HDV: http://www.cineform.com/downloads/NE...147-071214.zip

P.S. If other products are completed this weekend, I will try and post them.

Thank you David !

Can NEO HD be used within Sony Vegas 8 ( using Sony EX1 1920x1080 35mb files), or is NEO HDV only supported?

At 9pm PST I uploaded these again, if you got them earlier, please download again as the first upload was missing a component.

Yes Steven - no problem.

Hi David,

Forgive me if my question is inappropriate for this forum or has been answered previously (I did a search but came up empty handed and, well, 41 pages of posts can be a bit daunting). The EX1 represents my first foray into HD, so consider me a novice in this regard (although I've been doing SD for over 25 years). My system is a fairly recent HP xw8400 running Adobe CS3.

After pouring over your website many times, I still don't grasp a real-world differentiation between Prospect HD and Neo HD. Is Neo HD generally real-time with only one stream? And "CineForm AVI/MOV render output" and "32-bit floating-point processing" with Prospect HD...as opposed to what with Neo HD? I could go on, but I think you get the idea :). Yes, I see the comparison checklist on your website, but what does it all mean to me as an editor?

Thanks for your help. I'm looking forward to working with 21st century technology!

Bill

What is the best workflow now to capture from EX1 to Prospect HD live (before camera's mpeg compression)?

Bill, rarely are Q's inappropriate. If we suffer from one characteristic on our site it is too much information. For those new to what we do it is sometimes hard to find simple answers. We have to work on that.

The answer to your basic question is simple. Neo HD and Prospect HD are identical with one difference. Prospect HD includes the real-time video engine for Premiere Pro. If Premiere Pro is part of your workflow (Windows) then you want Prospect HD. For all other Windows apps (Vegas, AE (without PPro), Combustion, etc) you want Neo HD. Hopefully that tidbit is helpful....

Wow, that was simple. That one significant little tidbit somehow escaped me. Thanks!

Bill

More beta testing please.

Here are the beta versions for more of our products

Prospect 2K: http://www.cineform.com/downloads/Pr...147-071214.zip
Prospect 4K: http://www.cineform.com/downloads/Pr...147-071214.zip
NEO 2K: http://www.cineform.com/downloads/NE...147-071214.zip
NEO 4K: http://www.cineform.com/downloads/NE...147-071214.zip
Aspect HD: http://www.cineform.com/downloads/As...100-071214.zip

NEO HDV is still building.

NEO HDV 3.2.2. is up.

NEO HDV: http://www.cineform.com/downloads/NE...147-071214.zip

No Prospect HD beta? (((((( sorryyyyyyyyyy...didn't see the links below....))))))

Thought I'd post my feedback about how Prospect HD is handling the footage.

Pros:
1. The conversion from mp4 to avi is lightning fast - extremely impressive.
2. HD Link is a fantastic little program - way, way better than the software provided with the EX1.

Cons:
1. The clip thumbnail (which is generally the first frame of footage) looks extremely weird. I've attached a thumbnail of what it looks like because it's too hard to explain.
2. This weird effect also appears in the preview window of the timeline. Scrubbing and even playing the footage in CS3 is extremely slow and delayed, with interruptions of the footage appearing as per the attached screenshot when the cursor isn't moving.
3. Using the footage in Magic Bullet is no good because the screenshot it takes to manipulate in the standalone application is the strange reversed weird version as per the screenshot.
4. Rendering out the effect from Magic Bullet results in the entire footage being rendered out weirdly and looking like this screenshot.

INFO: I've tested this on my desktop with CS3 in XP Pro 32bit and on my sister's laptop with Vista Home Premium 32bit and got the same results.

I can confirm that Magic Bullet is not doing this to any footage other than the Cineform footage.

Hope this helps,

-- John.

David,
There's still conficting info regarding whether the Sony PMW-EX1 is utilizing 10 bit via SDI, or it may be 8 bit in the 10 bit word. I believe you've stated it was 8 bit.

The latest info states it's using the full 10 bit word.
Having said that, using Sony Vegas 8 with NEO HD, will this combo be able to make use of the 10-bit I/O?
If it does, expect an immediate update from my NEO HDV to NEO HD.

Sony EX1 and NEO HD
 

There's still conficting info regarding whether the Sony PMW-EX1 is utilizing 10 bit via SDI, or it may be 8 bit in the 10 bit word. I believe you've stated it was 8 bit.

The latest info states it's using the full 10 bit word.
Having said that, using Sony Vegas 8 with NEO HD, will this combo be able to make use of the 10-bit I/O?

IF the EX1 was outputing true 10bit via SDI, and you captured LIVE via SDI through BMD or AJA, THEN you should have true 10bit color. I doubt the EX1 has true ten bit color at all, but it is possible, and would be a very nice feature, if someone could confirm that.

If anyone is in San Diego with an EX, it will only take 5 minutes to confirm. For those more remote, all we need an AJA or Blackmagic user to capture a live short 'v210' sequence, i.e. 10-bit YUV clip. If the bottom two bits of each component are zeros (or unchanging), it is 8-bit. Send me a file, I only need a few frames.

Good to see that the MP4 conversion for the EX1 is working. Was HDLink ever able to convert the MXF conversions from Sony's utility? I only get a green frame when attempting that, and the resolution is reset to 1440.

Both errors have been fixed and a new version of Prospect HD and NEO HD should be completed within an hour. I'll post new links when they are ready.

Prospect HD and NEO HD build are up with fixes for 1920 MXFs files and weird thumbnail and exports for progressively encoded frames.

Prospect HD: http://www.cineform.com/downloads/Pr...148-071217.zip
NEO HD: http://www.cineform.com/downloads/NE...148-071217.zip

I have just updated and the weird thumbnail thingy is gone.

Now I'm noticing a distinct difference in brightness in my preview between what it looks like when paused and when I press play.

It's as if the footage brightens considerably as soon as I press play, then, after pressing stop, it reverts to its original colour (playback quality settings are always set to high, though I tested it on Draft as well and the issue still occurs). There is also an approximately one second pause between when I press play and when the timeline starts to play.

Also, the more I play with Prospect, the more I wish I'd had this earlier! I guess I now know what all the fuss is about!