I too do not have the C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\CS4\MediaCore directory in my Vista 64 HP SP1 setup. Each program has its own directory (as per Steve Montoto's list) with a sub Plug-ins folder. I have Adobe Master Collection CS4 - don't know if that makes difference to the way the folders are set-up during installation.

Is CS4 That Useful to You?
 

I must admit that I impulsively responded to Adobe's Marketing Blitz, and purchased CS4 Production Premium early on, expecting (hoping) that the forewarned problems in coming up with a Cineform solution would be shortly forthcoming. I installed CS4, and then uninstalled it, and am again using CS3,with Prospect 4k. I find Cineform absolutely indispensable for archiving and for downrezzing (albeit still a mess) to 720x480. For the time being, CS4 will just sit on a shelf! Do those of you with installed CS4 and the issues in this thread really see a substantive benefit to jumping through these hoops to use CS4?

Yup. Mine was the same way. I just had the Creative Suite though.

Is it possible that the "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\CS4\MediaCore" folder is a left over from CS3?

Those that have this folder, did you originally have CS3 and upgrade to CS4?
Or was CS4 the only thing you installed?

The new media encoder was a big selling point for me. I looked forward to being able to render to multiple formats, using multiple projects via the queue. However, my real world tests, not even using Cineform, show that it is so much slower than CS3 that it negates any benefits that I was hoping for. I cannot fathom how this program is so slow in comparison to CS3. I have a friend who swears by Vegas and I have to admit, it consistently get's better, version after version and only appears to get faster too! Premiere
seems to add features (few at athat) get slower or at best stay the same. I would have been happy if it stayed the same. But at this point it is a waste for me.

I did a clean install of Production Suite CS4 on Vista 64 and "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\CS4\MediaCore" was there.

Marty, I was using CS4 and went back on CS3 until Cineform gets CS4 working.

Encodeing times. I did a test and found that the encoding times are almost exactly the the same. The only time CS4 was slower was if you select "maximize rendering" option. Then it was WAAAAYYYY slower, but did product better quality when downsizing from HD to say 720x480 dvd.

I took a 60 second 1440x1080i HDV clip and exported as follows:

CS3 to BluRay 70 Sec
CS4 to BluRay 65 Sec

CS3 to DVD 41 Sec
CS4 to DVD 44 Sec

CS3 to iPod 86 Sec
CS4 to iPod 58 Sec

I have a quad-Core2 2.83ghz, 4GB Ram, Vista x64. I read and wrote the files to the same dedicated drive.

Format.............MPEG2-DVD
Multiplexer........None
Video Size........720x480
Video Bitrate....CBR-7mb
Video Quality....4.6
Audio................PCM

Format.............MPEG2-BluRay
Multiplexer........None
Video Size........1440x1080
Video Bitrate....CBR-35mb
Video Quality....4.6
Audio................PCM

Format............H.264
Input...............Crop 4x3
Output............Scale to Fit
Multiplexer.......iPod
Video Size........640x480
Video Bitrate....VBR 1pass 1.3 to 1.5
Video Quality....N/A
Audio................AAC 128

Where do you access the maximize rendering option? Hopefully mine is checked on and that is what is causing this horrible rendering performance.

Edit: Nevermind.....I found this and it is not checked. Why am I seeing such long render times?

Well I ran additional tests similar to yours and I still get a disparity, but not as great as before. I loaded a 30 second HDV 1080/24P clip in the timeline. Added the brightness and contrast effect and increased the contrast to +10. I first built a preview which took about 1 minute. Then I exported it using the CS4 media encoder to Blu-ray mpg2 1440x1080 at 15mbps CBR. This took 1:30 for a 30second clip

Repeat the exact same process in CS3 and I got the preview to build in :58 seconds....about on par, but the encode to Blu-ray mpg2 1440x1080 took 1 minute also. So it is 30 seconds faster on a 30 second clip....or about 33%.

So a full 10 minute projects would take about 20 minutes in CS3 and about 30 minutes in CS4. Keep in mind, this is the best I have seen it....there is usually a much bogger gap between them.

I'll keep pluggin away. Thanks.

I'm probably missing the obvious, but without the RT engine I can't think of any reason to do my upgrade for either PPro or Prospect. I've got CS4 sitting quietly on the shelf and I upgraded to Prospect within the right time frame, so I'll get the Prospect for CS4 upgrade at some point, but until Prospect and CS4, via updates, are both ready for prime time, I'll stick with CS3 and the final build of the last Prospect.

That's where I'm at as well Adam.

Marty- I'm curious what OS you re using, and how much RAM you have.
One reviewer who was very enthustiastic about the performance of CS4 AME was using Vista 64 with 16 GB RAM. He was pretty emphatic that it takes 64 bit + mega RAM to get the advertised performance.
Since I am just on the cusp of upgrading to CS4 and a new system, reports like yours are key info for me.
Thanks

intel quadcore 3.2ghz
4gb ram
Windows xp 32bit
Geforce gtx 260 with 896mb ram

Wish I had CS3 to test since I'm running an 2.6GHz i7 processor over clocked to 3.2GHz with 16GB of memory and a Nvidia 260 graphics card. I'm getting pretty decent speeds. Not to mention all 4 cores (8 threads) get pegged at 100% usage when exporting from Premiere into AME. So the machine is cranking.

Yeah- That's what I'm planning for CS4: Intel i7, Vista 64, 12-16 GB RAM.
That is encouraging news Brant.
Some of you may be interested to read the article about CS4 & Vista 64:
http://blogs.adobe.com/genesisprojec...ucts.html#more
I always thought that 32 bit apps like Pro CS4 could only access 2 GB of RAM no matter what the OS, but this article insists that with Vista 64, both Pro and AE can access up to 4 GB per CORE- so, quad core = 16 GB for Pro CS4.
That would be a very big deal, if it's really true.

I am in the process of updating my XP box to dual boot to Vista 64. As soon as I get it up and running, I will update you on any performance increases I see in CS4 encoding. I have my doubts that it will speed up a single video clip sitting on the CS4 timeline, but I will try it. There are too many other advantages to Vista 64 running multiple apps so the timing is right.

This blog was written by one of the developers of MS Flight Simulator (RIP) and it explains the IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE flag that allows 32 bit programs to use up to 4GB RAM in Vista x64 and up to 2 GB in 32 bit Windows:

PTaylor's WebLog : FSX and Win32 Process Address Space

Actually, After Effects CS3 also used more than 2GB of RAM by spawning multiple copies of itself.

Below is a listing of the exe file header flags for Premiere CS4 and it indeed can use > 2GB per running copy.

Just fyi, we get good results on our 32bit XP Pro workstation with CS3, using the "/3G /Userva=2560" switches in the boot.ini. Helps the mem probs a bit, without pushing too close to the limit.

Our 64bit XP workstations don't need any help...with CS3 or CS4.

These are all quadcores with only 4 GB RAM. So far, so good. If when CF finally gets things going with the CS4 versions of Prospect HD, we'll probably discover that more mem is better too. But for now, we're doing okay with 4 GB...for now...for now...

Well, I was so happy that I could finally import the converted files... so I tried the new neoscene to convert all my new canon 5D II videos... it stopped after five...
Now It doesn't work anymore... the same error I got other times with the old versions. It works one time and then the program gets corrupted.
But CS4 works fine now with the cineform files (the few I managed to convert).

Curious how you got 16GB on your i7 platform. What's your memory configuration. Did you abandon triple channel?

Ok So the outstanding problems that i'm still facing with Neoscene and CS4 are

1) In Premiere, you cant import files bigger than 4gb in size. It truncates the video. This has been identified by Cf support , but Im stuck now since the past week waiting for an update to the situation

2) All of a sudden video thumbnails have dissapeared in Adobe Bridge for Neoscene Avi file. Previously they were showingup. No amount of purging cache etc is solving it. (Still not a major drawback as compared to point 1)

My setup is a Laptop HP HDX Quad core, Seagate e-satat, Vista 64bit, 4 gb ram. 1 gb Nvidia 9000 series card.

With this setup can't yet play two HD video tracks in realtime at 50% opacity and no other effects.
They do play back however at draft quality on Premier timeline.

I guess need more power under the hood and raid? even with the otherwise excellent CF codec to play two tracks of video in realtime?

Really? Is this true? Are you sure your HDD isn't FAT32? I've never heard of this (which of course means nothing...). Big files are no problem in CS3; is this a CS4 bug?

I have not tried to import CF files > 4G in PP CS4 but I just imported a 16GB DV file with no problems.

I mistyped. I have 12GB which is the max on the ASUS P6T Deluxe board.

Yes unfortunately its true. It's been confirmed by CF support on a ticket.
They working on it. I;m just depressed as I'm delayed a week now and it's the first time im working with CF (since some source material of mine is in ACVHD).
I think its a bug in the background CF importer routie for cs4. Playing teh same file in windows media player etc works just fine.

CF codec without doubt is THE method for working with AVCHD.
and no, My drives are not FAT 32 heheh :-)
I'm going to get a Mini-G raid soon, so hopefully will see if that makes a difference to letting me play at least 2 streams of HD sized CF encoded video, with 50% opacity in realtime at full res.

Regards

The speed of the importer is mostly Adobe, not CineForm, as it Prospect HD we can play 3X the number layers. This has always been the case. CineForm can't fix Adobe's native playback mode, only replace some of the parts that don't work so well with a custom play module (not yet for CS4.) The CS4 importer is not designed for speed, although it is pretty fast, the multi-layer laying engine in Adobe has always been slow. The Prospect accelerator is coming to CS4, just other projects and NAB are taking priority.

Basically I'm describing way people use Prospect HD over NEO HD in Premiere CS2/3, the same will be true for CS4.

I just installed CS4 today, and am curious about what method is used to import the files into PPro CS4. Is a specific preset used (e.g., HDV)? I find that I have problems opening up existing CF projects in CS4 (CS4 just crashes), after having placed the the DLL and PRM in the specified locations...also, I don't see Cineform as one of the supported import options.

Thanks,
Matt

Presets will come later. For now we are focusing on the importer. You can create your own sequence presets however. Use 'Desktop' for the Editing Mode, and since the CineForm Codec is not available in the Preview File Format option, just use 'I-Frame Only MPEG'. Make all the other settings match your source footage and then save the preset.

OK. So how bad have I screwed things up? I had to uninstall Prospect and reinstall for CS3 and forgot and when it installed all the plugins and setup went into CS4 instead of CS3! How can I fix this? Can I uninstall and somehow force the next install to go to CS3 instead? There must be some way to fix this without removing CS4.

Thanks in advance.

New beta
 

Here is an update to the beta (yes it updates the old link.)

http://miscdata.com/cineform/CFHD_CS4_importer.zip

Still a vanilla importer with no installer.
It contains:
CFHDDecoder.dll
CFHD_AVI_Importer.prm
CFHD_MOV_Importer.prm

Added:
* An MOV importer for PC users accessing CineForm files created on a Mac.

Fixes:
* No more issues with long files.
* Wouldn't import all CineForm AVIs.
* Various stability fixes.

The DLL must be installed in you execution path, if you don't know which directories are in this path, use c:\windows\system32. DO REMEMBER where you put it as it will need to be deleted before installing any official CS4 supporting installers, just in case. You have been warned.

The PRM filex goes in
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\CS4\MediaCore
or
C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\CS4\MediaCore

Remove any our *CFHD*.prm file you might find.

Then start up PPro CS4.

We need the file as the memory leak is not happening here and for others. Use yousendit.com and send the file with these issues to support.

> 4gb import solved
 

I can confirm that for me, using the new Neoscene importer in Premiere Cs4 on vista 64 system, th entire file is now importing proper on the timeline.
(previously it was getting truncated to around 18 seconds if the clip size was bigger than 4 gb).

Many thanks for this fix and CF support.



P.s I was reading somewhere about something about Cineform 3d? or am i just a bit confused about some other subject?
If not, is there something in the pipleine for Stereosocpic 3d support?

Clyde,

Thanks for the report of another sucessful fix.

Off Topic (not for discussion in this thread): Our way cool Stereo/3D annoucements are coming in about a week -- in the meantime we a wooing the Hollywood crowd with tech previews.

Maybe this will help with issues with the mediacore folder not being present. I had the folder and then it disappeared. I had installed Magic Bullet, thinking it was going to my CS3 install. Because CS4 took over, the magic bullet plugins went to CS4 and were in the CS4 mediacore folder. I uninstalled magic bullet and the CS4 mediacore folder was gone. Upon reinstalling it is back. Apparently the reg key that points to your plugins created it automatically if it is not there.

Not sure why it would disappear but it did. Perhaps installing a plugin into CS4 will create it for those of you who don't have it there by default.

Good Luck.

The only problem is that I have zero plugins, and it wasn't there in the first place.

I also don't have the C:\Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\CS4\MediaCore. I don't even have a Common folder. This is a fresh install on WinXP. I do have Magic Bullet and Trapcode plugins installed for AE, but none for Premiere. Is it better to create the folders or to put the prm file into the individual plugin folders for Premiere, AE, and Encore?

Files import audio only
 

OK, so I tried making the C:\Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\CS4\MediaCore folder and put the prm file in it. But when I import a Cineform file I get an AVI with audio only. I then cut and pasted the prm file into the plugins folder of Premiere and AE with the same result in both. I'm using the latest importer files that were posted. Suggestions?

Same thing for me, I only get the audio from the file. Installed the latest beta following the instructions.

Seems to play back OK on Vista64
 

Ok, I'm building a new computer, and part of that includes CS4 (i7, 12GB memory, GeForce 9600GT). Quite an upgrade from PPro 1.5.x! Anyhow, after installing PPro 1.5.x and Prospect on the new computer (I *still* need to edit CF projects, y'know), I converted an M2T using HDLink, and that fairly flew. Then I put the CFHDDecoder.dll in C:\Windows\system32 (I tried SysWOW64 first, but that's not in the PATH for some reason...), and the PRM files where they go.

The file plays back smoothly without rendering. I'm playing back off the system drive, because I don't have my other drives/raid moved over yet, and it still looked good. This is just desktop playback, of course, because now I'm splitting my two monitors between the two computers. Not sure if that makes a difference.

Good flow, good sound. Wish it worked as well on my old computer (AMD opteron x2 with 3GB and CS4).

Thanks,
Matt

If you can swing it, may I suggest you ditch the 9600 graphics card for the new Nvidia 275 GTX (I'm not sure if they have been released yet). Otherwise the 260 would be another good choice. Thats what I'm using.

Quote: If you can swing it, may I suggest you ditch the 9600 graphics card for the new Nvidia 275 GTX

Why, if you don't mind my asking?