Yes my initial question was in reference to exporting CFHD from the timeline to a CFHD file using adobe media encoder. My setup is a little old; Dual dualcore AMD Opteron 270's and 4GB of RAM, but 10 minutes for 1 minute of footage seems awfully slow to me.

Roger, when you say realtime, do you mean that 1 minute of timeline footage takes 1 minute to render out to a CFHD file?

I did not mean render previews on the Timeline, i mean File > Export > Media to render out the Timeline to a master file.

Thats great! :)

Yes, thats what i mean.

I'm going to install Win7 x64 and see if that improves anything. I feel like my render times are wayy too slow. I certainly wasn't getting this kind of performance on CS3.

Its probably just CS4. I am using Windows 7 x64 and AME says it will take 7 hours to export a 20 min CFHD file.

Bring CS5 NOW!

Yea--I went back to CS3 and render times dropped to about 3 minutes for 1 minute of footage, on my laptop. Avoiding CS4 like swine flu. What a waste of money.

Oh my god, maybe its because I've never had any training on CS4 but ticking "Use Preview files" and ticked "max render" its dropped my export time for 6-8 hours to 30 mins (est)

Should I have always ticked Use Preview Files?

No harm using Preview files if CineForm is your preview codec, designed for multigeneration.

Sorry for the stupid sounding question but how do I know if CineForm is my preview codec?

David.... go to Sequence Settings. Under the General tab at the bottom, you should find Video Previews, and a pull down window offers Format and Codec selections.

Thanks Marty,

In there I have ii-frame Only which is selected

or Microsoft AVI.

I've got NeoHD installed and using CS4.

David... I'm with ProspectHD, and in a Cineform based project, my Video Preview format is Cineform AVI, with the Codec selected and greyed out as Cineform HD Codec.

Is your project a Cineform based one, or are you attempted to utilize Cineform as your preview format within a project of a differing format?

That was within a already started project. So I started a new poject and I still only have the 2 options.

Here is the guide I followed to setup CS4 http://techblog.cineform.com/?p=1230

Am I meant to have any CineForm presets for CS4? And are they meant to be in NeoHD product? Am I missing something?

David,

It wasn't until well into CS4's lifetime that Prospect offered Cineform Presets. I am not familiar with how Neo dealt with CS4 integration.

Just to be clear, when you start a project, you have no Cineform presets available to you?

I don't know how energetic you want to pursue this, but you could try a trial install of ProspectHD. You would then have those Cineform preset options and could see how your exports are affected by the presence of Cineform preview encoding.

Part of the parameters of an Editing Mode Preset is the apparently the Preview format. I never gave it much thought. My options for Previews included MPEG so I just went with that, never anticipating the actual use of those Preview files for inclusion in an output.

It's curious that when you opt to include the preview files in your export, it seems to have a positive impact even though those preview files are not a Cineform based file?

Correct - I've created my own.

I have free time so downloading now and will see what the difference is.

Without ticking that box my exports; no word of a lie were 6-8 hours! Ticking use preview files dropped it to 30-35mins. Although it seems its using MPEG files rather than CineForms codec.

I will be upgrading to NeoHD V5 as soon as its released.

I wonder if your export times would continue to be improved if you deleted your preview files prior to export, but keep the "use preview files" option ticked. I can't imagine how a Cineform encoded export would benefit from preview files that weren't also Cineform encoded.

I'm curious as to what you find out... please keep us posted.