Still Need to Convert to Cineform Intermediate AVI?

[Ian Lim]

For m2t footage real-time monitoring and editing in Vegas 6.0a, do I still need to convert .m2t to Cineform Intermediate AVI? I'm recently using AMD Dual Core 4200+ 2.2ghz, DDR 2 gigs, HIS Excalibur X800 XT 256mb for editing. Rendering process is also very slow, compared to my old Pentium HT 3.4ghz. Awful. Can anybody tell me what's wrong? Thanks!

Ian

[David Newman]

It is not clear to me what you are describing. Are your conversion times slow using HDLink (which they shouldn't be on a dual core) or are talking about rendering within Vegas?

[Ian Lim]

David, it is rendering within Vegas =)

[David Newman]

Yes, Vegas rendering is about four times slower then converting using Connect HD's HDLink tool. When you use HDLink it will make use of your multiple cores (or hyperthreading on P4) for very fast conversion (or direct capture conversion.) I think you find Connect HD worth the investment. Download the trial from www.cineform.com

[Ron Evans]

Ian, I also have a 4200+ with 2G DDR RAM using a Gigabyte Ultra 9 motherboard, ASUS X700 PCIe video card, 80G boot, 200G and two 160G SATA and an external 120G. On a recent 57 min HDV it took 72 mins to convert with HDLink. Canopus takes about the same time to convert to the Canopus HQ intermediate too. I tried capture with Premiere which takes about the same time too ( conversion carries on for about 10 mins after the tape has completed). Clearly the 4200+ is not up to realtime conversion!!!!
A question for David . What is the best configuration of hard drives for capture and conversion? HDlink seems to read and write to the same hard drive, does it use a temp file somewhere too? Can HDlink be made to use different hard drives for source and target ( and temp?)

Ron Evans

[David Newman]

Originally Posted by Ron Evans

I tried capture with Premiere which takes about the same time too ( conversion carries on for about 10 mins after the tape has completed). Clearly the 4200+ is not up to realtime conversion!!!!

Yes, but it is very close. Wait only an additional ten minutes for an hour long capture, rather than a separate conversion pass of 70+ minutes is a huge gain. Seems like the AMD dual core 4200+ is get about a 1.2 : 1 converstion versus a fast single core doing about 1.5 : 1 for 30i (note: 25Hz capture will be 20% faster i.e. 1:1 on the dual core -- I have experienced this with a Pentium D system capturing CineFrame 25.)

Regarding the drive usage questions, this is not big factor in conversion performance (although a de-fragmented drive is a good idea.) HDLink does temporally read/write the M2T data (low bandwidth) before it writes out the CineForm AVI.

[Ron Evans]

Thanks David.
The drive issue was of interest in that the m2t data ( in my example) of around 10 mins must be stored on some hard drive. I assume the process is to capture m2t to hard drive( boot drive?) and then convert from there to the destination drive. HDlink only specifies the target drive or in the case of a conversion the file source drive. I am sure that in both these cases being able to specify temp drive, source and destination would yield performance or at least a convenience improvement( I had to copy source m2t file to a drive with more space before converting).
As to speed for the X2 I am happy at the moment. I am trying to arrange for a SD output from a single HDV input so am interested in the overall time to edit multi crop for HDV and then output to MPEG2 for DVD. Editing HDV reminds me of early days in NLE editors, lots of things to manage and lots of time rendering. Coming from a realtime Canopus system for DV I can't wait for technology to give us realtime HDV!!!

Ron Evans

[David Newman]

Yes, for convience it would be a good feature to add, but as I pointed out earlier we haven't found it to be a performance factor. Also most of users convert to CineForm AVI immediately upon capture, eliminating the need for any additional steps. As for real-time HDV we pretty close now, real-time capture (on fast systems), real-time editing (on average systems -- with Aspect HD), the only element that isn't yet real-time with HDV is HD encoding for export (WM9 and MPEG2 are slow to create.) HD RT encoding solution do exist, there just not very affordable yet, but that won't take too long.