Well as soon as we can reproduce it, it sounds very fixable.

1080p or 720p with Prospect
 

Hi David,

I finished shooting my short film and I'm getting ready to convert all of my m2t clips (720p @ 24fps) into Cineform AVI's.

I have a couple of questions for you. I ultimately want to be able to lay my final cut out to HD tape. If I wanted to go the 1080p route, am I better off upconverting my m2t's to 1920X1080 24p AVI's before I edit, or making the conversion after I edit? I know that my titles will look softer if I convert after the edit, but if I saved the title creation until after I've upconverted my final cut, would it matter?

Or should I just output a 720p master to tape? I don't want to upconvert just to upconvert if it's going to soften my image dramatically - I'd rather stay in the native resolution if that's the case.

Do you have any thoughts on the upcoversion issue? Is the upcoversion option in HDLink better, or the same as the one in Premiere Pro 2.0? Do you think my footage will look too soft if I do upconvert? Obviously I want to maintain the highest quality.

And, if I decided to lay out a 720p project to tape, which deck would you recommend, so that I maintain the high quality of my 10-Bit Cineform files?

Thanks,

Geoff Murillo

Lot will depend on the work you are planning after you have mastered out. Is in going to film? There are likely better resizing for a film blow-up than either HDLink or Premiere Pro can provide, that said the availble resizers are still nice in both cases (HDLink may have the edge.) The image will not loose detail through this resize, yet it may look softer to have an 720 image in 1080p frame (this is normal), so you will likely add sharpening filters during the post to compensate. The 1080p encode will have even more compressed headroom, yet the files will be bigger -- that is the only trade-off. So if you system is faster enough do the resize on capture. Plus there are more quality export deck options for 1080p then 720p, either D5 or HDCAM-SR (best) are good choices for 1080p24 exports.

It's settled. I'm going to go with the 1920X1080 conversion in HDLink.

Thank You David,

-Geoff

ProspectHD, AE and Vegas
 

Hopefully this can be done.

Capture PC with AJA LHe, ProspectHD and AE for effects stuff.
Do initial post/color correction work, sfx, blah, blah
Render out to eSata drives using Cineform IC.

then...
Connect drives to another PC with Vegas 6 ConnectHD, blah blah....

Capture PC will be connecting to HD100 and capturing at 8bit 4:2:2 to keep things workable in Vegas (at least for the time being).

Is the above scenario plausible?
Is there a better setup using Cineforum software to do this?

Need different machines because one will be doing finishing and surround stuff, while the other is capturing or doing sfx processing.

I'm not ready to consider Premier Pro at this time.

Yes that will work. Only issue is if you have any 1920x1080 content, as that can only be decoded within Vegas not encoded (unless you install Prospect HD on you Vegas PC.)

No, it will be 720p, at least thats the plan for now.

Thanks for the response

Prospect HD
 

Hi

I am thinking of using Prospect HD for simple direct to disk recording in a small pc with Xena. Just a couple of questions:

(1) What would the minimum pc spec look like for this application. No editing involved just straight recording. (Capturing component) Will any of the ITX boards be suitable?

(2) Recording 1280x720 50p 4:2:2 would a single hard disk of any variety be suitable or would I need a raid? (Prospect HD)

(3) Are there any other programs available for recording to disk using Prospect HD or is it just Premier Pro 2? I don't really want to buy a full NLE to do this if possible.

(4) How would I then use the video captured with Prospect HD on a Mac?

Many thanks!

Trevor

You'd need a high-end PC with PPro:
http://www.cineform.com/products/ProspectHDConfig.htm

I'm not a Mac user, so not sure what PC formats that FCP can import and edit natively.

Trevor,

1) the minimum system spec for real-time compression (not simple) is a Pentium D 840EE, 955 is better, and now that Conroe is released that is the recommended small form-factor part. There is a good change a high-end Merom (new Core 2 Duo mobile CPU) will also be up to the task, we need more testing on this.

2) For capture you will not need a RAID, 720p50 at 10-bit will average under 20MB/s.

3) We have only integrated a capture unity into Premiere Pro. However other others have built there own capture tools like Wafian. Maybe you are needing a Wafian unit?

4) Mac support is very close. We will soon allow you to capture directly into a CineForm MOV file for direct support on Mac or PC.

Hi David

Thanks for this. A Waifan would be good if it wasn't so expensive!

Is it possible (Speaking from real ignorance here!) to have small program written to interact with Xena and Prospect HD. Something that would just have the basic functions necessary for DDR?

Thanks

Trevor

If you're going to bypass Premiere, and have Xena and CineForm Prospect components talking to each other directly, you're really looking at a false economy.

Essentially you'd need to hire a very very competent DirectShow coder who has oodles of video experience. I would imagine that this will cost more than Premiere Pro.

If your sources are HD-SDI or component based, the Xena-Premiere-Prospect combo is the most cost efficient way of going about things if you are building your own PC.

I am intrigued about your ITX suggestion from a personal standpoint. Do you have any motherboards in mind?

Thanks Richard

I didn't have any particular ITX board in mind, just checking out the options.

Trevor

Prospect HD v Sheer video
 

Hi

Does anyone know what the difference between Prospect HD and Sheer Video? There is a lot of difference in price! But what else?

Thanks

Trevor

One is codec, one is post production solution. Sheer is a good archive codec, but doesn't solve much for completing your post-production (particularly under Premiere Pro.) Prospect HD comes with a post-production ready codec, but that is only one element in an integrated suite of tools. To date I believe Prospect HD is the only 10-bit compressed post solution for the Adobe Production Suite -- and it is real time.

Cineform Prospect and AJA 2K
 

Will Cineform be updating Prospect to support the new AJA 2K capture card?

I know Prospect already supports the LH, LHe and HS AJA cards but the greater range of features on the new card seem to provide some future proofing for higher end capture (4:4:4 dual link and 2K)

At some point we are likely to add Xena 2K to the supported cards list. No annoucements at this time.

Prospect HD is good, any updates I should get?
 

Hey David, enjoying our Prospect HD, been cutting lots of stuff with it, and the HDLink ROCKS, us it all the time with the hvx

DO I need any updates to HDLink or Prospect HD? I want to keep with the latest builds..;)

Also, I have noted some jaggy edges on the resize of 720p from the hvx to 1280x720 in HDLink, if I shoot 1080p and downsize to 720p in HDLink I don't see the jaggy edges...Could you find a solution for a higher quality resize from the native 960x720 to the 1280x720?

scratch the last post, I jsut read your blog about 1080p vs. 720p hvx recording, thanks!

We have a fix for the 720p to 180p HXV upres in the next build of Prospect HD. Looks really nice now, although like my blog states you don't benefit much posting HXV footage at 1080p. We are still a couple builds before will will do a mass email to all Prospect HD users and get everyone upgraded.

Prospect HD Enhancement - Support Sony HVR-V1U HDMI-->HD SDI w/3:2 Pulldown Removal
 

Prospect HD Enhancement - Support Sony HVR-V1U HDMI-->HD SDI w/3:2 pulldown removal

For a background, Sony is introducing the first TRUE 24p camcorder under 10,000 (Panasonic and Canon cameras use interlaced CCDs). I am interested in purchasing a Sony HVR-V1U HDV camcorder when it comes out.

However, I am interested in capturing video directly from the HDMI port rather than compressed HDV video from the Firewire port. Convergent Designs makes an HDMI to HD-SDI converter just for this purpose that would output HD SDI directly to a Aja Xena card.

Problem

Sony captures progressive full-resolution 1920x1080, 24p, 10 bit 4:2:2 color data, but I believe they output it to HDMI with 3:2 pulldown so the converter would be sending output in 1080 60i rather than 24p to the HD-SDI output.

In your Aspect and Prospect HD pages you mention support for special Sony HDV Cineframe CF24 and CF30 modes. However, as you mention in your Aspect HD discussion, your conversion method from 60i to 24p is adquate but loses resolution and that there are better 60i to 24p solutions out there.

This new camcorder does not use Sony's HDV CINEFRAME CF24 output like the older Z1U, A1U, or FX1. This is HDMI full-resolution, uncompressed 1920x1080, 1080 60i, 10 bit 4:2:2 color output, and Sony embeds their 24p in the 60i stream with 3:2 pulldown. Prospect would need to be able to remove the 3:2 pulldown and restore the actual 24p material without the loss of resolution. I'm sure that it would require figuring out how the Sony HVR-V1U stored the information on the fly, to restore the original 24p material.

This may take an investment on your part but since Sony will no doubt introduce other camcorders with 24p and 3:2 pulldown to the HDMI port, the investment would surely be worth it.

Black Magic is introducing the Intensity for $249.00, http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity, an HDMI board that captures uncompressed full 1920x1080 4:2:2 10 bit output. If you supported this card directly in Aspect and Prospect HD, with 3:2 pulldown, this would be the ultimate LOW COST solution.

This may also be the ticket for Cineform to enter the Mac world supporting the Mac Pro too!

I hope you plan to support this card, but if you don't, then the HDMI to HD-SDI converter would be my second choice.

I would then be interested in the Convergent Design HD-Connect MI, HDMI to HD-SDI converter. Info is available at: http://www.convergent-design.com/CD_...DConnectMI.htm

This converter could feed the AJA Xena card directly. If you could perform your 3:2 pulldown removal magic with Prospect HD, this would probably be a killer 10 bit combination.

Thanks.

We already support 60i to 24p extraction without any resolution loss over HDSDI in real-time, so you are good to go with Prospect HD Ingest and an AJA HDSDI I/O card. Within the capture interface you select 1920x1080i60 10-bit HDSDI, add the capture option to remove the 3-2 pulldown auotmatically. We are looking into the new Black Magic HDMI card as a capture device, yet AJA will still be our primary all-purpose HDSDI card.

Thanks for your rapid response. I realize that HDSDI will always be your primary card, but I would guess that HDMI acquisition will probably end up as the acquisition method of choice for all under $3000 serious AVCHD and HDV camcorder users, whether Cineform chooses to participate or not. Afterall, Sony has HDMI on 3 low cost HD camcorders now with more to follow. I'm sure JVC, Canon, Pana etc. will follow suit in future HD camcorders.

I would also guess that HDMI will be more important to Aspect HD users than Prospect HD users. However the market has a way of changing rapidly while you're not looking.

I'm glad to hear that you are looking at HDMI capture. I think it would be good for your company. That's just my opinion.

I will be purchasing Prospect HD as soon as I have had a chance to test the new Sony HVR-V1U with an eval version of the Convergent HDMI converter and the trial version of Prospect HD in the real world.

I have high hopes for this combination with Prospect HD for our new film.

Thanks again, Dave.

Wow, I was just going to ask that question.

Let me add one...is there an HDMI I/O card for laptops???

If so...the Sony to Cineform via HDMI may become a new standard :)

Since AJA doesn't have plans for an HDMI interface, BlackMagic HDMI support would be necessary. At $250, dramatically lowers the price of acquistion; especially coupled with a $4800 camcorder.

Prospect HD & Firestore Fs-100
 

I am having a problem converting mxf. files from my Firestore via HDLink, I can convert the video fine, but I am unable to convert the audio as well.
Any ideas on why this is?
Also when converting I was always able to get the log to come up, now it has disapeared on me and I cannot get it to load with HDLink, (the 'log' button does nothing)

Certainly fine a trouble ticket at cineform.com/support. Also check the you have an "AUDIO" directory in your "CONENTS" folder.

HDMI to CINEFORM
 

I am sure that the same revolutionary thinking that went into the development of cineform will lead to its usage with HDMI technology.
I am confident that cineform will reach the mass market of indie film producers.One of such routes will definitely be by closer integration with cheaper HDMI.

Prospect HD new release Status
 

David, wonder what the latest status for the next release is?

Thanks

Dave

We went out a email blast to registered Prospect HD users for the latest version a week or two ago. I'll send you that information.

Cool, just sent you an email back. I never saw this email. Could someone make sure I am registered correctly. Thanks

Dave

Congratulations on Cineform Prospect 4k
 

David Taylor and David Newman,

I just watched the Quad Demo Video - Congratulations on the Real Time 4K support.

Anyone who wants to download the video should go to the Cineform home page and click on the link on the right hand side, under the 11/14/06 4K Real Time announcement.

Congratulations on the XBox announcement too.

-Geoff Murillo

Thanks, it has been a busy few months.

The presentation is pretty staggering and a real testament to the n-way threading technology. It's also a tantalising look at tomorrow's technology and workflow, today. Plus nice to put some names to faces :)

Out of curiosity, if the uncompressed workflow requires 1.7GB per second bandwidth, how much is this reduced by using the CineForm codec? What sort of benchmark do you get with the CineForm decoder on this system up against the benchmarks on your "four cores the merrier" blog entry? And what kind of HDD array is required to service this workflow?

For my own applications, 1080p/60 will be the next 'big thing'. Could a single Kentsfield take care of that in High Quality/Progressive?

The Xbox announcement is absolutely fascinating. I'm wondering what technology you had to develop there - I'm assuming the bulk of the Wafian's work is in ingesting 1080i/60 over HD-SDI and rescaling to 720p/24 on the fly?

"Out of curiosity, if the uncompressed workflow requires 1.7GB per second bandwidth, how much is this reduced by using the CineForm codec? What sort of benchmark do you get with the CineForm decoder on this system up against the benchmarks on your "four cores the merrier" blog entry? And what kind of HDD array is required to service this workflow?"

Think 1.7GB/s is based on RGB DPX files at 4096 x2048 x6 bytes per pixel at 36 fps (the max of the Dalsa camera.) 24p would be 1.2GB/s, and we are fine 10-bit LOG Bayer compresses to around 30MB/s -- remember RAW Bayer is a third of the source data than demosaiced RGB. A single stream is decodering around 40fps on 2.4GHz dual proc quad core (8 cores total.) We have been recommending a 3 drive RAID 0.

"For my own applications, 1080p/60 will be the next 'big thing'. Could a single Kentsfield take care of that in High Quality/Progressive?"

I expect it might for the fastest system, but we haven't tested that yet.

"The Xbox announcement is absolutely fascinating. I'm wondering what technology you had to develop there - I'm assuming the bulk of the Wafian's work is in ingesting 1080i/60 over HD-SDI and rescaling to 720p/24 on the fly?"

The work was split pretty evenly between Wafian and CineForm. The HR-1 uses a few of other video processing filters for pulldown extraction and scaling. However the scaling wasn't done on ingest.

Prospect HD 2.2 capture scene detect issue?
 

Okay, got over the bug with PPro locking up. So, now I am trying to import my HDV tapes. These were taken with a Sony Z1 and HC1. So, I put a tape in, clip scene detect, and hit tape. So it scene detect captures correctly for about 7 minutes. Then nothing. I have tried over and over again, and even though I see the scenes changing, no changing of the name for the capture.
So, what is scene detect triggering off of? Could the Z1 and HC1 do different things to the tape. (I dont know which camera I used on what parts of the tape.) I have also had things lock up and seems like the only way to get things to work is to reboot. Not sure whats going on here, pretty random.

So, any thoughts on scene detect?

Thanks

Dave

I haven't heard of anything in this area. Please file a ticket. In the meantime you could try HDLink just in case there is a new bug -- although not much code has change in capture.

prospectHD fails to decode in premiere pro2
 

hello

this week I downloaded and installed the prospectHD trial and have a problem with premiere pro2 after processing some videos with virtualdub.

I'm not an expert just beginning, said that, I like to process videos with virtualdub aplying filters before editing with premiere. After some testing the problem basically is, saving a video with virtualdub selecting the cineform codec, if the video is equal or less than 1440x1080 the video is decoded correctly in ppro2, but if its bigger, 1920x1080 all I get in premiere pro2 is a black video or even a nice green lines. The problem only happens in premiere, in all other software the 1920x1080 videos are decoded correctly (including after effects), may be I'm doing something wrong

I've been using other codecs like alparysoft or huffyouv and work fine at 1920x1080.



regards

As Prospect HD is designed for 1920x1080 images it seems you have made a misstep. Never mix Aspect HD and Prospect HD installs as Aspect HD is only licenced to encode 1440x1080 images (so unintall Aspect HD before install Prosect HD.) To confirm a bug hasn't kept in, I download the trial of Prospect HD Edit, encoded a 1920x1080p23.976 with VirtualDub and it worked fine in Premiere Pro. So make sure your Prospect HD installed correctly and that you have a CineForm folder within the Adobe plug-ins directory : C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0\Plug-ins\en_US\CineForm. The plugin module that adds decoding support for 10-bit and 32-bit float I/O CineForm files is called im-CFHD_File_Import.prm. If either the whole directory or im-CFHD_File_Import.prm is missing, then you need to reinstall Prospect HD.