Cineform Prospect HD
 

Just back from NAB. Curious there's no comment on Cineform's new product - Prospect HD. I suppose since David is a moderator here he may feel announcing it himself would be tooting his own horn?

had quite a few conversations with the Cineform people. Prospect is, for now, only sold with a BOXX turnkey computer - ie 23k. In time, Prospect will probably be sold as stand alone solution. Here's a few things it can do:

1. Capture HD-SDI 10 bit uncompressed (up to 1920 x 1080i/p)and convert ON THE FLY to Carlsbad codec. This actually means a BOXX-type computer isn't necessary. All that's necessary is a motherboard with dual opturon (or fast dual xeons), PCI-X, AJA HD-SDI card and a 7200 speed hard drive. This... is very cool.

2. Edit 10 bit material. (again, up to 1920 x 1080i/p). Currently they recommend a dual opturon computer. Sounds like dual Xeon with 800 speed memory would work as well. (my dual xeon has 533 speed memory).

3. Export to HD-SDI

4. Edits 3 streams at 1080p! or 4 at 720p!!

Don't know when it will be available as stand alone product but that's the direction i'm going when it becomes available.

Why? Because "affordable" HD (not HDV) is going to be available sooner than you think. (and anyway, those new JVC and SONY HDV cams won't be available until next year)

If you're curious about a reasonably priced (22k) High def camera (i don't mean HDV), check out the SONY POV camera which is supposed to start shipping in June or July. That's 22k INCLUDING the lens. Puts out 10 bit 4:2:2 signal. NO monitor. From what i saw of it on a HD monitor, it performs very very well.

Also saw a prototype of Jeff Kreine's Kinetta which could also be pretty sweet, albeit 2 to 3 times the price of the SONY POV and fairly questionable shipping date.

What does HD-SDI have to do with HDV ?
Isn't HDV already crushed to 8 bits anyway, so the 10 bits would not get you any more color correction latitude? Or is there a color space translation issue I'm not thinking of?
-Les

You're right. 10 bit uncompressed 4:2:2 (HD-SDI) has nothing to do with HDV.

But if you're thinking of spending 20k on the next JVC HDV cam plus 5-20k on a lens, i'm just suggesting there are other solutions which make more sense.

True, HD-SDI and HDV are different issues and really should to be discussed seqparately. However, due to the lack of a more suitable location, much of the discussions here already goes beyond editing transform streams. Just as Aspect HD is considered an HDV product, even when it doesn't edit transport streams. Prospect HD is an HDV product also, as it includes all the Features of Aspect HD but adds 10bit processing, HD-SDI capture and output etc.

The subject of 8bit vs 10bit is not an issue of latitude. e.g. HDCAM is recorded in 8bit yet its latitude is far greater than the JVC camera. Linear 10bit workflows add precision over 8 bit workflows -- levels between the levels. 8bit processing can result in visible color banding (or contouring) that can occur during color correction or other filters. Higher-end systems use 10bit processing (or deeper) to prevent this digital artifact. 10bit intermediates help prevent this even when using 8bit sources.

Prospect HD -- various questions
 

Hi David,

How much is prospect HD?

Thanks

Hello,

I moved your inquiry to a new thread.

Prospect HD was previously sold through BOXX Technologies only, that has very recently changed so that other integrators may sell Prospect HD systems. ProMAX is the lastest licensed Prospect HD integrator. There is while be others so expect to see a good range of prices based on system features. Expect complete system pricing between $12k and $20k.

CineForm is also planning a lite direct sales version of Prospect HD to enable work group systems to edit in 10bit with HDSDI I/O. This will also appeal to film makers who can use 10bit color correction, from sources other than HDSDI, such as HDV and film scans. Price has not been announced.

Thanks David

Prospect with Dual-Core AMDs
 

Hi David,

Would two dual-core AMDs with their lower clock speeds (2.2ghz being the fastest) perform as well as two AMD Opteron 252s with Cineform Prospect for any HD need?

-Geoff

Yes. The dual core options are cool. Prospect HD will have the ability to thread cross the number of CPU present, although it currently defaults to 2 CPUs, we have tried threading to 4 on dual core with excellent results. We did this for the AMD keynote at NAB. We will have a dual core aware version of Prospect HD soon.

Hey David, in the insane rendertimes thread I mentioned spreading the workload across multiple processors, and you said it wouldn't help much in terms of render speed due to cache size and the nature of HD. But here you say that the cineform folks are working on multiprocessor version. Now I'm confused. This will help in what way? (Don't get me wrong. I'm already hooked on the prospect HD. -In fact I been speaking with Dana at Promax).

Yeh. Two different issues. For our own compression technology we do mult- processing work to real-time encoding and multiple stream decoding. For renders to HDV you are dealing with third party MPEG encodes and Premiere's rendering engine -- the threading is out of our control. The caching limits still kick in, as main memory speed does not increase with dual-core -- bascially it is complex.

Makes enough sense to me. More processors, more RT in edits. (Benefits of staying with the cineform engine vs. PPro native). I'm sold.

Pete

Questions regarding Aspect and Prospect...
 

First, a few simple questions....

Can Aspect HD capture regular standard definition DV over firewire and convert it to the Cineform Intermediate codec for editing? Can Prospect?

Does Prospect work just as well with the Matrox APVe as Aspect (dual monitors plus high def out)?

What kind of bandwidth does Prospect require for the different HD formats?

Is it safe to assume that Prospect can ingest anything that comes over an SDI interface such as Betacam SX or DVCPRO50?

Are there any future plans from Cineform to support component inputs for use with betacam SP, or is that considered an out of date format?

Is the quality of the Cineform Intermediate codec really just as good as editing real uncompressed 10 bit HD?

Thanks,

Eddie

> Can Aspect HD capture regular standard definition DV over firewire and convert it to the Cineform Intermediate codec for editing? Can Prospect?

No. DV stays as DV in both systems -- you can convert to CFHD as needed but we don't do that automatically -- you can combine DV and CFHD on the same timeline.

> Does Prospect work just as well with the Matrox APVe as Aspect (dual monitors plus high def out)?

Yes.

> What kind of bandwidth does Prospect require for the different HD formats?

Approximate averages. Codec is constant quality so the bit-rate will vary as needed.

1920x1080 10bit 24p = 14MB/s
1920x1080 10bit 30p/60i = 17MB/s
1280x720 10bit 60p = 15MB/s


> Is it safe to assume that Prospect can ingest anything that comes over an SDI interface such as Betacam SX or DVCPRO50?

Not yet. Prospect HD is an HD not SD product. We will be added SD shortly now that we have dual mode HDSDI hardware.

> Are there any future plans from Cineform to support component inputs for use with betacam SP, or is that considered an out of date format?

We are adding SD support, so if analog I/O comes available via the Xena cards we will support it (currently SDI only.)

> Is the quality of the Cineform Intermediate codec really just as good as editing real uncompressed 10 bit HD?

In 99.9% of practical workflows, yes! Remember we introduce far fewer artifacts than the camera's own compression technology (i.e. HDCAM and Varicam) so uncompressed really gains you very little. Whereas our compressed workflow safe you disk space, simplifies RAIDs, allows for network/SAN HD post, and real-time multistream HD editing.

Thanks for the quick reply. It's good to know standard definition support is on its way. Hopefully its not too far away, since we know that the XENA HS card already supports standard definition SDI.


>> Can Aspect HD capture regular standard definition DV over firewire and convert it to the Cineform Intermediate codec for editing? Can Prospect?

>>>No. DV stays as DV in both systems -- you can convert to CFHD as needed but we don't do that automatically -- you can combine DV and CFHD on the same timeline.

I find this interesting, since I'm sure standard dv could definitely benefit from the CFHD codec.

I guess I'm just an all in one box kind of guy. I long for a system that can handle anything a client walked in the door with, without switching to different editing bays.

Eddie