You could be in luck. Generally people use the HXV200 in 720p24 or 25 (with over/under-cranking for effects as needed.) 720p24/25 is particularly easy that many under-spec'd PCs will work fine. I suggest down the CineForm trial, and test the performance on your PC for yourself.

Possible ways to postpone new laptop purchase
 

Ryan,

Looking at your specs, your memory could probably do with an upgrade to 1Gig. This will give any app. plenty of room to play in.

Also, laptops have slow hard disks: 4200rpm is the norm. I have purchased an external eSATA unit and put 2 x 250Gbyte 7200rpm SATA disks in RAID 0 array into it (500Gigs). Currently I am accessing this via USB2 interface but eventually when motherboards and laptops support it will be able to use that interface. All my Media now goes on this portable unit so I have decoupled my media from my PC with a very fast interface.

Another thing to try are Gearshift from VASST (uses smaller rendered temporay files in place of the larger .avis)


Nick.

Xena HS PCI? or PCI-X?
 

I can't seem to nail down the specifics on this card, some list it as a PCI card, some a PCI-x.

Does anyone know if this card will do HD on a regular PCI motherboard?

I'm starting to believe I'll have to upgrade to a system with PCIe, but if I can put that off for a bit that would be great.

John, I just went to the AJA site and noticed they are not good about identifying the bus requirements for their cards. But the Xena-HS requires a 64-bit PCI-X slot. PCI-X is generally available on workstation-class PCs, but not all, so you'll have to check your machine. If you don't have a 64-bit PCI-X slot then you can use the Xena-LHe which works in a 16-bit (I think) PCIe slot. That card is more expensive than the -HS because it includes component HD I/O in addition to HD-SDI.

If you also purchase Prospect HD we can supply either card, and we have bundle pricing for both the -HS and -LH(e) family.

yeah, looks like I'm going to have to upgrade my system to go either route. No PCIe or PCI-x

Funny? It was fast enough a year ago :-)

Moore's law sucks.

Yeah but it wasn't too long ago that the entry price point for HD post work was $100K!

Your words offer little comfort to my credit card. :-)

Some Ingest Questions
 

1. Is there a credit for the ingest if you previously purchased PropectHD edit?

2. When do you select the Xena LHe over the Xena HS?

3. Which is the correct card to use with the HD100/200/250, HVX200, XL-H1 and new Canon A1?

4. When, if ever, is a RAID configuration needed? Are modern 300GB 7200rpm (or if necessary 10k) disks fast enough?

5. Is a single Core 2 processor sufficient? If only a single disk and processor are necessary, could injest be done with a $1500 PC?

Thanks,

David

1. Yes. Your upgrade charge is the current difference between Ingest and Edit products.

2. LHE is PCI-e and HS is PCI-X, so often the choice is made for you. If you have an older PCI-X-only workstation there is also the LH (no e). The LH or LHe cards have analog I/O, which is worth the extra expense for most users.

3. All work fine. However for any of the non-HDSDI cameras the LH/LHe cards allow you to do direct analog capture, and bypass the camera's own compressed. For the HD100 that will also get you 60p slowmotion.

4. Sure it is fast enough for most applications, however for those extreme multi-stream moments the RAID can come in handy. That said I recently upgraded two 120GB drives in RAID-0 with a single 320GB SATA drive, and it is keeping up.

5. If you are talking Conroe base Core 2 Duo then YES! Those machines blaze. We have tested a 2.66GHz dual core Conroe (Dell 390) and it could handle everything we could throw at it.

Hd Sdi
 

Hi

Anyone know if you would need a raid with Prospect HD when capturing HD-SDI from a Canon HL H1?

Thanks again

Trevor

A RAID is not needed, only recommended. The direct output form the Canon's HDSDI feed can average over 25MBytes in highest quality mode -- modern single SATA drives can handle this.

Question About Component Ingest
 

If a camera is outputting a progressive output on 1080i, how is that captured? That is, is it captured as progressive output?

The question is about component output of 1080p24 output from a Canon or Panasonic HVX. While the H1 and G1 also have HD-SDI, the A1 only has component output. The HVX also has an option of 720p, however the Canons (and Sonys) don't.

Thanks,

David

No HDV/P2 camera truely outputs progressive over 1080i (HDSDI or analog.) They all apply pulldown to place 24 frames over 60i fields. We detect and extract this pulldown so the original 24p signal is all that is captured.

Thanks...boy was that quick...

Short follow up: is component ingest much better than converting the HDV m2t file?

Thanks again,

David

Yes, it less compressed if you capture the data live, better for greenscreen work. However, as for "much better" that depends on your needs.

Video Graphics Card
 

Hello,

I'm building a new system to edit HDV using Premiere and Cineform. I bought a Matrox APVe card in ebay, but apparently it's not working, and I cannot do anything about it, the warranty has expired :( The only thig I can do is to buy a new card (this time not an used one) Is the Matrox APVe the only option that can display full HD video via component output?

Regards

It is a preferred card but there are others.

Thanks a lot for your quick response. Can you recommend me another one. It's hard for me to get another APVe in Mexico. Nvidia and ATI cards are easy to get. Maybe something by those brands?

Thanks.

NVidia FX540 is the other popular one, however is a longer startup (from scrubbing to playback) delay than the Matrox card, that is why we perfer the AVPe.

HDMI to Cineform?
 

With the advent of Blackmagic's HDMI input card for $250, I was wondering whether a system configured with such a card could record to the Cineform codec. While I personally wouldn't benefit as the FX1 has no HDMI output, it's certainly an interesting idea.

-Steve

Already onto that one. Yes, real-time CineForm compression from HMDI.

I have to admit that I saw the specs for the card and I was absolutely astonished. Blackmagic are looking to redefine the HD capture market - they could have sold the card for double the price and it would still have shifted in large volume. Official CineForm support for it would be a godsend.

As we'd be looking at realtime 10-bit 4:2:2 capture, would this be an addition to Prospect HD? If so, you're welcome to my upgrade dollars.

HD-SDI preview as passthrough
 

David, received my LMD Monitor, but not my HD-SDI input board. While waiting for that, I tried seeing if I could run the HD-SDI preview signal (via Xena HS) to the Canon G1 and passthrough to the LMD's component. No luck, my guess is that the canon's HD-SDI port is output only.

Correct, the HDSDI on Canon is output only.

Thanks. I'll have to use overlay via one of the graphic card heads then. There's a PC RGB port on the LMD.

Buying new workstation for Cineform.... any suggestions?
 

With the arrival in a few days of my firstborn daughter, I have invested much in a Sony HDR-HC3 camera and then another $500 for HD Aspect. But now my computer is just having major problems. The translating of the mp2 to Cineform codec crashes my computer routinely. Now it is even starting to crash in other video rendering applications.

So, I am ready to spend even more money and buy a new computer workstation about six months before I had planned to, and I would LOVE to benefit from the experience of those out there using Premiere Pro and HD Aspect together. I was thinking one of the $2,000 or so Alienware systems.

A few questions: Is it worth it to upgrade to 7,200 up to 10,000 rpm on the hard disk running the operating system and applications?

Is there any specific video card that works better with HD Aspect than others? I was thinking of going with the Standard NVIDIA GeForce7900 GS?

How about for cpus the Intel Core 2 Extreme or the AMD Athlon 64 X2? I would think the former rather than the latter, as the dual core threading would offer benefits, no?

I know many of us want to stay with Windows XP rather than beta test Vista for Microsoft, but would it not be a good idea in the long run to move over to Vista and be ready for two years down the road? When they develop software for it? Go with Vista, as it seems to be the standard in computers sold now?

I am a passionate and fairly knowledgeable amateur and will shoot and HD video in the evenings. I don’t need an external monitor or a RAID or anything that fancy (and expensive).

And I would like to spend around $2,200… and ideas? I already own all the relevant software.

I thank you very much in advance.

Sorry to hear that your PC is unwell, but congrats on the daughter (I bought my HC1 for the same reason.)

My recommendations : Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66GHz, 2-4GB, a 7200RPM drive for system, 2 x 7200 RPM drives in RAID-0 for your media, most modern graphics card are fine as Aspect HD doesn't need them for acceleration, stick with XP for now.

Congratulations! I picked up an HC1 for my new son as well. Just last night my 15 year old son was nagging about why his videos were recorded on VHS, and that his younger brother gets hi-def :)