Cineform Prospect or Aspect?
 

Hi,

I am gearing up to shoot a low-budget feature. I own a 3.73 Extreme Edition Pentium 4 with 2GB of Ram. I will be getting a Sony HVR-Z1U soon for the project. I plan to shoot in 60i, capture with Cineform, convert to 24p with DVFilm Maker and edit in Premiere Pro.

I've read on the Cineform site that they suggest their 10-Bit Cineform Prospect for HDV projects that require substantial compositing or color correction where your workflow requires multiple rendering stages. My project will have some visual effects and I plan on doing color correction with Color Finesse, so this seems like the right fit for me.

I would like to have the greatest image quality available in case I am lucky enough to land distribution and need to film-out.

Cineform currently bundles Prospect with Adobe Software, but I already own all of the Adobe Products (Premiere Pro, After Effects, Encore, Audition and Photoshop). Is there any way that I can purchase Prospect by itself?

And... Will my Processor and RAM support a Cineform Prospect workflow? (I can still add 2 more GB of RAM to my motherboard if needed)

Or, am I going overboard with Prospect and should I just buy Cineform Aspect?

Again, this movie will be low-budget -- I'm trying to save money anywhere that I can. But with this said, I would still be willing to pay more money for Prospect if I knew that I would have the greatest opportunity to preserve image quality throughout post production.

Any comments would be appreciated. I’d like to make an informed decision.

Thanks,

Geoff Murillo

Hi Geoff,

The distinction between AHD and PHD for your purposes with HDV source material will be primarily 8-bit versus 10-bit. Yes, we do recommend for some HDV productions with substantial compositing being used that you consider PHD. But we don't want to imply that AE compositing with Aspect HD doesn't result in excellent quality. We have many customers doing lots of AE work with Aspect HD with super results, including an exceptional music video shot a week ago with a number of AE segments that we're showing in the Sony booth here at NAB. My suggestion first of all is that you experiment with the trial version of AHD. It includes the import/export components for AE.

David.

Upgrading to Prospect HD
 

David,

I am interested to migrate from Aspect HD to Prospect HD. I was one of the first to bought Aspect HD when it was available for Premiere 6.5, and I paid $1,000 for it! How much credit I will receive from you for this kind of migration? Using it with Adobe Video Collection Pro, and with HD100 footage, what kind of hardware specifications do you recommend?

Thanks,

Luis Otero

We can definitely offer some credit from your previous CineForm purchase. Note: you will be the best deal if you actually contact sales directly, I can't promise numbers publicly. ;)

For Prospect HD with the HD100U, are you planning direct capture from the camera's HD component outputs (at 720p60) or will you need to capture 1080p24/60i etc. For these real-time capture needs you should follow the system recommendation (listed here http://www.cineform.com/products/ProspectHDConfig.htm) which is an AMD dual Opteron workstation. If you only need HDV capture or 720p24 capture, a more moderate system will work fine.

I emailed David Taylor, and made my proposal after he ofered something...

Tahnks for your help,

Luis

To David Newman
 

So what you are saying is that with Prospect HD and the proper computer hardware I can capture from the JVC HD100 component outputs the full 720p60 signal, have it encoded in real time at a selectible bit rate (such as 35 megabits per secound) using MPEG-2 encoding software (which may or may not be included with Prospect HD) and then I can burn 30 minutes of this footage to a dual layer Data DVD for mass distribution playable on Windows XP computers with the appropriate minimum system requirements with a choice of playback at full 720p60 quality for the high end computers and 720p30 quality for the entry level computers? And I am assuming that m2t files encoded at any selectable bit rate will play on the VLC player from videolan.org

Tommy, Prospect HD is not a MPEG encoder, that wouldn't really be all that useful as a software HD MPEG encoders would look pretty bad. Prospect HD is a real-time HD wavelet encoder for post-production; bypassing MPEG compression for much higher quality masters and post-production. PHD also encoder at the full HD 4:2:2 resolution (unlike the MPEG HDV 4:2:0 and the lower sampling resooution of DVCPRO-HD at 3:1.5:1.5) and up to 10-bits per channel precision (vs 8-bit in the other solutions.)

You can read more about Prospect HD here : http://www.cineform.com/products/ProspectHD.htm

David,

For us that bet on your software since day one (Premiere 6.5), the oferred credit that I received from Mr. Taylor seems to me way off of what Cineform should be ofering to the client base that supported you since the beginning. I am really disappointed... I love Cineform and will not change it for anithing else, but those type of "corporate" decisions are the ones that separate the good companies from the excellent companies. Hopefully your growth is not changing the great company culture that has permeated through your customer service and your interaction with the users in this kind of forums.

Respectfully,

Luis Otero

I don't think you are being quite fair. We I hope that users of our products gain much value from that use; and it sounds like you have. We have continue to offer free upgrades for which the early users have gain the most benefit. I think the deal offered was really good, like upgrading a 5 year old Toyota for a Lexus, but your trade-in is valued as if were the 2006 model. I hope you will consider it.

David,

You are presenting a different perspective that is making me think that it was a good deal. My appologies if in any way you felt offended; that was not my intention. Rather, I was expressing my point of view as a loyal customer. Again, accept my appologies.

Regards,

Luis

CineForm Aspect HD vs Prospect HD
 

I just purchased a new Canon XHA1 and am now looking at updating my workflow. I see that a lot of users use the CineForm products, but I'm not sure which product I should be looking at.

I do post work in Adobe Premier Pro, but like the export capabilities of Sony Vegas better. So, since I'm working with both of these NLE's, I think I should be looking at Aspect HD or Prospect HD.

Based on the fact that I'll be using a Canon XH A1, which CineForm product should I get?

AspectHD should suit your needs fine. ProspectHD is for serious 2K editing and such, and is much more expensive than ProspectHD...

I think? I don't see why AspectHD shouldn't work for you.

Aspect HD will work fine. Prospect HD is targeted to anyone using HDSDI for capture and timeline monitoring, is it a little more high-end than Aspect HD, but still suitable for HDV shooters, particularly those make a living in video production (you guys need SDI.) Prospect 2K is targeted to filmmakers with the new 4:4:4 codec and resolutions up to 2048x2048 (with source data up to 4K+ x 4k+.)

Thanks for the quick replies!

you're right about needing SDI. Just key a 4:1:1 dv project under the duress of a short deadline!

Let's not forget about bragging rights, that's up there too! My codec is bigger than yours...

additional benefits of prospect over aspect?
 

Other than full 1920x1080 and 10 bit capabilities, what does an upgrade to Prospect bring to me if I am not using a Xena card. Are there any other benefits beyond this?

Thanks.

Depend on what you think "10 bit capabilities" means. Prospect HD not only expects to 10-bit compressed CineForm files, it does all it processing in high dynamic range 32-bit float within Premiere and After Effects -- this leads to more naturallistic images, partically for those undergoing extensive color grading without highlight clipping and image contouring. Deeper than 8-bit processing is the ideal for profession video/film work -- this is the main separation form Aspect HD to Prospect HD.

Thanks. So what kind of performance hit should I expect going from aspect HD to Prospect on a 2.6GHZ Core2 Quad precessor? And while I am asking, are Aspect or Prospect optimized for multiple cores? I just built this Quad Core machine and it seems as though building previews in PPRO using Aspect only utilizes 25% CPU +/- . I feel ripped off as reviews on the Quad Core say most applications don't take advantage but with encoding of video in Premiere Pro there was a huge differece.....like 50% faster...almost. Instead of 5 minute encodes, it was like 2:40. This adds up over longer timelines.

I am not seeing anything like this. It's like inviting 4 body builders over to move your grand piano and 3 of them don't even help.

Anyway......any insight would be great.

Thanks.

Both have playback optimized for n-cores. Export is partly threaded but there is an bottleneck through Premiere that we have been trying to workaround for some time. While we do intend to speed up the export, once Adobe has stop changing their API. Fortunalety most of the editing time is not spend rendering.

So bottlenecks aside, can expect to see a decrease in performance with Prospect? Or will it feel the same?

I ask because I used to use Premiere Pro 1.5 RGB curves to get the look I wanted. It was a decent tool for my needs. This was in in DV. Then PPRO 2.0
changed this tool, for the better supposedly, by making it do it's computations in 32bit or 10bit or whatever. It was a deeper bit depth for better color accuracy. But, it made the render times go up by 10 times too! So simple segments that would take 2-3 minutes to render now take 40-50 minutes. It is unusably slow. I wish they would have left an older version of this effect in the toolkit for when I don't need that accuracy...which is 90% of the time. When performing this on a 1440x1080 HD frame it is much longer yet.

So I have serious reservation of working in 10-bit if it is going to make that big of a hit on my performance and render times.

Thanks.

You guys can solve this problem for me if you add some Realtime RGB curves to Aspect or Prospect! Please???

Peace.

Yes we want to add real-time levels and curves, unfortunately Adobe & Microsoft keep on change things, so I lot of development time feels wasted on just support the parent app. 32-bit options are controllable, and they will slow rendering when active -- CineForm filters don't slow as much. Remember you are going from 8-bit to 32-bit, the memory footprint increases alone is a big factor. This is all about quality, not speed. You need to judge for yourself with the trial.

How does installing Prospect on the same system as Aspect work? Can I just install it, create a new Prospect settings project in PPRO and import my original Aspect settings project?

Then colour correcting and grading would be in 32-bit? (I'll have to check whether Magic Bullet Colorista and Looks is 32-bit though, to benefit, I'd imagine)

I bought Aspect v4.x (but currently trialling v5) - but I have a test screening for our film in 8 days - could I potentially colour-correct and grade in Prospect and create a better looking result (considering I'll be exhibiting from a DVICO Tvix HD media player in 720P divx - not perfect, but better than standard def DVD).

Cheers, Doug.

Uninstall Aspect HD before installing Prospect HD, all your Aspect projects will work, and yes you can now grade in 32-bit.

OK. A project that I am currently working on had me doing some timelapse filming of clouds in a blue sky. I am currently using Aspect and guess what? Banding out the wazoo. The original footage is not too bad but it was shot on an XL-H1 which produces more of a flat look. Upon adding contrast and boosting the saturation (aspect plug-in) the banding pops out. So......I am guessing prospect would not have this problem? Are the premiere plugins coded different to avoid the banding or will any plugin benefit from the deeper color depth of Prospect?

Also for short sequences could I export to uncompressed avi or quicktime and avoid this? Or are the artifacts coming from the processing and not the encoding?

I am having a hard time justifying Prospect at this time as most of my work does not include footage that shows so much banding. So would exporting uncompressed help or not?

Thanks.

Uncompressed 8-bit is still an issue with 8-bit processing. Aspect HD v5 uses more precision internally so that new CineForm encodes perserve the data of uncompressed within introducting banding. You may want to re-encode the clip if it was created pre-v5. So uncompressed or CineForm compressed at the source will be about the same. Prospect HD filters and the Premiere Color filter are all 32-bit enabled under PHD, now you will not be introducing banding while you color correct. 8bit thru 8-bit CC results in less then 8-bit (i.e. banding) whether you use uncompressed or not. 8bit thru 32-bit CC, preserves all your original levels, Prospect HD supports encoding these as 10-bit.

Please download the PHD trial.

Upgrade to Prospect???
 

Hi guys.

First - I have to say again, that Cineform is an awesome piece of software for Premiere, it really takes HDV editing to the next level.

Secondly - I've had Aspect for a while now and am going to upgrade to the latest version for the $100. But I'm thinking I might take this opportunity to upgrade to Prospect HD.


How is Prospect HD better than Aspect HD in video editing HDV??? I've seen the 10-bit to 8-bit comparison, but how else is it better?


Thanks. I do mostly editing/cutting and color correction. But any other special effects is rare.

Yes, 10-bit compression and 16/32-bit processing are the main advantages, inaddition to 1920x1080 support. If you add an AJA Xena card, Prospect HD really shows it stuff. So greater quality, resolution and hardware support.

Thanks...

A few more questions before I go spending all that cash though (you've already sold me on the Prospect...but now for selling me on the Xena HS)


Here is my current workflow:

Record using Canon XH-A1 onto HDV tape.
Ingest via firewire into premiere using aspect hd settings.
Work with editing in premiere, I know after effects well, but my previews are really really really slow and unusable on my computer.
Output from premiere using Cineform avi outputting to SD size 24f/p.
Into Encore to build DVD and burn.

I know, I know, I need to use tmpgenc to encode for quality!! I'm getting there.


My current computer set up:
Asus motherboard
Intel core 2 duo @ ~2.4ghz
nVidia 7800 overclocked video card w/ either 256 or 512 mb ram
3gb of ram (actually 4 but windows xp doesn't recognize)
1.5 terabytes of hdds, none in raid
dual lcd 19" monitors
no broadcast monitor to speak of (a sin I know, but I don't have that kind of cash)



So...

How would a xena card help me out? Would I have to plug a monitor into it to see the increases or would it assist my current video card running my dual lcds? How would my after effects previews be affected, I even use nucleo, but it's just so much slower than the realtime hd I'm used to in Premiere!!!
Also, at work, we use Avid stations with aes audio, not sure what that is, but if we use it at work, it's broadcast quality.

Would my output work have a higher visual quality with prospect and the card? Even outputting to DVD?

Thanks again. Sorry for my lack of knowledge, it's just that sometimes, this equipment seems more than I may need. But I'm definitely needing to get as close to broadcast quality as possible.

Xena HS, LH or LHe card are not processing accelerators -- they will not make rendering faster. They are HDSDI and component HD input/output cards. The reason to use these for output over a graphic cards, is more color accuracy for color correction, support for output/mastering to professional decks and monitors.

Aspect HD or Prospect HD for Intensity system?
 

I currently have black magic intensity.
My camera is Sony V1U and HC3.
I do a lot of compositing on greenscreen and i want to take advantage of HDMI output bypasing HDV.

However, uncompressed footage would require i spend about 900 bucks on a LSI RAID card and 4 disks in RAID 0 array... -then i decided i could just buy Aspect HD and use that format for chroma key with the 2 disk RAID i currently have.

Im considering Aspect HD, but am wondering if Prospect HD will make a difference with my setup? I care about quality a lot but if these cameras are 1440x1080 resolution to begin with then how will Prospect make a difference?

Specs:
MB: Tyan K8WE
CPU: 2x Dual core AMD OPTERON 270s.
RAM: 4gb Corsair ECC
GPU: Nvidie Quadro FX560.
Blackmagic Intensity card.
Audigy2 ZS
System Drive 250g WD
Video Drive: RAID 0 array of 2 500g Western digital SE16 drives.

While the camera is only going to resolve under 1440x1080, the HDMI output is 1920x1080, so some favor Prospect HD as will capture pixel for pixel the HDMI signal. Aspect HD resamples back to 1440x1080, however for these cameras I don't believe this impacts image quality. However, Prospect HD has the advantage of any color correction work as it support deeper than 8-bit processing -- that is worth considering. You can start with Aspect HD and later upgrade to PHD if you are on the edge.

Prospect to Aspect
 

Im 99% sure this is fine; just want to be sure.

I have contractor shooting some HD stuff for me and delivering it to me on an external HD after captureing it in vegas to prospect hd codec.

If Im using aspect hd with ppro cs3, Ill be fine reading/edting these files correct?

Any thing specific i should have him set settings to to ensure smooth workflow back and forth?

Curt,

Prospect HD doesn't work with Vegas. So for clarity, on the capture machine - do you have Premiere Pro with Prospect HD installed, and also Vegas installed? That's the only way you have Prospect HD on a Vegas PC. Normally with Vegas you use Neo HDV or Neo HD.

The good news is that all our files, no matter which CineForm software they are created with, will play with any of our decoders. The spatial resolutions of our decoders are always unrestricted.

If you DO have either PHD or NeoHD installed on your Vegas machine, then depending on the capture settings, you *might* receive 1920x1080 content from your contractor. The content will play fine in your Premiere Pro timeline with Aspect HD, but renders out of PPro with AHD will have a max frame size of 1440x1080.

My contractor told me he uses Vegas and captures to a cineform codec using prospect hd. Perhaps he has his terms screwed up.

Im running PPRO CS3 (which would be the receiving machine) I havnt pulled the trigger on aspect or prospect hd yet. But looks like im gonna need to soon. Not at all enjoying hdv natively in pro and hd uc is just too big..

Curt

Curt, your last sentence is a very succinct statement of what we tell people.... With our new cross-platform (Windows/Mac) support hopefully that will also help the workflow....

On a related note, can Prospect handle 1440x1080 projects, the Prospect setting that I see only shows 1920x1080 but obviously Premier let's you change that, so when working on an HDV project, should default startup settings be changed to 1440 at the start of the project or just import the HDV 1440 footage into the 1920 x 1080 setting?

Yes, Prospect HD supports 1440x1080, you can easily create that preset. The only reason it isn't there was the AJA card doesn't support the 1440 mode, and initially all our Prospect HD customers used AJA HDSDI cards. We should add the preset as there are so many using Prospect HD for HDV now.

David your response time is always nothing short of exceptional, so rather than Capture in HDVSplit and convert the 1440 to 1920 I will modify the workflow to a new 1440 preset created for HDV / Prospect. thanks.

Prospect vs Aspect.
 

I just downloaded a trial of Prospect for the first time (I'd only ever tried Aspect HD before). And I noticed that there are no presets for 1440x1080, as I thought there were with Aspect HD. Does anyone use Prospect and use a custom resolution of 1440 or does everyone just upsample to 1920? (Perhaps I'm overlooking the point of ProspectHD by asking about the absence of 1440x1080)

Also, I remember Cineform mentioning something a while ago about possibly having a student discount, and to call them to see if something could be worked out, but I can't find any contact info other than an e-mail address.

Craig,

Just an oversight about not having 1440 presets in PHD. You can easily create your own from the 1920x1080 preset. Many people using PHD prefer square pixel formats 1280x720 or 1920x1080.

PM me separately about student discount....