One more post on this alpha channel problem.

We were able to successfully render 1920x1080 alpha layerered material if they were output as sequencial Photoshop-generated files at 60 fps with straight alpha channel.

This was only true if we put the alpha channel material on top of a single layer of CF'ed 1920x1080 video. If we try to do three or more layers with CF, crashola again.

Is it possible that the "realtime" CF playing, with simultaneous CF rendering is somehow overwhelming the memory bus or something? It seems to be a memory problem for sure. That's the only thing I can think of that would pop PP out of memory completely.

It's all a royal pain in the rear.

We've tried every trick we can think of to eliminate hardware errors:

- Changing DDR2 memory modules
- Removing RAIDs
- updating every possible driver for everything from the mb to the video
card, etc. etc.
- reducing memory from 4GB to 2GB
- creating new projects with only a few items
- etc.
- etc
- etc

But we get the same message everytme: "Faulting application adobe premiere pro.exe, version 3.0.1.0, faulting module cfencoder2.ax, version 3.2.1.184, fault address 0x0005267b."

I think we're pretty close to dumping Cineform Prospect, since it's impossible to edit using it as the main codec with CS3. We've tried doing the same things with regular CS3 PP HDV projects and everything works just fine. No crashes, no errors, nothing out of the ordinary.

David, it's a Cineform Prospect problem/and-or/CS3. Period. No and's, if's and but's about it. Either CS3 is unable to edit with full 1920x1080, or CF Prospect codec has a serious problem working with CS3 in doing that.

This is a bitter pill for us, but we cannot keep trying to flail a dead donkey and the only reason we switched to Prospect was to gain the 10bit/1920 workflow.

We're pretty much out of time for getting a solution to this and don't believe it's our config/hardware problem.

If we switch back to the newest AspectHD and it works okay for us, will Cineform return our money for the upgrade we did to Prospect?

Suggestions...comments?

We know this issue is not widespread as we just finish a project ourselves at 1920x1080p24 for the 48 hour film project under Prospect HD using CS3. So work with us and give all the information about your system and project to tech. support. Posting here instead doesn't help as I have no idea what you are doing. Please work with support, send them sample clips of what you are working with as your project file work fine here. Is this still only an alpha channel issue? Please explain to support as it is no longer clear to me.

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Is anyone else see a crash in cfencoder2.ax? As a failure there makes no sence to us, that component is used everywhere, you wouldn't be able to capture or convert to CineForm within it.

Yes, it still only happens when rendering anything that has been CF'ed (that is, compressed with the CF codec) with any alpha-channel material that is either CF compressed or as uncompressed 1920x1080.

It mostly seems to be alpha channel related, although I could provoke a crash trying to using the "timewarp" on CF compressed material as well...

One difference from your project is that we are not doing it as 24p. Would that make any dif?

Sorry if it looks that way, but we are not trying to go around your tech support team, but were just hoping it was something easy to identify and correct so if doesn't hold up a major 3 yr project with 48 productions yet to do. We basically have 6 people sitting on their hands until this gets sorted out and I'm under pressure to resolve it.

All technical staff are in today, so get your info to support. Unfortunately all the failures you list, alpha channels and timewarp are Adobe functions, we have no control over their rendering, Premiere simply hands us the completed frame that we send to the encoder. So a failure in these functions may be a CS3 issue when using 32-bit float, which is the only difference in a render between Aspect and Prospect, short of the memory footprint difference between 1440x1080 and 1920x1080.

We turned off 32-bit float as you suggested before and it makes no dif. Maybe it's the memory footprint diff...who knows anymore. It does appear to be the handoff between CS3 and CF, as it always completes some of the render, then gives the error message. If we insist on trying to render, it often crashes completely out of PP.

Will post info to support.

David, since I haven't heard from your tech support yet...

Here's a little bit of info that might be important. We ran Task Manager in the foreground, and every time PP renders, it runs the "PF Usage" up and down with render material, then crashes when it gets to a render that forces it to reach 1.8 GB! It does NOT crash at 1.78 GB, only 1.8 GB.

Since we have expanded our PF to 8GB, then reduced to only 2 MB to force to RAM, it still crashes at 1.8 GB.

That might mean I should be running x64 or Vista...as it's a memory management prob...

It is a fault in 32-bit window applications, they can only access about 1.5GB each no matter how much memory your system has. Switching to Vista or 64-bit OS will not help as the fault is in Premiere itself (as it is a 32-bit app.) However we are working on a fix. The issue is Premiere uses up all available memory (for a 32-bit app) leaving almost to no memory for the encoder. We are making the encoder run in the lower memory state. Premiere uses more memory than it should when frame blend (speed or timewarps) and go alpha channel etc.

That's the first logical answer I've heard! Thank you David, you just saved me from a major hassle of trying to upgrade to something that doesn't help.

Any "ballpark" time frame for the fix? (I know that's difficult to answer, sorry...we"re just pretty desperate)

It is what I'm working on now as the highest priority -- should have a build with a fix (or huge improvement) by the end of the week (if not sooner -- end of today or tomorrow with fingers crossed.)

OH YEAH! I'll leave you alone....

David, are you going to support compressing and using CFed alpha channels realtime in Prospect with this new release?

Sure would be nice for whacking down all those nasty big uncompressed AVI's we have to deal with and saving some storage space...and render playback time...

...................we do get greedy in our old age!

CineForm files with alpha channels will not support real-time alpha mixing on the Premiere timeline -- you will need to render for the mix -- they will play real-time without mixing. However they are at least 6:1 smaller than uncompressed RGBA AVIs, and will have quality if you source support greater than 8-bit RGBA. I think alpha support will be pretty cool.