DV Film Raylight at 60i
 

Raylight users; I've seen some references to raylight as good codec for editing FX-1 footage as an inexpensive alternative to Cineform. However, the emphasis seems to be on .mxf file handling and conversion to 24 fps. Has anyone used it for hdv 60i straight through post, ie used in Premiere Pro and After Effects and if so, how does it perform? Does it give editing/rendering speed advantages or should I be looking at some other codec?

I've tried their site and the settings/tutorials they have are geared for 24 fps output. I'm trying to find out how the workflow proces works and project settings. So if anyone knows, I'd love to hear from them. (After following what I interpreted as their directions, Premiere Pro wanted to take 30 minutes to render a 30 second clip, on a QuadCore machine. I assumed I was doing something wrong.

I am not familiar with Raylight but if it's anything like Atlantis, then forget it - you have not done anything wrong, I just tested Atlantis today and it took 5 minutes to render a 3 second NTSC file to PAL. No typo, five minutes for 90 frames!!!

Go figure... The result is stellar but it takes forever, and DVFilm makes this no secret - the software goes through the video like 4 or 5 times doing different transformations (deinterlacing, 60i to 24p, 24p to 25p, 25p to 50i, and a few stages for the audio as well).

Their main focus is the "film look".

Normally, DVFilm Atlantis processes about 5 frames a second. Were you using the demo of Atlantis?

Atlantis will work slow if it requires an update, which can be done free at the DVFilm - Digital to Film Transfers, Tape to Film Tranfers website.

As for the op's questions, Raylight can allow editing programs like Sony Vegas to directly use MXF's in the timeline, but you can also convert your FX-1 footage into Raylight AVI's to be used in your NLE. Raylight comes with a DVFilm Maker as well so you can convert your FX-1 footage to 24p if you need to. Hope this helps.

Best,
Andy