Prepurchase questions

[Bill Bryant]

I'm evaluating neoscene and neohd to see if it is a good solution for my AVCHD performance problems in post. I started out evaluating neoscene then switched over to neohd after I started reading about FirstLight. So far I like the way converted footage looks and feels on my timeline in Premiere CS5.

I'm on a Windows 7 64bit system with an i7 920, 12 gigs RAM, GTX 295 video card,10K Velociraptor system drive, 2 TB RAID 0 video drives. I have a applied the "hack" to my CS5 install to get the GTX 295 to be utilized by the Mercury Playback Engine (MPE). It works well I get all the accelerated effects in real-time on my timelines based on Adobe's AVCHD sequence presets. I do get the yellow bar above my timeline but it all plays back in real-time.

When I use a Cineform preset for a sequence and I bring in Cineform converted files onto the timeline everything looks real-time, no colored bar at all over the timeline. When I apply one of the Cineform effects to a clip the timeline above it goes red and needs to be rendered. Same with any of Adobe's accelerated effects. Any effect that was real-time on my Adobe AVCHD sequence preset now needs to be rendered if used on a Cineform RT preset including Cineform RT effects. Is that normal or is my system bugged? Doesn't that totally defeat the purpose of the MPE?

Another issue I'm having with with the Cineform sequence presets is not being able to see clips playing in my source window full-screen on my second monitor. I can see my timeline window full-screen on my second monitor, just not clips in the source monitor. When I use Adobe's AVCHD sequence preset for a timeline I get full-screen playback on my second monitor for both my source and record windows. I see that the two presets, (Adobe vs Cineform), use a different playback engine or something for external monitoring because I get two totally different looking preference setting windows depending on the sequence preset I selected. Is it normal not to get a full-screen preview of clips playing in the source window on a second monitor hooked up to my GTX 295 graphics card when using a Cineform preset? The Cineform presets don't really seem to offer much to CS5 users utilizing the MPE, they nerf features unless I'm missing something.

My last question...FirstLight started playing back clips in slow motion today, it was acting normal yesterday. Did I press a button or change a setting? I can't find anything in documentation, it just started happening all of a sudden. The clips play real speed when I'm in Premiere, but they play back slow in FirstLight.

Sorry for the long post, I appreciate any help/advice. I'm trying to get this all sorted out so I can evaluate which product I really need.

[Jay West]

I have run into similar problems with Cineform sequence presets when editing mutl-cam projects. (I'm running a system like yours except that I'm using an I7/920 and a GTX 260 card.) However, I have not yet tried the latest build of NeoHD which has been available for a few days.

I've also got an MXO2-Mini for external monitoring and several AVCHD cams. Rather than use Cineform sequence presets, I've been using the Adobe AVCHD and Matrox presets.

[David Newman]

Bill,

The red markers are not an indicator of real-time in the CineForm preset, one day they will be, so the mercury acceleration is still active. There is a bug in the source window full-screen, it is on the list. In FirstLight, make sure you haven't enabled a 3D display mode, which is more work, and can be slower. Set the "3D Display Type" to Left.

You can use any preset with CineForm files, the CineForm preset is best for 3D projects, which Premeire doesn't do without us, otherwise use what meets your needs.

[Bill Bryant]

Thank you for the replies...

Changing "3D Display Type" to Left fixed the slow motion playback. I had set it to interlaced to solve this problem I was having when playing back interlaced footage converted from 1080 60i clips:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3211957/Cine...%20footage.JPG
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3211957/Cine...%20monitor.JPG

Is it normal for interlaced footage to play like that in FirstLight? It plays fine on my timeline in Premiere.

Another issue that popped up last night...I wanted to go back to neoscene to evaluate that some more, so I uninstalled neohd and reinstalled neoscene. Any time I go to convert a clip in HDLink results in a crash of the app without leaving any entry in the log as to what my have happened and an unusable video file in the destination folder. I tried uninstalling and rebooting several times, I even redownloaded the app, nothing fixed the crashing. If I uninstall neoscene and reinstall neohd I can convert clips without a problem. Is there a special way to roll back from neohd to neoscene?

Also, can I assume that any clips I convert with neohd can be used later on with neoscene if that is what I decide to purchase?

[David Newman]

The "interlaced" in 3D, is not the same. For interlace 2D material see the playback resolution to Half. We probably should deinterlace that source type, but half res does almost the same thing.

That crash sounds like a question for support, as you should be able to switch between them without issue. NeoHD files will also play fine in NeoScene.