I am using NEO HDV to capture and convert HDV 24F from a Canon HV20 as well as an A1. When I open a Vegas project (version 7e) and I begin to pull clips to the timeline Vegas will all of a sudden shut down. Vegas will work fine with the 24F M2T clips from my A1 but when I try to use clips converted to CineForm Intermediate avi's it chokes. I saw some posts about this happening with Vegas 6 and have tried some of the suggestion/fixes for that but nothing is helping. I did download and install the latest version of Neo HDV so that isn't a fix (I did uninstall the earlier version before installing the latese).

I have a ticket into Cineform but have not recieved a reply yet. Any help would be appreciated as I'm tyring to get some editing done for a video I have to do in January.

Thanks,

After using Vegas 6 for music multitracking and sound work for my video stuff, I have upgraded to Vegas 8.

I'm currently set up with Adobe CS2/Premiere Pro 2 (aka Crash-o-matic), and Aspect 4.3 (I know, I know... I'll upgrade soon).

Is there any downside to using Vegas 8 with my CFHD clips? Is anyone else using this combo, or do I really need to add another breed of Cineform for Vegas to work best in the Cinform world?

I'd really like to fully explore this combo before plunking down the bucks to upgrade my Adobe suite. I'm willing to give up some of the multi program integration of Adobe, for a lean, stable NLE...and of course, the prospect (no pun intended) of working with EX1 footage soon.

Vegas 8 will work fine with CineForm clips, however not as fast as Aspect HD allows in Premiere. Some Vegas 8 installations load an older CineForm codec, to prevent this rename the CFHD.dll file in the Vegas install directory. This issue is worse with Aspect HD v5 or NEO v3, as the old Vegas component is not longer compatible.

Thanks David. This will be a stop-gap until I go the Prospect route with the EX1. If I rename the file, will Vegas find the current installed codec, or do I need to reinstall Aspect after Vegas 8 is installed?

Since the year is just about gone, it's as good of time as any to say thanks to you and David Taylor for your steadfast support. It's truly a paradigm shift in customer support.

I thought about posting my question at around 11:55pm, just to see if you are able to monitor this board whilst singing Auld Lang Syne.

Thanks again, and Happy New Year.

:)

Renaming the file, allows Vegas to find the new codec installed. Only some PCs find the wrong codec, so this is a preventive measure.

Apologies if this has been answered before, I did a search but couldn't find anything. Can 10 or 12bit Neo 4K files be edited using Vegas 8, maybe utilizing it's 32bit float mode? I'm not exactly sure how their 32bit mode works and have not had the time to read up on it. I have a bluescreen/CGI project currently in the writing stage that I would eventually like to edit together at a 2k resolution using Vegas if possible.

If I am bringing in a converted file from cineform HDV NEO(8 bit) is there any advantage to have sony vegas editing in the 32 bit mode or am I just wasting horsepower?

Regardless of where your video source is coming from, 32-bit Vegas can help you, if you use it properly. Almost all videocams record luma values outside of the broadcast luma range of RGB 16-235. Using 32-bit in vegas allows you to bring back values into the useable range. Sometimes, there are values above RGB 255 that are recoverable. But it's not automatic and not all codecs are 32-bit aware, so, you need to keep track of things manually. I use the pluge bars to double check everything.

As a side note, Vegas I/O is only 8-bit, even if you use internal processing of 32 bit floating point math. So, it's quite critical to bring all those illegal values back into RGB 16-235

Currently Vegas can do 4K resolution, I think 2K is still the limit. We plan to add 32-bit support to Vegas but it is not there yet.

Very interesting Bill, how and at what stage should you do that? Can you explain 'pluge bars?'

And is 'outside RGB 16-235' what I'm seeing when I capture Panasonic SD with the Pana SD codec, the result being high contrast with shiny blacks with not much detail in them.

When I convert those files with NEO HDV the result is less contrast and the blacks are grayer with some detail in them. Would that be bringing the SD into RGB 16-235?

Sorry Roy I don't mean to convert your thread mate :)

My comments stem in direct reference to Vegas 8a.

If you open the Media Generator and drop the Test Pattern/NTSC SMPTE bars on the timeline, you'll notice in the lower right corner, under the red color bar, a series of 3 black bars. These are the pluge bars. Take a look at the definition of plude in wikipedia for a more complete description.

Now, look at the Vegas waveform monitor for this frame. Make sure the WFM is set to STUDIO RGB....see the pluge bars? The middle bar should be on 0% IRE.

If you have an HDV camera that can generate color bars, it will also have a pluge. Import the color bars from your camera and look at the pluge bars in the WFM. It should look the same as it did with the media generator test pattern. If it doesn't use the FX/Sony Levels to adjust computer to RGB or RGB to Computer.....what happens?

I've just touched on some basics here. I really can't spend the time, right now, to explain in more detail. Just remember that NTSC/Broadcast television will show 16-235 RGB It will clip all values below RGB16 or above RGB235. All cameras capture in full Computer RGB, 0-255.

Thanks Bill, bet I'm not the only one who appreciates your explanation.
Cheers.

Ok, great, thanks. Maybe by the time Vegas 9 is out for the 32bit support?

i don't understand why you can't use neo hd and edit in 2k/10-bit with vegas. i believe 10-bit footage can be edited fine preserving the bit depth. as long as you don't do a lot of cc work:

i've noticed that some of the plugins are not fully float compatible and produce strange results when pushing color.

Just updated to Vegas Pro 8.0b. Same problem. Same solution of renaming the cfhd.dll. Very irritating. But oh,well I know it's not Cineforms fault.

What are the minimum system requirements to get real-time 1080p 24fps playback in Vegas 8.0b using NeoHD? Will a Core2Quad 6600 do it?
Am I the only person wanting to edit in 1920x1080 online?
Premiere is no longer an option, I wasted 5 years of my life on that NLE.

Hey Robert, I see no one has responded so I'll throw in my own experience here. I realize you are asking about the HD, not the HDV product, so be sure to remember that when reading about my experience.

First, you're totally overpowered on the processor side for editing the resulting .avi cineform file. I'm using Vegas Pro 8.0b with a Core2Duo 1.6 (which I will be OC'ing to as high as my RAM can handle) and processor utilization is a complete non-factor. Honestly, I don't see why 100% of people trying to edit AVCHD don't just drop the $200-$250 for NEO HDV and be done with it, LOL! Presto, lack of editing options for AVCHD just disappeared - the format is now a complete non-issue for NLE's. And it's not like the converted intermediate file is stupid huge either. It's roughly 3-3.5x the size of the original .mts. Big deal, a 160GB HDD is like $50 today. Six months from now, that will be the price for the 250's.

Where you need your CPU horsepower is during the conversion process. Assuming you're using decent SATA II drives, the processor is now the limiting factor. Not sure about NEO's ability to fully exploit the quad's - that's a question you'd have to ask them. Even though I'm using a RAID 0 setup, I'm sure it isn't necessary. I highly doubt there is a chip out there that could keep up with even a decent HDD during the conversion process. So IOW more CPU power = faster conversions.

Not sure about NEO's ability to fully exploit the quad's - that's a question you'd have to ask them. Even though I'm using a RAID 0 setup, I'm sure it isn't necessary.

Thanks Aaron - great post. I thought I'd address the issue of threading. The CineForm encoder is very well threaded, so for operations in which we control we usually peg the CPUs at 100%. In the case of AVCHD, because we recommend a commercially-available AVCHD decoder, there may not be as much threading efficiency from that decoder, so if the CPUs are below 100% that's the reason.

Also, for conversion, a single drive is totally fine. Depending on the number of streams you need to process on the timeline in RT we usually recommend a two-drive RAID 0 configuration, but it's not a requirement.

For the record, if anyone cares, I'm using v1.6 of CoreAVC Pro for my decoder and my Core2Duo is always max'd during conversion. Wish I could comment on the multithreading capabilities of this decoder WRT a quad core, but alas, I can't...

THank you for sharing your expierience. I have an Athlon X2 4200+ (2.2ghz dual core) and can only get about 7 fps playback when playing back 1080p footage encocoded by NeoHD.
Anyone else?

Hmm, that's messed up, LOL. I can't believe there's that much horsepower difference between our systems. Something isn't right there.

I wanted to give you an exact figure here, so I just played a Cineform HDV encoded clip (originally AVCHD file from Canon HG10) in Vegas Pro 8.0b and CPU remained @ 15% entire time.

The way I understand it the HD codec and the HDV codec atre the same codec with different resolution limitations. Is this correct? Can anyone from Cineform weigh in on this?
-Robert

All depend on your PC and how you set up your editing environment. As CineForm's compression uses wavelet, the less you need to decode the faster is goes, much more so then MPEG2 and AVCHD. So if you set your playback to be full best, some machines will not be realtime under Vegas. Try Preview-Half, quality is still excellent for editing but it will be up to 4 times faster.

Just in case you were wondering Robert, I have my encoder option "quality" set to "high." I'll check playback options tonight.

Perhaps it's a bug in Vegas, but I do not experience any noticeable increase in framerate when playing back at lower quality settings. This is true for the Cineform way of decoding less to make playback faster and the Vegas way (going to draft mode at half-rez).

Here are my machine specs:
Asus A8N32SLI Deluxe
Athlon X2 4200+ 2.2 Ghz dual-core
2GB Corsair RAM
Areca 1220ML w/ 8 drive Seagate SATA RAID 6 (300MB/s avg)
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
Sony Vegas 8.0b
Win XP SP2

I have confirmed I suffer the same slow playback on a fresh install of WinXP. The Vegas timeline seem to have significant overhead and also seems incapable of using all available system resources. As a result I have never been able to achieve realtime playback of NeoHD footage on the Vegas timeline. I can play back the NeoHD footage in windows at full rez with no problem.

I would love to hear from someone who edits 1080p Cineform footage in Vegas in realtime.

Thank you,
Robert

I don't use Vegas, but are you trying to use your Blackmagic hardware at the same time. That might be the issue. That would cause playback problems if you were using Premiere. Your system should be able to playback CineformHD files without a problem.

I do not play out my Blackmagic hardware from the Vegas timeline as I have never been able to overcome the high contrast due to YUV problem. I play on the desktop only or use my Quadro to output to a secondary monitor which does not seem to affect playback rate.

You have a very nice PC config there. I assume you've got XP & apps installed on a drive outside of your RAID 6 - wouldn't matter that much WRT performance anyway.

Just so I've got this right...You open Vegas (nothing else major running in background), correctly define your project properties, file -->open a cineform HD .avi file and press the play button in the transport area of Vegas and you're not getting smooth video displayed in the little preview window of the main Vegas window!?!

That is correct Aaron. I have tried closing any open processes that are not critical for windows to operate and do not see any performance improvement. I have also tried this on a clean install of WinXP on the same system with no improvement.

Are you referring to the Cineform HDV that comes with Vegas or are you referring to the Cineform NeoHDV?

I first downloaded a trial version of Neo HDV encoder (w/HD Link) in order to (1) properly remove pulldown from footage from my Canon HG10 and work with a true 24P timeline in Vegas and (2) get the video (and audio) into a more workable format in Vegas (and SoundForge). The performance enhancement, codec quality, portability/cross platform compatibility, and everything else David has mentioned is just icing on the cake. I officially purchased yesterday - it really is a no-brainer for anyone who is looking to do more than just cursory editing of raw footage...

Robert, what I would do in your situation is either piece together a very basic PC from scrap parts or start off building your upgraded box that you talked about in your opening post. Pick up a decent Asus, Gigabyte, Abit (or non OC'ing Intel) motherboard and pair a cheap (throw-away) Intel CPU to it. You could even pull out one of your Corsair sticks. Pick up a $50 HDD, $30 graphics adapter, install XP SP2, install the MB device drivers, hit the windows update site (will require validating XP again - just call the phone number if you've exceeded two or three installs), and then download trial versions of Vegas and Neo (and an AVCHD decoder if necessary) and stop there. Don't install your vast array of existing hardware. Convert a video clip, open it in Vegas and press play. I'm 99% certain you'll see what I see...

Heck, put together the base of my box: Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R, Intel E2140, your DDR2-800 Mem, any Seagate 7200.10 SATA HDD, MSI NX8400GS-TD256E...

Just curious is anyone has an idea of how much longer it takes to render to MPEG2, Cineform AVI files, versus M2t files.

I'm just starting to really appreciate what NEO can do for me, but I haven't finished a project so I wasn't sure how much longer the renders will take.

I'll check playback options tonight.

Ok, here's my info. I did, in fact, have the playback set to preview (Auto) which I'm pretty sure is the default option upon installation - had to reinstall everything after some old TC Electronic plugs screwed up XP's virtual mem configuration.

So I changed it to Best (Full) - worst case scenario right? I get realtime playback of my 24P clip no problem. CPU is at 95-99% while playing footage and ~85% playing back an empty timeline.

I'd say something is "broken" with your PC configuration and it's going to take some <insert hardware/software, test; insert more hardware/software, test; etc.> to figure out what's wrong. That's why I suggested you get back to zero with at least one PC and then start adding things.

Thanks again for you assistance. I downloaded the NeoHDV demo and did some live capture to test my playback specs. I have observed the following:

CPU usage when playing back the timeline reaches a max of 75%

Framerate stays around the neighborhood of 18-20fps.

If your processor is maxed out (99%) when playing back 24p, it's resasonable for mine to be at 20fps and 75%. It's probably an AMD incompatibility thing keeping Vegas from using 100% of my processor. The big difference between us before was the fact I was using NeoHD instead of NeoHDV for the test.

Looks like I'll simply have to upgrade my computer in order to handle Cineform editing in realtime at my desired resolution.

Here's a new question: Can anyone say for sure that an Opteron 185 2.6ghz dual-core will have enough horsepower to convert 1080p footage (while removing the pulldown and fixing the flip) in real-time for live capture scenarios? Cineform's website lists the Opteron 252 in their minimum specs which has the same specs except it's for a socket 940. If I drop $250 o nthis upgrade I would have to be assured it would power my capture station without issue.

If I capture clips thru cineform or vegas and put them in a folder and and use them and don't move them its ok V8 doesn't crash, I just noticed if I move clips from one harddrive to another and then try to bring them into vegas V8 immediately crashes. just folders that have cineform clips in them. Whats up with this? Haven't had a this problem lately but now its happening again.

Never heard of this. Is it a Vegas issue? Maybe their support can help. Make sure your CineForm components are up to date. NEO is up to version 3.2.4.155

all of a sudden it happened on my laptop, old version of cineform, and my desktop, new up to date on cineform, it happened when I moved all of one external drive to an internal drive so I could use the external on my laptop, I am just wondering if it has anything to do with that, only thing I can point to. but if I capture new clips, its ok. only effected are older clips.

I had something similar happen recently, but I had installed a bunch of new software updates etc. so I'm not sure what started the problem. I re-installed the latest version of Vegas Pro, followed by a re-install of the latest version of Cineform NEO HDV and the problem went away.

Running Vegas 7 here and have been getting quite a few crashes recently also whilst editing Cineform files. I never used to have any such problems running the exact same version of Vegas.

Anyway, my next project will be 100% old DV footage, so if the crashes still occur, then it obviously won't be caused by Cineform.. Will see how it goes :)

I am wondering if the addition of certain codecs could be the problem, I have added some, along with some software which encodes flv and different video. I did reinstall begas on my laptop, even deleted it out of my registry, and program files, didn't help on older m2t and mainly cineform clips, its definitely extremely aggrevating. I think I know how to solve this, have a computer with nothing on it except vegas and cineform, but who does that

Hi..when I capture 25f from my canon xh-a1 into vegas8 , vegas recognises the files as progressive, however if i convert the m2t files to cineform Avi using HDlink they appear as upperfield first in properties.(field order)
I also notice that the play back is real poor in my 25p project unless i change the property of each Avi to progressive field order.
I have tried to change setting in prefs to progressive and also to Auto but with the same result each time i convert the files.can anyone please shed some light on this..thanks john

hmmm guess not...well with the probs i have capturing from firewire using vista and hdlink..crash..crash.. (it did say vista compatable) and with this prob it seems like a bad investment...when vegas runs better without it.

The interlaced vs progressive is a Sony Vegas issue, nothing to do with CineForm (happens with all other VfW codecs.) If you place 1080p25 or 30 in Vegas it assumes it is interlaced, it needs a setting to over ride this (request that from Sony's support.) Yet 720 or 1080p24 is marked as progressive, CineForm doesn't tells Vegas that, Vegas is simply guessing (wrong.) CineForm file does actually know which is which, yet the VfW interface Vegas uses for third party codec doesn't have a way to communicate that.

As for the Vista capture with HDLink, we are looking into that.

Is the quality the same if I capture directly from the camera thru cineform into an avi file compared to capturing a m2t file into vegas and then converting it thru cineform into an avi file.

thanks david but i am still confused..I just managed to capture about 1 min of footage 25p into cineform hdlink by using the resize button (strange)and i kept the m2t files and avi...now when i import the m2t file vegas recognises this as progressive but the avi shows upperfield first (indicating to me that its interlaced)
so i take it the footage is progressive but i just need to go into the properties of each clip and select 'none progressive' or can i just ignore it.

Slightly higher quality through CineForm HDLink directly as Vegas will introduce unnecessary colorspace conversions. Vegas is RGB, source files are YUV, HDlink converts preserving the YUV colorspace (which is also much faster.)

It is a question for Sony Vegas's support team, as the failure is for all VfW AVIs (compressed or not.) I have previously thought that it was a cosmetic error on Vegas's part, yet you have suggested that where performance implications. Therefore it is a Vegas bug that they need to fix, or at least have a project setting override (they might already have that.) Let us know what Sony reports, us it will be useful information for others.

david..out of interest i just imported one of the cineform avi files into a demo of EDIUS 4.6 and that also shows field order as upper whereas the m2t shows progressive for the same clip so its not just vegas.

It is still up to the NLE to allow the user to control that. The problem is these NLEs are use the old VfW codec standard with has no way report a progressive image. It is the NLEs that are guessing wrong, so it is their bug to fix to maintain the best support for VfW codecs. If you create a 1080p25/30 progressive project, a better assumption would be to guess that you content is progressive if you can't know otherwise. Please submit a bug report to Canopus as well.

hello all.
here is a list of questions i've not found in the FAQ.

Sytem I will use (draft)
1 single Intel quad core (q6600 or q9450)
4GB RAM
Dedicated HDDx2 for OS (RAID1)
Dedicated HDDx2 for video (RAID0)
Windows XP 32.
Sony vegas 8
Cineform NEO 4K
Blackmagic decklink pro (4:4:4)
AJA 2Ke (4:4:4)

is someone using a DELL precision machine with decklink successfully ?

I) Codec :
cineform is similar to MJPEG2000 ends with "I-frames with wavelets compression in Variable BitRate, constant quality" -- we have none of the compute load issues. We are between 5-7 times faster for encode and decode than JPEG2000. No hardware is needed.

Data rates depend on you, your quality choice and your content. Data rates in compression ratios work for all source formats. 10:1 for good quality, 7:1 for very good quality with peak data rate hitting 4:1 (rare.)

that means (video stream only):
SDvideo = 4:2:2 10bits YUV 720x486i @29,97fps ->32Mb/s = 4MB/s
HDvideo = 4:2:2 10bits YUV 1080i@59,94fps ->190Mb/s = 24MB/s
HDvideoRGB = 4:4:4 10bits RGB @59,94fps ->284Mb/s = 35.5MB/s

so even a single drive 7200rpm can handle full hd :)

II) Sources :
[SD] My source is meanly from a Sony VTR deck with Digital Betacam SD. Can I capture in SD 4:2:2 10 bits ? What is the minimum CPU to do that (max quality) ? how much RAM is needed ?
(I mean capture with preview + inverse telecine process.)
The final quality will be about the same as from the tape (archiving purpose)?

[HD] My source is meanly from a Sony HDCAM SR deck with Digital Betacam HD. Can I capture in SD 4:4:4 12 bits 1080i60/1080p60 ? What is the minimum CPU to do that (max quality) ? how much RAM is needed ?
Is it best to have a 4 cores @3Ghz or a 8 cores @2Ghz ?
(I mean capture with preview + inverse telecine process.)
The final quality will be about the same as from the tape (archiving purpose)?


III) Preview :
Do I have a preview during capture in realtime (with AJA and Blackmagic cards) ? this preview in on the PC monitor only ? Or can I have the preview outputted to SDI ? this preview reflect the input only, or the on-fly-compressed video ?

IV) Timecode :
Do I get the timecode form the Deck and from SDI LTC-VITC (live sources) into the captured file ?. Is the embeded timecode available into AVI and MOV files ?
In vegas is there a way to see this embedded timecode (timecode reader) ? A way to burn it in the video ?

V) Closed Captions
[SD] EIA-608, closed captioning in line 21. Do the CC is embedded into the captured file ? AVI and MOV ? when I playback from the Vegas timeline, do I directly see the CC (via external decoder) ? With both AJA and blackmagic cards ?

[HD] EIA-708, closed captioning in line 9. Do the CC is embedded into the captured file ? AVI and MOV ? when I playback from the Vegas timeline, do I directly see the CC (via external decoder) ? With both AJA and blackmagic cards ?

VI) Inverse telecine (24p film look)
My sources are mostly film telecined into digital betacam tapes NTSC. Is there a way to automatically remove the telecine process during capture ? I mean a professional film look, with no more fields, whatever the pulldown sequence of the source is (clean or broken). What happen if the source is purely video or video and telecined mixed ?
With 24p, my final footage will be much higher quality and less CPU intensive to process ?
Then can I edit this footage transparently in Vegas ? Can I mix normal video and 24p footage ?



VII) And ultimate capture question :
Can I capture directly in Vegas with :
- close caption
- time code
- preview
- inverse telecine
- HD or SD

Or I must use cineform HDlink ?


best regards to this forum, cineform and vegas !

frédéric

I've contacted Canopus concerning the incorrect "upper field first" notaion on cineform progressive files. The advice I received was to "change it to progressive".