View Full Version : Premiere CS4 and NeoScene


Ann Bens
February 20th, 2009, 10:11 AM
I downloaded the update but got the trial?
Anyway i installed it (did not uninstall the old one) and it now says Cineform NEO Scene (1.1.0 build 108).
Converted a m2t clip to Cineform avi and played it in a Premiere CS4 1080i25 project.
I'm getting the yellow line and it plays very choppy. I was under the impression there would be no renderline. Also (forgive the noob-question) where is the CS4-importer or is this something build in the update?) Am i missing something here.
I am on a dual Xeon and 4 gig RAM with Vista 64.

David Newman
February 20th, 2009, 10:23 AM
CS4 support hasn't been released (it is more tricky than it should be.) The yellow line is the way CS4 is unless you install an accelerater like Prospect HD (still CS3 only), or one of the matrix products (many still CS3.) The choppiness is as CS4 is doing a poor video for window implementation, and using that codec. The import will helpful be in beta sometime next week, it should smooth your playback a lot.

Andy Urtusuastegui
February 20th, 2009, 10:26 AM
First, be sure to unintall BEFORE installing the new version.

In CS4, Cineform files are not optimized yet. The importer is not done yet. The importer will make CS4 work smoother and more inteligently with Cineform files.

When Cineform finishes the importer, it will be included in an update, like 1.1x. When you install the update, the importer is installed as part of the program. When you import Cineform files it will be the same process and not look any different but the importer will be working behind the sceens during the import with CS4 so CS4 knows to handle the Cineform files better.

With NeoScen, you will always have the yellow bar, but you do not have to render.
To get ride of the yellow bar, you will need Prospect.

Once the importer is done, the playback should be a little better, but in will never be perfectly smooth. Prospect does that. I just set my quality to draft and it helps a lot.

Andy Urtusuastegui
February 20th, 2009, 10:32 AM
First, be sure to unintall BEFORE installing the new version.

In CS4, Cineform files are not optimized yet. The importer is not done yet. The importer will make CS4 work smoother and more inteligently with Cineform files.

When Cineform finishes the importer, it will be included in an update, like 1.1x. When you install the update, the importer is installed as part of the program. When you import Cineform files it will be the same process and not look any different but the importer will be working behind the sceens during the import with CS4 so CS4 knows to handle the Cineform files better.

With NeoScen, you will always have the yellow bar, but you do not have to render.
To get ride of the yellow bar, you will need Prospect.

Once the importer is done, the playback should be a little better, but in will never be perfectly smooth. Prospect does that. I just set my quality to draft and it helps a lot.

Ann Bens
February 20th, 2009, 11:34 AM
OK thanks for the info, i must have misread the info in this thread:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/cineform-software-showcase/143858-crash-cs4-w-neo-scene.html
"CS4 should work fine", it must be only for the Canon.

David Newman
February 20th, 2009, 11:59 AM
CS4 works "fine" with the Video for Window codec, as good as CS4 works with any other third party codec, which is pretty awlful. CS4 is simply poorly optimizied for VFW. This is what the importer addresses, out soon.

Gary Brun
February 21st, 2009, 07:12 AM
I cant wait for the beta... I needed it yesterday :)

Brad Pritchett
February 24th, 2009, 07:08 PM
I'm worried that I may have misunderstood this product.

I purchased Neo with the expectation that it would help my editing of my Canon 5D Mark II MOV files in CS4. From what I'm reading on many of the Canon forums, support for this camera in Neo has been greatly anticipated. My experience with the product and what I'm reading on this forum are making me question if I really understand how this works.

My experience has been this:
I bought Neo yesterday and attempted converting a 450MB 5DM2 MOV file today. The file took 30 minutes to convert and resulted in a 3.4GB AVI file which crashed CS4 when I tried to import it.

I'm running a workstation with a 2.6Ghz Core i7 proc and 9GB of RAM. Should the conversion process take this long and result in a file over 750% bigger than the original?

From what I'm reading here, if I ever get CS4 to import the NEO AVI without the importer process server crashing, there will be a yellow bar on the video unless I purchase Prospect. Do I understand that correctly??? Is there any value I can get out of using Neo to create my source files for editing 5D Mark II content in CS4?

I'm extremely confused here and am very worried that I just blew $129.

Thanks,
BP

David Newman
February 24th, 2009, 07:32 PM
Did you see if there was a old CFHD importer installed here C:\Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\CS4\MediaCore. If so delete it. Now your CS4 will work.

File size will grow when there is a lot of sharp detail. Yet with the soft focus of shallow depth of field that the 5D can generate we typically see only 2-3X increase in size.

Something is going wrong on you PC hoeever, as you should be seeing faster than 1:1 conversion times. That clip should have converted in 45-50 seconds. Can you link us the file?

Keith Paisley
February 24th, 2009, 07:43 PM
I'm worried that I may have misunderstood this product.

I purchased Neo with the expectation that it would help my editing of my Canon 5D Mark II MOV files in CS4. From what I'm reading on many of the Canon forums, support for this camera in Neo has been greatly anticipated. My experience with the product and what I'm reading on this forum are making me question if I really understand how this works.

My experience has been this:
I bought Neo yesterday and attempted converting a 450MB 5DM2 MOV file today. The file took 30 minutes to convert and resulted in a 3.4GB AVI file which crashed CS4 when I tried to import it.

I'm running a workstation with a 2.6Ghz Core i7 proc and 9GB of RAM. Should the conversion process take this long and result in a file over 750% bigger than the original?

From what I'm reading here, if I ever get CS4 to import the NEO AVI without the importer process server crashing, there will be a yellow bar on the video unless I purchase Prospect. Do I understand that correctly??? Is there any value I can get out of using Neo to create my source files for editing 5D Mark II content in CS4?

I'm extremely confused here and am very worried that I just blew $129.

Thanks,
BP

The benefit of Neo Scene/Cineform is that when everything is working properly, the Cineform HD codec is *much* easier to edit/cut with than the native H.264 files that the 5D MK II generates. Assuming you used the default settings for the codec (medium quality), the cineform output files should be very close to the same file size as the source files.

What you've described sounds very similar to a bug that I observed. On two different machines, using Neo Scene I transcoded the exact same file (about 127MB) with the exact same cineform codec settings. One machine produced a cineform file that was about 131MB, while the other machine generated a cineform file that was 736MB. I filed a trouble ticket last week but it hasn't been resolved yet.

I am most thankful that Cineform decided to support the 5d Mk II with their "low end" Neo Scene product, but it seems like there are a few glitches that need to be worked out, as I am having a problem with Neo Scene crashing on the same machine that produced the oversized file and another problem involving truncated video (observed on both machines).

Brad Pritchett
February 24th, 2009, 11:31 PM
I just tried another MOV file. This one is 340MB. The conversion just passed 10 minutes and the output AVI is 1.4GB.

I searched my CS4 plugins folder for any *CFHD* files and found nothing.

I'll open a ticket on this tomorrow. I hope that Cineform can get NeoScene working.

Julian Frost
February 25th, 2009, 04:51 PM
I have the same problem and have opened a ticket with Cineform Support.

MOV files converted by Neo Scene are 5-8 times their original size as AVIs and the conversion takes a long time, much, much slower than real time. A 60MB MOV file from the 5D mk II ends up as a nearly 500MB AVI file after conversion with Neo Scene.

See also page 2 of this thread 143677 for more info. Several people are having similar problems.

Julian

Brad Pritchett
February 26th, 2009, 06:59 PM
I was having this issue,too, and things started getting worse and worse. At first, WMP began playing back my converted AVI's in slo-mo, then WMP began crashing on the converted files. Ultimately, I decided to reload the OS and start from scratch.

Everything worked as expected until I loaded Nero 7.11.10 (the whole suite), then all the problems came back (exceptionally long conversions & HUGE converted files). I uninstalled Nero and the problems went away. Then, I installed only Nero Burning ROM, thinking that some of the codecs used by Nero WAV editor or Nero Recode may be stepping on Neo. The problems resurfaced.

So, this seems to be pretty compelling evidence that Nero and Neo Scene don't play well together.

I've opened a ticket with Cineform (David, I'm looking for the value that paying you $30 more for your product than your resellers charge gets me). I'll post any results from that ticket here.

Does anyone else have Nero and NeoScene on the same machine?

Julian Frost
February 26th, 2009, 07:58 PM
Very interesting, Brad!!

My "Messy" system has Nero 5 (I think?) on it, which includes Nero Burning ROM, Nero Showtime and a few other apps. The Messy system has the problem we've all talked about here.

My "Clean" system does not have Nero installed. It does not have the problems.

You may be on to something. Good catch. I'll update my Cineform ticket with this information.

Julian

David Newman
February 26th, 2009, 09:15 PM
Good find, I'll install Nero to see if I can break things.

David Newman
February 26th, 2009, 10:07 PM
No such, luck Nero 9 and Neo Scene are work fine together on my home PC.

Keith Paisley
February 26th, 2009, 11:16 PM
The benefit of Neo Scene/Cineform is that when everything is working properly, the Cineform HD codec is *much* easier to edit/cut with than the native H.264 files that the 5D MK II generates. Assuming you used the default settings for the codec (medium quality), the cineform output files should be very close to the same file size as the source files.

What you've described sounds very similar to a bug that I observed. On two different machines, using Neo Scene I transcoded the exact same file (about 127MB) with the exact same cineform codec settings. One machine produced a cineform file that was about 131MB, while the other machine generated a cineform file that was 736MB. I filed a trouble ticket last week but it hasn't been resolved yet.

I am most thankful that Cineform decided to support the 5d Mk II with their "low end" Neo Scene product, but it seems like there are a few glitches that need to be worked out, as I am having a problem with Neo Scene crashing on the same machine that produced the oversized file and another problem involving truncated video (observed on both machines).

I need to post an update on this - with all of the testing I did, I just realized that the filesizes I reported above were for one of the files where I was observing the video truncation issue. That issue has suddenly cleared up on my "clean" virtual machine install but it remains on my main OS install (even after deinstalling Nero...). The actual filesize of the FULL Cineform HD transcoded clip ended up being 231MB (with medium quality). So if you're transcoding videos with Neo Scene and they're nearly 2x the size of the source video, then I think that's probably correct.

Keith Paisley
February 26th, 2009, 11:34 PM
No such, luck Nero 9 and Neo Scene are work fine together on my home PC.

Ok, I can now report that I removed Nero Suite 7.x from my system and successfully transcoded one of the large (3.26GB) 5d Mk II clips that was previously crashing Neo Scene. The final filesize of the cineform file (medium quality, no smart rendering) was 5.67GB.

I also tried encoding the one file that was resulting in truncated video and that seems to be working too.

So far, so good. Hopefully Cineform can figure out why Neo Scene can't co-exist with Nero 7. I have noticed one or two other minor issues that I will mention in another thread/trouble ticket.

Amish Solanki
February 28th, 2009, 12:21 AM
I just bought NeoScene a day or two ago. I'm using HV20 files, captured and converted to 24p with NeoScene.

Running CS4 with the 4.0.1 update. I've found now since using the NeoScene converted files, ImporterProcessServer.exe crashes on me every now and then. Either at the start, or just sometimes right in the middle of editing.

Brad Pritchett
February 28th, 2009, 08:09 AM
I just bought NeoScene a day or two ago. I'm using HV20 files, captured and converted to 24p with NeoScene.

Running CS4 with the 4.0.1 update. I've found now since using the NeoScene converted files, ImporterProcessServer.exe crashes on me every now and then. Either at the start, or just sometimes right in the middle of editing.

I was having the same problem a few days ago, but the ImporterProcessServer would die during NeoScene file import. At least you have been able to begin editing them.

David Newman (from Cineform) suggested the following:
"...Remove any file call *CFHD*.prm from
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\CS4\MediaCore"

Unfortunately, I didn't have any files matching that description. For my situation, the fix was to reload my OS & applications, being careful not to pollute my codec pool with any unnecessary codecs.

Your issue may be different, but mine appears to have been caused by another application which interfered with NeoScene's ability to convert the 5D MII MOV's. The resulting AVI's were somehow tainted and would make the ImporterProcessServer blow up.

Check for David's fix above. It that doesn't fix you up, I suggest opening a case with Cineform. They've been responsive within 24 hours for me.

David Newman
February 28th, 2009, 10:23 AM
Amish,

We don't have a report of that issue. Please file a trouble ticket with CineForm Support (http://www.cineform.com/support).

Amish Solanki
February 28th, 2009, 12:48 PM
Thanks guys for the quick input. I actually did put in a ticket initially (got a reply back about the CFHD file), and checked for that file, but nothing was there.

I'd got to being able to bring in the files, (put on timeline, and got a yellowbar on the top). The playback was extremely choppy however. After I put in some transitions etc (had to render) the playback was a little better.

It eventually came to a point where it just kept crashing. I tried to export some a short 20sec clip using Media Encoder, and again it kept crashing.

I've removed CS4 all together as of right now. I also noticed I had quicktime alternative installed (I've had vista 64x installed since Nov 2006). So I'm really just removing all 'crap' that may be installed. Yes I figure I should probably get a new computer/reinstall windows, but so far it's been running fine for me (my system is a dual opteron 1.8g oc'd to 2.4g with 4GB of ram).

So I'm gonna remove whatever I can from my system, reinstall CS4, and give it another go. I'm taking a guess I should install cineform AFTER cs4 has been installed?

Ann Bens
March 3rd, 2009, 02:39 PM
Finally NeoScene (1.1.2) for CS4 is out. Waited nearly 1.5 month and what a disappointment it turn out. I am getting this ImporterProcessServer.exe crach during NeoScene file import also.

David Newman (from Cineform) suggested the following:
"...Remove any file call *CFHD*.prm from
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\CS4\MediaCore"
Nowhere to be found.

Brand new machine i7-940 (custum made), 12 gig RAM and vista 64. Did manage to run a few clips. Very smooth even with some effects.

Amish Solanki
March 3rd, 2009, 03:47 PM
Finally NeoScene (1.1.2) for CS4 is out. Waited nearly 1.5 month and what a disappointment it turn out. I am getting this ImporterProcessServer.exe crach during NeoScene file import also.

David Newman (from Cineform) suggested the following:
"...Remove any file call *CFHD*.prm from
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\CS4\MediaCore"
Nowhere to be found.

Brand new machine i7-940 (custum made), 12 gig RAM and vista 64. Did manage to run a few clips. Very smooth even with some effects.


As per David's post here (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/1020639-post24.html) regarding my same problem with the ImporterProcessServer.exe issue, it's Adobe's issue.

The odd thing is this doesn't happen if I don't use cineform files.

Ann Bens
March 3rd, 2009, 05:49 PM
i filed a bug report at Adobe.