Yes, here are the beta releases, just in time for NAB. It has been a crazy busy few months, working on v4, new web site, Neo 3D (just announced), FirstLight (just annouced) and launching one more software product at NAB (not annouced.)

Regarding v4
These a not feature complete -- with more CS4 integration (Prospect) and First Light following shortly (this will be on show at NAB.) The readme file hadn;t be update to clearly list the changes. Fortunately the AVCHD and Canon 5D is in all these products now, so have fun.

Prospect HD
http://02bb6aa.netsolhost.com/downloads/ProspectHDv400b204-090416.zip

Prospect 4K
http://02bb6aa.netsolhost.com/downloads/Prospect4Kv400b204-090416.zip

Neo HD
http://02bb6aa.netsolhost.com/downloads/NeoHDv400b204-090416.zip

Neo 4K
http://02bb6aa.netsolhost.com/downloads/Neo4Kv400b204-090416.zip


P.S. As all of CineForm will be in Vegas next week (half are already there setting up) we won't be able to offer too much beta support until next Friday and after.

P.P.S These versions are 15-day trials. We had to that as the have new components we have licensed off others that can only go to licensef v4 users. For those of you how are due a free upgrade or pre-purchased v4, you will receive a new serial number for activation -- After NAB. These betas can be activated into you perminant verisons, so install away if you NOT in the middle of a time critical project. Within the 15-days we intend to you get you running First Light, which will change the way you post.

Good news! So you actually pulled it off...big congrads and a week in the Bahamas after NAB!

Questions:

It appears these betas can be installed over the version 3 of Prospect 4K/HD? If so, can they be rolled back to the version 3 if there are serious probs (heaven forbid, slap my mouth...)?

Can they (should they) be used with CS3?

I see no presets after installing a HD version on a CS4 machine, nor any CF choice for outputing, so is it possible to render out a CF file? IOW, can we use this for real work?

Congrats and good luck at NAB!

I can't wait to try it out!

Simon

After d/ling the v4 beta, NeoHD still doesn't work with XDCAM HD files ;o(

I am on board to try this but I need to know how it affects the current version of Prospect running on CS3 on my machine before I move forward. Any advice?

Hmm, odd. Eset NOD32 says the Prospect zips are infected...

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But turning off the Web scanner, downloading the zip file, and then scanning the file locally, comes up clean. Eset weirdness, but NOD32 won't let me submit the file for analysis, for some reason, to take care of a false positive. *sigh*

Thanks,
Matt

Bill,
We will try check the XDCAM HD support today -- that shouldn't have changed.

CS3 Support:
This should be solid, uninstall PHD/P4K v3, and install v4. This is ready to go for real work. Prospect HD use know have full Active Metadata support within Premiere.

CS4 Support:
It has the importer and all the transitions and filters ported so exiting projects will now load in CS4, although CS4 has a bug rendering fields backward on upper field first sequences (it is a new CS4 bug, that we will have to work around.) Progressive sequences work fine. The new media encoder rendering module didn't make the cut for this build, although I've seen it working well in house (so very close.) You can export using the CineForm VfW codec as a stop gap, the exporter release. Under After Effects the Export Module is working fine. No presets in Premiere until the play module (accelerator) is ported.

Hmm, odd. Eset NOD32 says the Prospect zips are infected...

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I'm also having wierdness with the zip file.
Attempting extraction with two different apps, both lock up and become unresponsive when trying to unzip the ProspectHD file. The extracted file nonetheless appears in the folder, and seems to install normally.
However, on converting an EX1 clip to CFHD with HDLink, although the conversion process looks normal, when I look in the target folder there is no CFHD.avi- the folder is empty.
This is a new system with Vista 64/ CS4 and no prior CF software onboard.

I have test XDCAM HD and Ex1 files and for the conversions are working fine.

Robert, it sounds like you have "Use Capture Location for converted files" set, so there are going to the new directory. The path is show in the Converted Clips window, and you can double click to directly play the new AVI.

David..

Thanx for taking the time in your schedule to look at XDCAM HD files. I am referring to XDCAM HD files at 50 or 100mbps from Convergent-Design's Flash XDR. Any attempts to convert one of these files produces a corrupt directory folder, which crashes Windows XP, essentially disabling the target drive folder. Avid Media Composer 3.5, Edius 5, and Vegas 8 will all open these native files without complaint.

I filed a trouble ticket and was told CF knows what the problem is, but, that you don't have the time to fix it. I was hoping a fix would be incorporated in CFHD v4

There has been too much stuff on our plate to look at Convergent-Design's Flash recorder -- general XDCAM-HD files work fine. Once the dust settles with CS4 and NAB we will get this addressed.

Robert, it sounds like you have "Use Capture Location for converted files" set, so there are going to the new directory. The path is show in the Converted Clips window, and you can double click to directly play the new AVI.

Good call- actually I had it unchecked, so it didn't send it where I wanted.
Video conversion is good, but no audio- there's an audio track, but it's empty.
I'm probably not going to make real headway with v 4 until the alpha is released.

Alpha is before beta. :) Also the conversion features are pretty mature, and EX1 audio conversions are working fine directly from the mp4s (nothing has changed in that area of HDLink.)

EX1 conversion is good now- I think my glitch was in CS4- but unable to get audio with AVCHD conversion. I have the Haali Splitter installed, which was all I had needed for AVCHD with CS3/Prospect v3.

I must be doing something wrong. I have both CS3 & CS4 installed (Vista 64) and previously I only used NEO HD, with the beta importer for CS4. Everything worked fine. I uninstalled the beta CFHD importer files, including the DLL. I uninstalled NEO HD. I installed the Prospect HD v4 beta. The importing of both CFHD avi & mov files, in Premiere CS4 still works fine, but in Premiere CS3, I don't get any acceleration (nor do I see any new files installed in any of the CS3 folders, except for the importer prm files). There are no Cineform editing modes available, so that may explain the problem. CS3 previews roughly at the same rate as with NEO HD v3 installed. Does the v4 setup program work properly if both CS3 & CS4 are installed?

Has anyone else gotten acceleration with CS3 and has both CS3 & CS4 installed?

EDIT: I manually decompressed the CS3 files from the Prospect v4 setup exe (with 7-Zip) and installed them manually in the CS3 folder. It more or less works now, except for CFHD MOV files, which preview upside-down and reddish. I missed have missed a file to install.

I have tried the Beta on Vista x64 with CS4 and on XP x64 using CS3.

From AE CS4 my 32 bit projects give absolutely stunning renders.
I just upgraded Premier CS4 to 4.0.1 and all the hassles I had with it have disappeared. I can capture from HDLink and bring files into a project. They scrub and play without a problem.

There seems to be more functionality under XP using CS3. I get the Prospect splash screen when I load an old project. I can even capture using CF direct from Premier although it crashes after transcoding. CF didn't even see my camera (a Sony V1) using 3.4.9.193. Old projects open in Vista CS4 quite happily but crash in XP with CS3. The project will open if the links to CF files are broken but crashes when I reestablish the links. New CF projects do the same thing when I import CF files.

So do you recommend PPCS4 for vista 64 with cineform Propsect HD beta for a new workstation?

Or should I wait until cineform is an official release?

Sounds like it is too buggy still.

:(

I would wait a while if you can. Its looking good but there is a way to go yet. If your in a hurry then CF and CS4 on Vista will work in the not too distant future.

A quick rant; CS4 when it works is awesome but CS4 has got to be the worst software release I have ever used and I go back to when computers didn't even have a hard drive. The Premier 4.0.1 update fixed all the things that Adobe told me I had wrong with my systems. Not a big surprise to me really I built them.

Using the PHD 4 beta:

I've got a bunch of projects from PPro 1.5 w/Aspect and/or Prospect. Can't really afford to lose all that invested time/effort, so needed to see what PHD 4 with CS4 was going to do to my precious...(es)

Today, I reconverted the M2Ts to CFHD AVIs, High quality for my most recent project. I opened the project as-is in PPro CS4. I went through all the "where is this file, where is that file" dialogs, and got everything all linked up again. Everything linked. No complaints about missing effects or anything (although I don't use a lot of effects...). And my sequences all play.

Ok, definitely need the RT engine to play the RT effects...when the color balancing/correcting effects are turned on, the playback is really choppy. c'mon NAB! Hurry up and END already!!

I think the presets and the RT engine are the outstanding items, and I can live for a short time without those. Coupla days, at least! ;) But I REALLY need my activation code!!!

I have one project that I'm editing, started out with CS4 & PHD 4 beta. It's going along pretty well. I haven't added any color correcting, so it's still playing along pretty well (two-camera sequence).

All-in-all, it's been a pretty positive experience so far. I think it helps that I hadn't bought CS4 until after all the updates came out, so I can't really relate to anyone's CS4 pain...

Oh, and the AVIs will play in Windows Media Player again on Vista 64 (they wouldn't with my original version of PHD).

Thanks,
Matt

:(

Darn, sounds like I still should wait.

And wait is what I will do.

Thanks,

Simon

EDIT: I manually decompressed the CS3 files from the Prospect v4 setup exe (with 7-Zip) and installed them manually in the CS3 folder. It more or less works now, except for CFHD MOV files, which preview upside-down and reddish. I missed have missed a file to install.


Oops, my mistake. The file was a QT MOV file, which of course won't work in a Cineform project. CFHD MOV files work fine.

Great job guys! I'm pretty sure that I will be upgrading to Prospect HD v4 from NEO HD, when it's released.

If there are no cineform presets with this release what CS4 preset should I use to edit cineform files previously captured with prospect-3 or aspect?

You will have to create your own for the time being....

How is activating going to affect current activations? I have Prospect installed on the same PC twice, once for 32bit XP and once for 64bit Vista. In installed the beta and it obviously needs to be activated within 15 days. So....what if I go back to 3.xx is that still valid or does it need re-activated?

Are our activations reset after the latest update? I'm confused how to deal with this.

My computer kept crashing when importing cineform files on VISTA 64 business version using PPCS3 and the beta version of Prospect HD. This is a new machine.

So I installed the 3.4 version of Prospect HD from January and it worked!

Whew!!!!!!

I can't wait until the new version has all the bugs fixed.

Simon

P.P.S These versions are 15-day trials. We had to that as the have new components we have licensed off others that can only go to licensef v4 users. For those of you how are due a free upgrade or pre-purchased v4, you will receive a new serial number for activation -- After NAB. These betas can be activated into you perminant verisons, so install away if you NOT in the middle of a time critical project. Within the 15-days we intend to you get you running First Light, which will change the way you post.

Any word on the activation and new serial numbers for existing PHD 3 customers? Trial period is nearing its end...

Thanks,
Matt

So Adobe is coming out with a big update in May. Does this help or hurt the chances of Prospect HD compatible for PPCS4 coming out beforehand?

Simon