Hi all,
I've read some posts here and have a couple of questions to David Newman and to all in the forum.

A bit of myself:
I've edited on the last 5 /6 years with:
PC Win2000 + Premiere 6.5 + Targa 3000 (YUV i/o) + Combustion + 8x SCSI RAID 0 (for video)
Betacam J-30 SDI (+ SDI-->YUV from ADAPT) and my camera is a Sony Z1E
Sony monitor PVM-20L4 with YUV in (not SDI or 1394 options)
On the last 2 years I capture/edit also with CS3 on a laptop. Targa never worked properly with 1394 inputs.

The Targa works terrific with YUV and DV (4 layers in RealTime).
Not so good with MPEG-I frame - unstable - so I've used this option twice.

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Yesterday the worst happend: my RAID 0 with 8 SCSI drives as one faulty ... ...
You can imagine...!

I was planning to upgrade soon, but not that sooner.
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For some reason I had think to move to Matrox AXIO or RT-X2 ($€ dependable), but lately this seems to be NOT my first option.

And I've rememberd the CineForm soft.

For the moment 98% of may source material will be the one shooted on HDV with the Z1 camera. I will edit 30% in DV and start editing the other 70% in HD (from the HDV)
Some material (for SD projects) will come from DigitalBETACAM

What I would like to know:

- DV or HDV captured in PremierePro is around 15G/h.
With CineForm, 1h of HDV, how long will be on disk?

-With a good PC and a 'decent' RAID 3 or 5, how many layers will play back on RealTime? (±)

-What board for I/O will give me the best results?
I would like to have YUV for SD and YUV/HDMI/... for HD on a 1920x1080 consumer TV (ex. Sony BRAVIA)

-What RAID do you recommend? Internal or External ? - I'm not ritch ... ...

-For PremierePro CS4 + Cineform + HDV source, what graphic card do you advise?
is a GTX295 good enouth or do I REALLY need a Quadro FX or Quadro CX.
Again, I'm not ritch...

- I'm thinking in the ProspectHD with a bit of future in mind. Is the correct choice?

In resume, for my case, what's the best configuration that you advise me to have 0 problems?
Please remember that my Targa is still working bulet-proof. The problem is the Raid0...

I've forgot the word RENDER in Premiere.
But I do know it very well in Combustion... ...


Thanks in advance for your answer.
Sincerely
Carlos

Hello Carlos,

DV or HDV captured in PremierePro is around 15G/h.
With CineForm, 1h of HDV, how long will be on disk?

Depends on the Cineform quality you set for capture.

-With a good PC and a 'decent' RAID 3 or 5, how many layers will play back on RealTime? (±)

I think on a fast processor quad core its about 4-5 layers of 1080.

-What board for I/O will give me the best results?
I would like to have YUV for SD and YUV/HDMI/... for HD on a 1920x1080 consumer TV (ex. Sony BRAVIA)

AJA cards allow capture and playback

-What RAID do you recommend? Internal or External ? - I'm not ritch ... ...

Internal raids are fine raid 0 data across all drives so if a drive fails all the contents of lost.

Raid 5, allows 1 drive to become corrupt or dsmaged without loosing all your data.

-For PremierePro CS4 + Cineform + HDV source, what graphic card do you advise?
is a GTX295 good enouth or do I REALLY need a Quadro FX or Quadro CX.
Again, I'm not ritch...

Cineform does not need a grapics card to operate, so it's upto you which card. I always used Nvidia cards and these work fine. However I have heard good things about ATI cards as well.

I hope that helps?

Leo

Leo, thanks for your answer.

The need for a new machine is now extreme.
Yesterday my old (5½ yo) RAID 0 with 8x SCSI drives as became damaged and I have now only 5xHD working, with a total of 170GB !!
Not enought!!!
I should not invest any money on a PC with 6 years old.

******************

One good info on your answer is that CineForm "does not need a grapics card to operate".
This means that Premiere/Combustion/AfterEffects will not use anything from the GPU to work with CineForm?!
That means that a "regular" GTX280 will work properly, and avoid the costs of a Quadro.?
Good!

About the data recorded on disk.
In your experiance, with the 'Best Quality' option, an hour of HDV will give how many GB ?

If I can play 4-5 layers of HD with a 'decent' external RAID it will be terrific.


Do you use an AJA card? What XENA model?
Happy with it?
What can you say?

How do you preview HD signal?
On a PC monitor, a consumer TV or a HD broadcast monitor?


My question on RAID was brand/model.
I feel that I will need an external RAID 5 or 6 connected by fiber channel or similar.
What option do you use/recommend ? As inexpensive as 'possible'.


Do you feel that, for ex., a HP Z800 is MUTCH better than a self assembled?
Does it deserves the extra money?
Self-assembled with 1st rate components!


Do you work ALWAYS with CineForm?
Are you going to keep it for a while, or on your next machine you will drop it, because of the new speed processing is increasing?

Be aware that I've never used it.
On paper the concept is quite appealing, but in reality I don't now.

I will give a try on a demo.
I have Premiere CS3 on a laptop.
If I have an increase in speed with it, I should have better performance on a good workstation.
But on my laptop the video is on an external drive by USB2 or FW400.

Thanks for your attention.
Carlos

Hello Carlos,

One good info on your answer is that CineForm "does not need a grapics card to operate".
This means that Premiere/Combustion/AfterEffects will not use anything from the GPU to work with CineForm?!
That means that a "regular" GTX280 will work properly, and avoid the costs of a Quadro.?
Good!

I think any of the ATI and Nvidia cards are fine.

About the data recorded on disk.
In your experiance, with the 'Best Quality' option, an hour of HDV will give how many GB ?

I work at High quality when I am working with HDV, Cineform uses Wavlet compression so the file could get bigger or smaller depending how complex the video is in terms of details etc. I finishd a project recentley 1080p uncompressed 422 50i from a Super 16mm commercial. I converted all the Uncompressed files into Cineform these were more managable and looked identical as quarter of the size.

If I can play 4-5 layers of HD with a 'decent' external RAID it will be terrific.


Do you use an AJA card? What XENA model?
Happy with it?
What can you say?

I use a Blackmagic Multibridge Eclipse, it still does not work properley under cs4, neither does it on cs3, I know many peope have success witthe cards but I am fedup of the bugs. Iam looking at getting an AJA Xena card LHE soon I have heard they are great boards with really good support. Plus using those cards you have a complete Cineform solution capture/timeline monitoring. I had a audio glitch with Blackmagic a while ago took them about 6 months to fix the issue. I am not sure if it was firmware on the card they have or drivers. But anytime I had audio with video in a DV project or uncompressed project, as soon as video played the audio monitorng would be all clickly and choppping like a stuttered sound totally un-useable! If I turned the video track off it played audio fine. I am looking at selling my Eclipse card and going to buy a XENA LHE.

How do you preview HD signal?
On a PC monitor, a consumer TV or a HD broadcast monitor?

I mainly do the editing and cutting using the computer monitor as I am not doing mission critical grading etc. Then I send the project out to be onlined on AVID.

My question on RAID was brand/model.
I feel that I will need an external RAID 5 or 6 connected by fiber channel or similar.
What option do you use/recommend ? As inexpensive as 'possible'.

I use a Caldigit HDONE 2tb unit, works great upto 10bit uncompressed 422 upwards to 2k, although for Cineofrm its a lot less overhead needed so I think a fast internal raid raided drives with your motherboard should just work fine.


Do you feel that, for ex., a HP Z800 is MUTCH better than a self assembled?
Does it deserves the extra money?
Self-assembled with 1st rate components!

I alwyes went for self builds, to save money etc then had compatibility and other issues, I am now running a HP xw8600 workstation 8gb of Ram, Quad core Xeon 3ghz and all it works fine now with cs4 under 64bit with CIneform Prospect HD, although the realtime engine is not ready yet it's very stable.

With the HP if anything goes wrong I have a 3 year warranty. I heard the new Z series of workstations are great.

Do you work ALWAYS with CineForm?
Are you going to keep it for a while, or on your next machine you will drop it, because of the new speed processing is increasing?

I have worked with Cineform files for a while, the file sizes are much smaller and I like the workflow features that Cineform provide such as the HDLink to make a new Sd master from mymaster 1080 or 720 Cineform video file. Even though processors speed will increase I could easily use Uncompressed HD like I do now, I just converted all my Uncompressed 10bit 422 1080p files into Cineform as quite simply I nedded to capture at the highest quality via SDI from HDCAM, but Blackmagic does not support the capture using this protocol. So thats the reason why.

I can't suggest anything other then "Cineform" to use for your projects I have had huge success with Cineform files plus the support youget from David, and Jake is second to none in terms of the product, bug fixs and they are open and honest with their customers. Not all companies are like this. They have a great product and people behind it!

If you need to work with Red files or naything bigger then 1080p, then you will be looking at Prospect 4k under Windows.

I hope that helps? let me know if you need anything else?

Leo

Leo,

That's an answer in the way I like. Thanks a lot.

I have to get my new machine around October/November.
I've downloaded yesterday the Prospect HD trial to test.

I have had a small issue and changed a couple of e-mails with Jake.

I work on this industry for around 25 years.
I've worked in several companys with D1, Abekas A84, A57, Digibetas, etc., etc.

I've talked with a LOT of technitians, and the level of support that Yesterday Jake has provided me (accuracy and SPEED) is very, very rare in this industry.

If they act the same way after we buy, believe me, they have a client!

I have to finish a small project, and will try it better after that.
I Will come back in a few days to this forum.


Best regards
Carlos Manuel