Hi David

Thanks for this. A Waifan would be good if it wasn't so expensive!

Is it possible (Speaking from real ignorance here!) to have small program written to interact with Xena and Prospect HD. Something that would just have the basic functions necessary for DDR?

Thanks

Trevor

If you're going to bypass Premiere, and have Xena and CineForm Prospect components talking to each other directly, you're really looking at a false economy.

Essentially you'd need to hire a very very competent DirectShow coder who has oodles of video experience. I would imagine that this will cost more than Premiere Pro.

If your sources are HD-SDI or component based, the Xena-Premiere-Prospect combo is the most cost efficient way of going about things if you are building your own PC.

I am intrigued about your ITX suggestion from a personal standpoint. Do you have any motherboards in mind?

Thanks Richard

I didn't have any particular ITX board in mind, just checking out the options.

Trevor

Hi

Does anyone know what the difference between Prospect HD and Sheer Video? There is a lot of difference in price! But what else?

Thanks

Trevor

One is codec, one is post production solution. Sheer is a good archive codec, but doesn't solve much for completing your post-production (particularly under Premiere Pro.) Prospect HD comes with a post-production ready codec, but that is only one element in an integrated suite of tools. To date I believe Prospect HD is the only 10-bit compressed post solution for the Adobe Production Suite -- and it is real time.

Will Cineform be updating Prospect to support the new AJA 2K capture card?

I know Prospect already supports the LH, LHe and HS AJA cards but the greater range of features on the new card seem to provide some future proofing for higher end capture (4:4:4 dual link and 2K)

At some point we are likely to add Xena 2K to the supported cards list. No annoucements at this time.

Hey David, enjoying our Prospect HD, been cutting lots of stuff with it, and the HDLink ROCKS, us it all the time with the hvx

DO I need any updates to HDLink or Prospect HD? I want to keep with the latest builds..;)

Also, I have noted some jaggy edges on the resize of 720p from the hvx to 1280x720 in HDLink, if I shoot 1080p and downsize to 720p in HDLink I don't see the jaggy edges...Could you find a solution for a higher quality resize from the native 960x720 to the 1280x720?

scratch the last post, I jsut read your blog about 1080p vs. 720p hvx recording, thanks!

We have a fix for the 720p to 180p HXV upres in the next build of Prospect HD. Looks really nice now, although like my blog states you don't benefit much posting HXV footage at 1080p. We are still a couple builds before will will do a mass email to all Prospect HD users and get everyone upgraded.

Prospect HD Enhancement - Support Sony HVR-V1U HDMI-->HD SDI w/3:2 pulldown removal

For a background, Sony is introducing the first TRUE 24p camcorder under 10,000 (Panasonic and Canon cameras use interlaced CCDs). I am interested in purchasing a Sony HVR-V1U HDV camcorder when it comes out.

However, I am interested in capturing video directly from the HDMI port rather than compressed HDV video from the Firewire port. Convergent Designs makes an HDMI to HD-SDI converter just for this purpose that would output HD SDI directly to a Aja Xena card.

Problem

Sony captures progressive full-resolution 1920x1080, 24p, 10 bit 4:2:2 color data, but I believe they output it to HDMI with 3:2 pulldown so the converter would be sending output in 1080 60i rather than 24p to the HD-SDI output.

In your Aspect and Prospect HD pages you mention support for special Sony HDV Cineframe CF24 and CF30 modes. However, as you mention in your Aspect HD discussion, your conversion method from 60i to 24p is adquate but loses resolution and that there are better 60i to 24p solutions out there.

This new camcorder does not use Sony's HDV CINEFRAME CF24 output like the older Z1U, A1U, or FX1. This is HDMI full-resolution, uncompressed 1920x1080, 1080 60i, 10 bit 4:2:2 color output, and Sony embeds their 24p in the 60i stream with 3:2 pulldown. Prospect would need to be able to remove the 3:2 pulldown and restore the actual 24p material without the loss of resolution. I'm sure that it would require figuring out how the Sony HVR-V1U stored the information on the fly, to restore the original 24p material.

This may take an investment on your part but since Sony will no doubt introduce other camcorders with 24p and 3:2 pulldown to the HDMI port, the investment would surely be worth it.

Black Magic is introducing the Intensity for $249.00, http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity, an HDMI board that captures uncompressed full 1920x1080 4:2:2 10 bit output. If you supported this card directly in Aspect and Prospect HD, with 3:2 pulldown, this would be the ultimate LOW COST solution.

This may also be the ticket for Cineform to enter the Mac world supporting the Mac Pro too!

I hope you plan to support this card, but if you don't, then the HDMI to HD-SDI converter would be my second choice.

I would then be interested in the Convergent Design HD-Connect MI, HDMI to HD-SDI converter. Info is available at: http://www.convergent-design.com/CD_Products_HDConnectMI.htm

This converter could feed the AJA Xena card directly. If you could perform your 3:2 pulldown removal magic with Prospect HD, this would probably be a killer 10 bit combination.

Thanks.

We already support 60i to 24p extraction without any resolution loss over HDSDI in real-time, so you are good to go with Prospect HD Ingest and an AJA HDSDI I/O card. Within the capture interface you select 1920x1080i60 10-bit HDSDI, add the capture option to remove the 3-2 pulldown auotmatically. We are looking into the new Black Magic HDMI card as a capture device, yet AJA will still be our primary all-purpose HDSDI card.

We already support 60i to 24p extraction without any resolution loss over HDSDI in real-time, so you are good to go with Prospect HD Ingest and an AJA HDSDI I/O card. Within the capture interface you select 1920x1080i60 10-bit HDSDI, add the capture option to remove the 3-2 pulldown auotmatically. We are looking into the new Black Magic HDMI capture as a capture device, yet AJA will still be our primary all-purpose HDSDI card.

Thanks for your rapid response. I realize that HDSDI will always be your primary card, but I would guess that HDMI acquisition will probably end up as the acquisition method of choice for all under $3000 serious AVCHD and HDV camcorder users, whether Cineform chooses to participate or not. Afterall, Sony has HDMI on 3 low cost HD camcorders now with more to follow. I'm sure JVC, Canon, Pana etc. will follow suit in future HD camcorders.

I would also guess that HDMI will be more important to Aspect HD users than Prospect HD users. However the market has a way of changing rapidly while you're not looking.

I'm glad to hear that you are looking at HDMI capture. I think it would be good for your company. That's just my opinion.

I will be purchasing Prospect HD as soon as I have had a chance to test the new Sony HVR-V1U with an eval version of the Convergent HDMI converter and the trial version of Prospect HD in the real world.

I have high hopes for this combination with Prospect HD for our new film.

Thanks again, Dave.

Wow, I was just going to ask that question.

Let me add one...is there an HDMI I/O card for laptops???

If so...the Sony to Cineform via HDMI may become a new standard :)

We already support 60i to 24p extraction without any resolution loss over HDSDI in real-time, so you are good to go with Prospect HD Ingest and an AJA HDSDI I/O card. Within the capture interface you select 1920x1080i60 10-bit HDSDI, add the capture option to remove the 3-2 pulldown auotmatically. We are looking into the new Black Magic HDMI card as a capture device, yet AJA will still be our primary all-purpose HDSDI card.
Since AJA doesn't have plans for an HDMI interface, BlackMagic HDMI support would be necessary. At $250, dramatically lowers the price of acquistion; especially coupled with a $4800 camcorder.

I am having a problem converting mxf. files from my Firestore via HDLink, I can convert the video fine, but I am unable to convert the audio as well.
Any ideas on why this is?
Also when converting I was always able to get the log to come up, now it has disapeared on me and I cannot get it to load with HDLink, (the 'log' button does nothing)

Certainly fine a trouble ticket at cineform.com/support. Also check the you have an "AUDIO" directory in your "CONENTS" folder.

I am sure that the same revolutionary thinking that went into the development of cineform will lead to its usage with HDMI technology.
I am confident that cineform will reach the mass market of indie film producers.One of such routes will definitely be by closer integration with cheaper HDMI.

David, wonder what the latest status for the next release is?

Thanks

Dave

We went out a email blast to registered Prospect HD users for the latest version a week or two ago. I'll send you that information.

Cool, just sent you an email back. I never saw this email. Could someone make sure I am registered correctly. Thanks

Dave

David Taylor and David Newman,

I just watched the Quad Demo Video - Congratulations on the Real Time 4K support.

Anyone who wants to download the video should go to the Cineform home page and click on the link on the right hand side, under the 11/14/06 4K Real Time announcement.

Congratulations on the XBox announcement too.

-Geoff Murillo

Thanks, it has been a busy few months.

The presentation is pretty staggering and a real testament to the n-way threading technology. It's also a tantalising look at tomorrow's technology and workflow, today. Plus nice to put some names to faces :)

Out of curiosity, if the uncompressed workflow requires 1.7GB per second bandwidth, how much is this reduced by using the CineForm codec? What sort of benchmark do you get with the CineForm decoder on this system up against the benchmarks on your "four cores the merrier" blog entry? And what kind of HDD array is required to service this workflow?

For my own applications, 1080p/60 will be the next 'big thing'. Could a single Kentsfield take care of that in High Quality/Progressive?

The Xbox announcement is absolutely fascinating. I'm wondering what technology you had to develop there - I'm assuming the bulk of the Wafian's work is in ingesting 1080i/60 over HD-SDI and rescaling to 720p/24 on the fly?

"Out of curiosity, if the uncompressed workflow requires 1.7GB per second bandwidth, how much is this reduced by using the CineForm codec? What sort of benchmark do you get with the CineForm decoder on this system up against the benchmarks on your "four cores the merrier" blog entry? And what kind of HDD array is required to service this workflow?"

Think 1.7GB/s is based on RGB DPX files at 4096 x2048 x6 bytes per pixel at 36 fps (the max of the Dalsa camera.) 24p would be 1.2GB/s, and we are fine 10-bit LOG Bayer compresses to around 30MB/s -- remember RAW Bayer is a third of the source data than demosaiced RGB. A single stream is decodering around 40fps on 2.4GHz dual proc quad core (8 cores total.) We have been recommending a 3 drive RAID 0.

"For my own applications, 1080p/60 will be the next 'big thing'. Could a single Kentsfield take care of that in High Quality/Progressive?"

I expect it might for the fastest system, but we haven't tested that yet.

"The Xbox announcement is absolutely fascinating. I'm wondering what technology you had to develop there - I'm assuming the bulk of the Wafian's work is in ingesting 1080i/60 over HD-SDI and rescaling to 720p/24 on the fly?"

The work was split pretty evenly between Wafian and CineForm. The HR-1 uses a few of other video processing filters for pulldown extraction and scaling. However the scaling wasn't done on ingest.

Okay, got over the bug with PPro locking up. So, now I am trying to import my HDV tapes. These were taken with a Sony Z1 and HC1. So, I put a tape in, clip scene detect, and hit tape. So it scene detect captures correctly for about 7 minutes. Then nothing. I have tried over and over again, and even though I see the scenes changing, no changing of the name for the capture.
So, what is scene detect triggering off of? Could the Z1 and HC1 do different things to the tape. (I dont know which camera I used on what parts of the tape.) I have also had things lock up and seems like the only way to get things to work is to reboot. Not sure whats going on here, pretty random.

So, any thoughts on scene detect?

Thanks

Dave

I haven't heard of anything in this area. Please file a ticket. In the meantime you could try HDLink just in case there is a new bug -- although not much code has change in capture.

hello

this week I downloaded and installed the prospectHD trial and have a problem with premiere pro2 after processing some videos with virtualdub.

I'm not an expert just beginning, said that, I like to process videos with virtualdub aplying filters before editing with premiere. After some testing the problem basically is, saving a video with virtualdub selecting the cineform codec, if the video is equal or less than 1440x1080 the video is decoded correctly in ppro2, but if its bigger, 1920x1080 all I get in premiere pro2 is a black video or even a nice green lines. The problem only happens in premiere, in all other software the 1920x1080 videos are decoded correctly (including after effects), may be I'm doing something wrong

I've been using other codecs like alparysoft or huffyouv and work fine at 1920x1080.



regards

As Prospect HD is designed for 1920x1080 images it seems you have made a misstep. Never mix Aspect HD and Prospect HD installs as Aspect HD is only licenced to encode 1440x1080 images (so unintall Aspect HD before install Prosect HD.) To confirm a bug hasn't kept in, I download the trial of Prospect HD Edit, encoded a 1920x1080p23.976 with VirtualDub and it worked fine in Premiere Pro. So make sure your Prospect HD installed correctly and that you have a CineForm folder within the Adobe plug-ins directory : C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0\Plug-ins\en_US\CineForm. The plugin module that adds decoding support for 10-bit and 32-bit float I/O CineForm files is called im-CFHD_File_Import.prm. If either the whole directory or im-CFHD_File_Import.prm is missing, then you need to reinstall Prospect HD.

thanks I checked the folders and it seems some parts of aspecthd trial were there (I unsinstalled it before) deleted and uninstalled all ,then reinstalled prospecthd and now it works

regards

Cool. I just read about moving activation between machines, so I can edit while on the road or away. I understand about registering the second machine at your site. How flexible is the move? I assume that activation is similiar to other scemes (like the macromedia and right hemisphere products) that require an active internet connection to temporarily park the license on a server?

Something like that, and yes it does require an internet connection.

Peter, here's how re-assigning an activation works for all CineForm products. Yes, you MUST have an Internet connection, although you can manage the process from a different machine than your editing machine if that machine is not online.

1. Go to the CineForm activation page: www.cineform.com/register.html. This page will tell you exactly what you need to do to deactivate one machine.

2. Once the machine is deactivated (takes about two minutes, including gathering the requested information) you can immediately activate a different machine. Takes another one minute.

Nice. Thanks guys. I'm placing the order tommorrow.

I had a partially completed project done with PPro 1.5.1 and cineform encoded files. Some of those files were converted from a Pany HVX with 5.1 audio embedded, (don't know how I missed that setting). Anyway, I only needed the visuals so I disabled the audio for those clips.

Having upgraded to PPro 2.0 for Prospect, I then loaded the Prospect trial v2b (my purchased copy is still on back order). Upon opening or importing the PPro 1.5.1 project with the HVX files, PPro 2.0 would crash (disappearing magic trick).

Re-rendering a test file with the 5.1 stripped out of it proved to be the fix. I'm not sure if it's a PPro issue or cineform. A search turned up nothing on this issue.

Upgrading projects from 1.5.1 to 2.0 is not advisible for Premiere in general, although CineForm has no issues with this. As importing the project didn't fix the issue (normally that would) try isolating the problem; try importing the project with the media moved (so Premiere can't find it, you link it later) and also try importing the project into desktop mode (if that work import that project into a CineForm preset.) These tests will help determine if its is project or media related.

David, it was the audio stream in the HVX clips that was the culprit. I wasn't planning on upgrading to PPro 2 until learning about prospect having that recent requirement.

I moved the subject clips to a seperate folder and offlined them. The project loaded without a hitch.

I have to perform some color correction on the HVX stuff anyway, it will be interesting to see how this fares better on a 10bit timeline, though it's 8bit source.

I'm getting off subject, but wow... PPro 2... wow.

When using overlay in PPro 1.5.1 on an HDV project and overlay 1:1 preview is set, overlay works as expected. However, when doing so in a PPro 2 project with Prospect, I get an annoying flickering as the second monitor changes focus back and forth to the desktop. When ever I playback the timeline (spacebar), the focus changes to overlay and the video plays out. Hit stop, and it's back to the desktop. Annoying. In PPro 1.5.1 the overlay focus remains until I minimize or move away from the application (as it should).

Playback is also letterboxed on my LMD and not full screen as well. Not sure if it's the limitation of the graphics card, however I have a Quadro FX 3450. I also have the latest driver, v9.1.3.6.

Any suggestions?

On my second workstation, a Dell with Quadro FX 1000, forceware v84, the video overlay to second monitor keeps focus, however, when playing back from the timeline, the video flickers and switches to full screen. Once stopped it blanks out and then jumps back down to 3/4 size.

When I open the project as PPro 2 standard HDV, I get full focus 3/4 size video and no flicker, hesitation or jump. I'm ok with 3/4 sized video, it's the switching that is making overlay preview difficult. How is the prospect handling overlay different from PPro?

Yes, the overlay is handled differently for performance reasons. Of course Prospect HD/2K users should opt for the AJA output if they can as that output is perfect.

I understand. However, not all my projects are SDI but HDV. Aside from that, I think there is a conflict with the graphics card video overlay switched on and playing back video full screen option. If I enable video overlay with full screen playback disabled, I get nothing. Only if I have both options turned on with Prospect do I get this switching issue.

With PPro 2's own HD-SDI and HDV modes, I can have overlay on and full screen off and it works as expected.

HDV projects are not restricted from HDSDI output and monitoring. Most of our Prospect HD Edit users are editing HDV or P2 media.

If a particular mode is flat not working, that worth submitting a trouble ticket on. Otherwise when you get you Xena card all your concerns with vanish.

Yes. I have the Xena HS installed on one machine, I just can't preview from it until my HD-SDI option board arrives for my LMD monitor. Then I can use two monitors for the PC and preview full raster on a third via Xena (so yeah, problem goes away for that). It's just that I have a second machine for edits only, without a Xena, and was hoping to get by with overlay for that.

I'll wait till I get the aforementioned option board. I may just have to spring for another Xena. Growing pains. Ugh. Thanks for your help.

I'm in a process of converting some old SD Premiere Pro 1.51 slide show projects to PPro 2.0/ProspectHD. The old projects are imported to PPro 2.0 ones such that the timeline consists of offline files, and only then the files are linked to 8-bit Photoshop files having sRGB color space. As a result, the system gets very unstable and results in some sort of memory problem.

To avoid the problems I have to export every slide (PSD-file) first to CFHD avi and then rebuild the slide show one slide at time from the avi-files. Any ideas, what is going on, and how the problem could becircumvented?

The computer should have enough resources; It's the most powerful Intel Core 2 Duo machine with 4GB of memory, the work HD's are configured as raid, etc.

1.5.1 to 2.0 is not a reliable project immigration, I don't know why, but it is an issue with Premiere not the CineForm tools. You are correct in your discovery that CineForm AVIs can take fewer resources that image files. Your 4GB of memory unfortunately does not help 32-bit Windows applications, which can only address around 1.5GB each, so more memory only helps you run more applications. So to avoid the Premiere low memory warnings, you may need to break your project up into reels that are edited separately before splicing flatten exports together (this a how feature projects should be done anyway.)

Been Pushing Prospect HD to the MAX ! for the past 3 months, neglecting
my wife . Cutting HDV Footage / 12 tapes down to 1 hour . The footage was
shot with "The Chainsaw' for an HDV related seminar here in Cape Town.

The purpose of the seminar was not based on branding cameras but pushing the format to the extreme / Motion encoding - stormy seas / colours /
hi light / shadows / noise / camera encoder quality / focus / movement etc. THe showreel for the seminar was cut on PPRO 2 AND PROSPECT HD, screened via HD projector.

The response was overwhelming from a crowd of experienced filmakers.
Canon SA - has teamed up for the next seminar.

Thank's to the Cineform Co. / Prospect HD/ A - ONE ! NUMBER ONE ! !
viva ! / Cape Town / South-Africa.

What settings are required to convert HDV 60i to 1920x1080 23.976, can it be done during capture (capture M2T file only then convert to intermediate later?) Audio sync issues?

Thanks
Mike

Depends of your source and software license. But in all cases you can do it is single step with the real-time cpapture convert, with scene detection on for prefect audio sync. Only Prospect HD or 2K is licensed to encode 1920x1080, otherwise you should stick with the HDV standards 1440x1080 (or down-res to 1280x720 -- which is a great solution for most HDV sources which can't resolve 1080p.) If you source was CF24 from a Sony Z1, or the 24p from Sony V1 you should use the remove 3:2 pulldown option. If you source is 24F from a Canon HDV camera, the 24p extraction is automatic (keep remove 3:2 pulldown option OFF.) If you source is standard 1080i60, then have "remove 3:2 pulldown" and "deinterlace" checkboxes set on.

Hello,
I'd like to know if ProspectHd is capable of encoding Raw files like Bayer16 into Cineform Raw. I'd like to know for the simple reason that one can have varied sources of footage, some being Raw such as from Reelstreams Adromeda or even industrial cameras.
It would be nice to know one can include all this in a single Cineform workflow.