Davids (both CEO and CTO), the biggest question we have for Cineform right now is:

Why doesn't Prospect seem to be able to render ANY mixed media if that layer has material with an alpha layer in CS3? That is, when we try to render any CF'ed 1920x1080 material with any other 1920x1080 material containing an alpha layer, it crashes or gives an error message after aborting the edit.

That would be fatal for us and would preclude our using CF for editing or inputing, as we regularly use material with alpha layers. Up to now, we can edit everything normally in "regular HDV mode" in CS3, mixing any 1920x1080 input on the same timeline with the HDV, with or without alpha layers. They seem to render normally in every other codec we've tried that handles that size output...except CF. That includes rendering material out using the MainConcepts codec. Sloooooo good, but it does it!

Come on CF, we like your product and want to keep using it, but we're getting desperate and close to jumping ship if we can't find a solution. Give us some hope!

What sort of material are you mixing with that has an alpha? TGA files, uncompressed AVIs?-- so we can match your tests. We are in the process of adding Alpha channel compression support to Neo 2K and Prospect 2K, so this will clearly be a issue if CS3 has a bug. Note: CS3 does the mix, not CineForm -- we just encode the results, so I hopely this is something we can address. Try trying off the 32-bit float in the playback settings control panel.

Ever since we discovered that CF doesn't do alpha layers, we have tried outputting our Digital Juice HD material (Swipes, Revealers, JumpBacks, etc.) to regular uncompressed 1920x1080 AVI's and try to render these with our CF'ed material in CS3 PP. It doesn't seem to matter if it comes as MOV's or AVI's, just that it has an alpha layer...then crasho! No render.

This same material works normally with anything else we've tried in HDV sessions, even when bringing in as 1920x1080.

Also, what hope does this bring to us? We are using regular Prospect HD, not the 2K version...

Thanks for responding so quickly...we have 3 guys sitting on their butts because of this!

David, the 32bit-float turnoff did the trick! Even the CF'ed material we had done in Digital Juice (non alpha, obviously...) worked now when we used a luma key with it!

That made us dance around the editing suite.......(sorry, we didn't get it on tape)

I spoke too soon. It seems to be on and off and still will crash out of PP completely or give an error message. Sometimes it works, often it doesn't. It just seemed to work at first, then started crashing soon after.

We're back to sad again.

Just to let you know, the system we're using it on is a fresh install XP (all updated drivers), a quad CPU on 975x Intel board, 4 GB mem, boot drive + 2 RAID's, and a Matrox Parhelia APVe with the new (non-.NET) PowerDesk SE software and 3 LCD monitors (set up as analog right now).

David, a couple bits of info on the render bug:

We have gotten the same render error message even at times with the "realtime" CF dissolve transition in CS3 when it's on CF'ed material.

It renders normally when using the default CS3 dissolve transition. That should also be a clue. We never have gotten a crash or render error with the default transitions on CF material if there is only the transition with the CF material.

One more thing: the previews seen when dragging through the timeline do not cause crashes, regardless of what type they are. We can layer CF'ed material with alpha layers and drag-preview no problem. It's only when actually rendering, that the errors or crashes (dumps CS3...POP!) occur.

Please let us know when you have any hope for us. We're anxious for this render fix.

What is the minimum condition to cause this crash, as I'm not able to repeat it on my home PC. Are you still working with alpha channels? What are the media types? What is the frame rate? More information on how to make this happen please. Start a fresh project with just the elements you need to cause the crash and email me that project -- I shouldn't need the media is the crash is in our render code.

What is the minimum condition to cause this crash, as I'm not able to repeat it on my home PC. Are you still working with alpha channels? What are the media types? What is the frame rate? More information on how to make this happen please. Start a fresh project with just the elements you need to cause the crash and email me that project -- I shouldn't need the media is the crash is in our render code.

Okay David, we'll try to nail those elements down tomorrow and send you the project.

It's strange, but one clue might be when we set up for the render, then save our project and close CS3, then return to the project and render just one little segment of multilayer stuff, it usually will render correctly, even with alpha layers. If we try to do more than one little segment....it gives an error or crashes out of CS3.

All our additional material is pre-sized as 1920x1080 avi's (though we tried mov's too) some with alpha layers, some without at 29.97 NTSC. The video is all 29.97 NTSC from either a Sony V1U or A1 and has been Cineformed to 1920x1080.

Nothing else seems to crash CS3, just this. Very frustrating.

I'll try to make a little project tomorrow and send you.

David, we're trying to nail down whether this is a hardware prob instead. It is not consistent, which makes it suspect as being some kind of hardware or OS software prob. If there were others complaining about this, we'd be suspicious of CF, as it's only in CS3 and only with CFed material, but ... ?

We're trying to verify that all bios updates have been done correctly to this normally solid Intel mb (D975XBX2) and 6600 Quad processor, and that it's just not some HDD RAID controller prob. We've run stress tests on the system, but nothing seems out of the norm. The strangest thing is that when down-rendering output to 720x480 to review on DVD, it has no probs whatever and happily renders for long periods without errors, as long as the prerendered transitions/effects were done correctly.

This is a head-scratcher.

Still want to see you project data.

Should be there. Three layers guarantees a crash or render error message.

The new PP CS3 3.01 update did NOT fix anything as far as this error is concerned...

I've thoroughly tested this rendering error on 3 different pc's (2 intel quad, 1 amd dual core) as discussed in my topic on this. with pp2 or pp cs3, create a project with the 60i prospect template and put a captured clip on the timeline. then right click that clip and either slow it down or speed it up, hit render and the pp's will crash "every" single time. now it may crash right at the beginning of the render, sometimes the middle, and sometimes it makes it to the end but it will not finish, it will crash every time. uninstall prospect and install aspect and I have yet to make it crash, lol. now other effects and things also make it crash but I didnt nail down exactly what else does it for after 2 weeks of messing with it I had to give up and get some work done. and also if u use a non prospect template it will not crash. so I believe I've kind of eliminated the "hardware" possibility by getting the same exact result on 3 different pc's. but I can not rule out the possibility of a "stupid" factor as there's a possibility that I'm screwing something up somewhere; however, my renders do run perfect coming out of aspect or an adobe template so I dont know :)

Mark,

We have reproduced the speed change bug (Adobe's) and are looking for workarounds other than turning off frame blending, however that is not the same as this thread which is about alpha channels.

I want frame blending to die, I hate it, I have to right click and turn it off on every clip. I know this is an adopy thing....sucks.
Jon

David, I think I might have a clue. It looks like the Prospect tryout had loaded Aspect, NOT Prospect! I looked in the system hive and can see Aspect and it seems to still be loaded (though I never loaded it at anytime on this machine).

The only way it could have gotten on this machine is via that tryout for Prospect!

I think it crashes because Aspect can't handle the 1920, doesn't that make sense to you? Is this even possible?

Maybe I should run that software you have that deletes all references to Aspect and Prospect and then check the hive for any remains of them and reload a verified version from you?

Let me know as soon as you can, thank you

Hello CF? Anybody here? You guys must really be busy!

Are you having probs with your server again? We've tried 3 or 4 times to re-download Prospect to different email addresses, but the email link never showed up...

Here's the error message from the XP Application Event Viewer. Looks pretty much like CF is the problem:

"Faulting application adobe premiere pro.exe, version 3.0.1.0, faulting module cfrtcompiler.prm, version 2.0.6.89, fault address 0x0000e50f."

That was only a CF'ed video (1920x1080) with a title on top and an alpha-layered, uncompressed little transition on top.

This error has been fixed, and will be in the next build.

This error has been fixed, and will be in the next build.

Is that to be released soon? We're getting desperate...

ASAP. We may have a replacement module today. Note: this is a CS3 vs 2.0 difference, the same code is running, but under CS3 it leaks memory causing the crash after a peroid of render (some systems faster than others.) Seems like Adobe didn't tell us something (again.) :)

ASAP. We may have a replacement module today. Note: this is a CS3 vs 2.0 difference, the same code is running, but under CS3 it leaks memory causing the crash after a peroid of render (some systems faster than others.) Seems like Adobe didn't tell us something (again.) :)

Thank you, Adobe! Sounds familiar...memory leaks + Premiere and all. Somewhere I've heard this story for many years.

We'll be looking for that update, thanks much.

Here is an replacement CineForm AVI Exporter to try under CS3.

http://www.miscdata.com/downloads/CFRTCompiler.zip

Unzip are replace the one located here C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Pro CS3\Plug-ins\en_US\CineForm

We have rendered out many complex projects will this one. So give it a go. We will likely do a full release in a few days.

Here is an replacement CineForm AVI Exporter to try under CS3.

http://www.miscdata.com/downloads/CFRTCompiler.zip

Unzip are replace the one located here C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Pro CS3\Plug-ins\en_US\CineForm

We have rendered out many complex projects will this one. So give it a go. We will likely do a full release in a few days.

Still giving the error message "error compiling movie, unknown error", but hasn't crashed out of CS3 PP on the second try like before, so it does not give the program error in the Event Viewer.

I guess that's a little progress???...(but not for getting any work done).

You have another test compiler to try?

We are not seeing that after many hours of exports. Is it happening at a particular frame?

We are not seeing that after many hours of exports. Is it happening at a particular frame?

Just to double check, I opened a new standard HDV project and stuck a six layer mixture of video/transitions/special effects/titles, etc, including CF-ed material in various sizes. Nothing crashed, no errors, zip. Perfect previews, perfect renders. Normal.

Then I copied and pasted the the exact same material into a new Prospect project (1920x1080i) and tried the same thing. Previews worked when scrubbing, but the second I tried to render...the exact same error message as usual.

I'm going to reload the old CFRTcompiler and see if the program crashes also return. This has to be some kind of memory leak error like you stated. It crashes at different points, but never finishes more than 97%.

Oh, just remembered one more thing: When I pasted the material into the Prospect project, PP only asked to render the material with alpha layers. It was precisely those that apparently crashed and gave render errors.

I reloaded the old CF render engine and it crashed out of the Prospect project as before, but the error message in Event Viewer has changed to:

"Faulting application adobe premiere pro.exe, version 3.0.1.0, faulting module ntdll.dll, version 5.1.2600.2180, fault address 0x00064ed1."

I returned to the standard HDV project (without CF as the render engine and no "real time" CF stuff, but including CF captured material), then pasted the exact same material as in the Prospect project and everything worked again. No probs rendering whatsoever.

Go figure.

BTW, when I turned off "frame blending", and tried to render, this is the error message:

Faulting application adobe premiere pro.exe, version 3.0.1.0, faulting module cfencoder2.ax, version 3.1.1.176, fault address 0x0004cc4b.

This was with the old compiler loaded. When I reloaded your new CFRTcompiler again, the program crashes also stopped. Turning the "frame blending" off in a Prospect project, just produced the same normal error message, but no program crash.

David, I loaded the new 3.0.4 update. It easily rendered the normal transitions and everything ......... EXCEPT the full uncompressed transitions with ALPHA layers! (Titles made under PP also rendered easily):

Here's the new error message when PP crashed out:

"Faulting application adobe premiere pro.exe, version 3.0.1.0, faulting module cfencoder2.ax, version 3.2.1.184, fault address 0x0005267b."

?????

We aren't seeing this but I'll check it out Monday.

One more post on this alpha channel problem.

We were able to successfully render 1920x1080 alpha layerered material if they were output as sequencial Photoshop-generated files at 60 fps with straight alpha channel.

This was only true if we put the alpha channel material on top of a single layer of CF'ed 1920x1080 video. If we try to do three or more layers with CF, crashola again.

Is it possible that the "realtime" CF playing, with simultaneous CF rendering is somehow overwhelming the memory bus or something? It seems to be a memory problem for sure. That's the only thing I can think of that would pop PP out of memory completely.

It's all a royal pain in the rear.

We've tried every trick we can think of to eliminate hardware errors:

- Changing DDR2 memory modules
- Removing RAIDs
- updating every possible driver for everything from the mb to the video
card, etc. etc.
- reducing memory from 4GB to 2GB
- creating new projects with only a few items
- etc.
- etc
- etc

But we get the same message everytme: "Faulting application adobe premiere pro.exe, version 3.0.1.0, faulting module cfencoder2.ax, version 3.2.1.184, fault address 0x0005267b."

I think we're pretty close to dumping Cineform Prospect, since it's impossible to edit using it as the main codec with CS3. We've tried doing the same things with regular CS3 PP HDV projects and everything works just fine. No crashes, no errors, nothing out of the ordinary.

David, it's a Cineform Prospect problem/and-or/CS3. Period. No and's, if's and but's about it. Either CS3 is unable to edit with full 1920x1080, or CF Prospect codec has a serious problem working with CS3 in doing that.

This is a bitter pill for us, but we cannot keep trying to flail a dead donkey and the only reason we switched to Prospect was to gain the 10bit/1920 workflow.

We're pretty much out of time for getting a solution to this and don't believe it's our config/hardware problem.

If we switch back to the newest AspectHD and it works okay for us, will Cineform return our money for the upgrade we did to Prospect?

Suggestions...comments?

We know this issue is not widespread as we just finish a project ourselves at 1920x1080p24 for the 48 hour film project under Prospect HD using CS3. So work with us and give all the information about your system and project to tech. support. Posting here instead doesn't help as I have no idea what you are doing. Please work with support, send them sample clips of what you are working with as your project file work fine here. Is this still only an alpha channel issue? Please explain to support as it is no longer clear to me.

---

Is anyone else see a crash in cfencoder2.ax? As a failure there makes no sence to us, that component is used everywhere, you wouldn't be able to capture or convert to CineForm within it.

Yes, it still only happens when rendering anything that has been CF'ed (that is, compressed with the CF codec) with any alpha-channel material that is either CF compressed or as uncompressed 1920x1080.

It mostly seems to be alpha channel related, although I could provoke a crash trying to using the "timewarp" on CF compressed material as well...

One difference from your project is that we are not doing it as 24p. Would that make any dif?

Sorry if it looks that way, but we are not trying to go around your tech support team, but were just hoping it was something easy to identify and correct so if doesn't hold up a major 3 yr project with 48 productions yet to do. We basically have 6 people sitting on their hands until this gets sorted out and I'm under pressure to resolve it.

All technical staff are in today, so get your info to support. Unfortunately all the failures you list, alpha channels and timewarp are Adobe functions, we have no control over their rendering, Premiere simply hands us the completed frame that we send to the encoder. So a failure in these functions may be a CS3 issue when using 32-bit float, which is the only difference in a render between Aspect and Prospect, short of the memory footprint difference between 1440x1080 and 1920x1080.

All technical staff are in today, so get your info to support. Unfortunately all the failures you list, alpha channels and timewarp are Adobe functions, we have no control over their rendering, Premiere simply hands us the completed frame that we send to the encoder. So a failure in these functions may be a CS3 issue when using 32-bit float, which is the only difference in a render between Aspect and Prospect, short of the memory footprint difference between 1440x1080 and 1920x1080.

We turned off 32-bit float as you suggested before and it makes no dif. Maybe it's the memory footprint diff...who knows anymore. It does appear to be the handoff between CS3 and CF, as it always completes some of the render, then gives the error message. If we insist on trying to render, it often crashes completely out of PP.

Will post info to support.

David, since I haven't heard from your tech support yet...

Here's a little bit of info that might be important. We ran Task Manager in the foreground, and every time PP renders, it runs the "PF Usage" up and down with render material, then crashes when it gets to a render that forces it to reach 1.8 GB! It does NOT crash at 1.78 GB, only 1.8 GB.

Since we have expanded our PF to 8GB, then reduced to only 2 MB to force to RAM, it still crashes at 1.8 GB.

That might mean I should be running x64 or Vista...as it's a memory management prob...

It is a fault in 32-bit window applications, they can only access about 1.5GB each no matter how much memory your system has. Switching to Vista or 64-bit OS will not help as the fault is in Premiere itself (as it is a 32-bit app.) However we are working on a fix. The issue is Premiere uses up all available memory (for a 32-bit app) leaving almost to no memory for the encoder. We are making the encoder run in the lower memory state. Premiere uses more memory than it should when frame blend (speed or timewarps) and go alpha channel etc.

It is a fault in 32-bit window applications, they can only access about 1.5GB each no matter how much memory your system has. Switching to Vista or 64-bit OS will not help as the fault is in Premiere itself (as it is a 32-bit app.) However we are working on a fix. The issue is Premiere uses up all available memory (for a 32-bit app) leaving almost to no memory for the encoder. We are making the encoder run in the lower memory state. Premiere uses more memory than it should when frame blend (speed or timewarps) and go alpha channel etc.

That's the first logical answer I've heard! Thank you David, you just saved me from a major hassle of trying to upgrade to something that doesn't help.

Any "ballpark" time frame for the fix? (I know that's difficult to answer, sorry...we"re just pretty desperate)

It is what I'm working on now as the highest priority -- should have a build with a fix (or huge improvement) by the end of the week (if not sooner -- end of today or tomorrow with fingers crossed.)

It is what I'm working on now as the highest priority -- should have a build with a fix (or huge improvement) by the end of the week (if not sooner -- end of today or tomorrow with fingers crossed.)

OH YEAH! I'll leave you alone....

David, are you going to support compressing and using CFed alpha channels realtime in Prospect with this new release?

Sure would be nice for whacking down all those nasty big uncompressed AVI's we have to deal with and saving some storage space...and render playback time...

...................we do get greedy in our old age!

David, are you going to support compressing and using CFed alpha channels realtime in Prospect with this new release?

Sure would be nice for whacking down all those nasty big uncompressed AVI's we have to deal with and saving some storage space...and render playback time...

...................we do get greedy in our old age!


CineForm files with alpha channels will not support real-time alpha mixing on the Premiere timeline -- you will need to render for the mix -- they will play real-time without mixing. However they are at least 6:1 smaller than uncompressed RGBA AVIs, and will have quality if you source support greater than 8-bit RGBA. I think alpha support will be pretty cool.