CineForm and Sony Vegas 8

[Aaron Courtney]

Hmm, that's messed up, LOL. I can't believe there's that much horsepower difference between our systems. Something isn't right there.

I wanted to give you an exact figure here, so I just played a Cineform HDV encoded clip (originally AVCHD file from Canon HG10) in Vegas Pro 8.0b and CPU remained @ 15% entire time.

[Robert Kennedy]

The way I understand it the HD codec and the HDV codec atre the same codec with different resolution limitations. Is this correct? Can anyone from Cineform weigh in on this?
-Robert

[David Newman]

All depend on your PC and how you set up your editing environment. As CineForm's compression uses wavelet, the less you need to decode the faster is goes, much more so then MPEG2 and AVCHD. So if you set your playback to be full best, some machines will not be realtime under Vegas. Try Preview-Half, quality is still excellent for editing but it will be up to 4 times faster.

[Aaron Courtney]

Just in case you were wondering Robert, I have my encoder option "quality" set to "high." I'll check playback options tonight.

[Robert Kennedy]

Perhaps it's a bug in Vegas, but I do not experience any noticeable increase in framerate when playing back at lower quality settings. This is true for the Cineform way of decoding less to make playback faster and the Vegas way (going to draft mode at half-rez).

Here are my machine specs:
Asus A8N32SLI Deluxe
Athlon X2 4200+ 2.2 Ghz dual-core
2GB Corsair RAM
Areca 1220ML w/ 8 drive Seagate SATA RAID 6 (300MB/s avg)
Blackmagic Intensity Pro
Sony Vegas 8.0b
Win XP SP2

I have confirmed I suffer the same slow playback on a fresh install of WinXP. The Vegas timeline seem to have significant overhead and also seems incapable of using all available system resources. As a result I have never been able to achieve realtime playback of NeoHD footage on the Vegas timeline. I can play back the NeoHD footage in windows at full rez with no problem.

I would love to hear from someone who edits 1080p Cineform footage in Vegas in realtime.

Thank you,
Robert

[Mike McCarthy]

I don't use Vegas, but are you trying to use your Blackmagic hardware at the same time. That might be the issue. That would cause playback problems if you were using Premiere. Your system should be able to playback CineformHD files without a problem.

[Robert Kennedy]

I do not play out my Blackmagic hardware from the Vegas timeline as I have never been able to overcome the high contrast due to YUV problem. I play on the desktop only or use my Quadro to output to a secondary monitor which does not seem to affect playback rate.

[Aaron Courtney]

You have a very nice PC config there. I assume you've got XP & apps installed on a drive outside of your RAID 6 - wouldn't matter that much WRT performance anyway.

Just so I've got this right...You open Vegas (nothing else major running in background), correctly define your project properties, file -->open a cineform HD .avi file and press the play button in the transport area of Vegas and you're not getting smooth video displayed in the little preview window of the main Vegas window!?!

[Robert Kennedy]

That is correct Aaron. I have tried closing any open processes that are not critical for windows to operate and do not see any performance improvement. I have also tried this on a clean install of WinXP on the same system with no improvement.

Are you referring to the Cineform HDV that comes with Vegas or are you referring to the Cineform NeoHDV?

[Aaron Courtney]

I first downloaded a trial version of Neo HDV encoder (w/HD Link) in order to (1) properly remove pulldown from footage from my Canon HG10 and work with a true 24P timeline in Vegas and (2) get the video (and audio) into a more workable format in Vegas (and SoundForge). The performance enhancement, codec quality, portability/cross platform compatibility, and everything else David has mentioned is just icing on the cake. I officially purchased yesterday - it really is a no-brainer for anyone who is looking to do more than just cursory editing of raw footage...

Robert, what I would do in your situation is either piece together a very basic PC from scrap parts or start off building your upgraded box that you talked about in your opening post. Pick up a decent Asus, Gigabyte, Abit (or non OC'ing Intel) motherboard and pair a cheap (throw-away) Intel CPU to it. You could even pull out one of your Corsair sticks. Pick up a $50 HDD, $30 graphics adapter, install XP SP2, install the MB device drivers, hit the windows update site (will require validating XP again - just call the phone number if you've exceeded two or three installs), and then download trial versions of Vegas and Neo (and an AVCHD decoder if necessary) and stop there. Don't install your vast array of existing hardware. Convert a video clip, open it in Vegas and press play. I'm 99% certain you'll see what I see...

Heck, put together the base of my box: Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R, Intel E2140, your DDR2-800 Mem, any Seagate 7200.10 SATA HDD, MSI NX8400GS-TD256E...

[Paul Cascio]

Just curious is anyone has an idea of how much longer it takes to render to MPEG2, Cineform AVI files, versus M2t files.

I'm just starting to really appreciate what NEO can do for me, but I haven't finished a project so I wasn't sure how much longer the renders will take.

[Aaron Courtney]

Originally Posted by Aaron Courtney

I'll check playback options tonight.

Ok, here's my info. I did, in fact, have the playback set to preview (Auto) which I'm pretty sure is the default option upon installation - had to reinstall everything after some old TC Electronic plugs screwed up XP's virtual mem configuration.

So I changed it to Best (Full) - worst case scenario right? I get realtime playback of my 24P clip no problem. CPU is at 95-99% while playing footage and ~85% playing back an empty timeline.

I'd say something is "broken" with your PC configuration and it's going to take some <insert hardware/software, test; insert more hardware/software, test; etc.> to figure out what's wrong. That's why I suggested you get back to zero with at least one PC and then start adding things.

[Robert Kennedy]

Thanks again for you assistance. I downloaded the NeoHDV demo and did some live capture to test my playback specs. I have observed the following:

CPU usage when playing back the timeline reaches a max of 75%

Framerate stays around the neighborhood of 18-20fps.

If your processor is maxed out (99%) when playing back 24p, it's resasonable for mine to be at 20fps and 75%. It's probably an AMD incompatibility thing keeping Vegas from using 100% of my processor. The big difference between us before was the fact I was using NeoHD instead of NeoHDV for the test.

Looks like I'll simply have to upgrade my computer in order to handle Cineform editing in realtime at my desired resolution.

Here's a new question: Can anyone say for sure that an Opteron 185 2.6ghz dual-core will have enough horsepower to convert 1080p footage (while removing the pulldown and fixing the flip) in real-time for live capture scenarios? Cineform's website lists the Opteron 252 in their minimum specs which has the same specs except it's for a socket 940. If I drop $250 o nthis upgrade I would have to be assured it would power my capture station without issue.

[Hugh Mobley]

If I capture clips thru cineform or vegas and put them in a folder and and use them and don't move them its ok V8 doesn't crash, I just noticed if I move clips from one harddrive to another and then try to bring them into vegas V8 immediately crashes. just folders that have cineform clips in them. Whats up with this? Haven't had a this problem lately but now its happening again.

[David Newman]

Never heard of this. Is it a Vegas issue? Maybe their support can help. Make sure your CineForm components are up to date. NEO is up to version 3.2.4.155