Blackmagic Intensity Pro, Premier Pro, Cineform Workflow Question

[David Taylor]

Miguel, we haven't let you down because this was never a feature we advertised. In fact we've made it clear that we don't support the BM cards for output.

With that as preamble, we're exploring whether we might be able to add playout and timeline monitoring support (PPro/Windows) for BM cards - Intensity in particular. No promises and no schedule yet, but we're looking at it....

[Mike McCarthy]

They do: Its called the AJA Xena card line. Realtime 10bit SDI output from your Premiere timeline.

[Mike McCarthy]

With the Xena HS, LH, or LHe, you can get dedicated fullscreen playback to SDI or component or (DVI via SDI converter) plus the two monitors on you VGA card for the application UI in spanned or Dualview mode. I have setup a number of systems in this fasion.

[Graham Hickling]

In terms of output from the timeline, does the Xena HS work similarly with AspectHD as it does with ProspectHD?

[David Taylor]

Aspect HD does not support HD-SDI output - you need Prospect HD or Prospect 2K.

Aspect HD supports 1440x1080 which is not an HD-SDI format. HD-SDI spatial resolutions are 1920x1080 or 1280x720. So for 1920x1080 you need Prospect HD or Prospect 2K.

[Graham Hickling]

Thanks. So ... does that mean AspectHD could nevertheless export 1280x720 over component to a monitor? That would still be handy.

[David Taylor]

Not through an HD-SDI card - the drivers are not present in Aspect HD.

[Graham Hickling]

Understood. Thanks again.

[Stuart Brontman]

In case anyone is interested, I have been running Cineform Prospect HD on a dual xeon PC with 2 dedicated editing monitors and a separate HD monitor hooked up to the Xena LH card. The system worked great, BUT I recently upgraded my computer to a quad core PC with no PCI-X slots, so I'm out of luck with my Xena LH card.

Until Cineform comes out with another monitoring option, I'm stuck with a useless card (which I'm posting shortly for sale on the classifieds) and will have to monitor through the software interface. AJA will not swap out the card for the Xena LHe version (PCI-express slot) since it's about 6 months old. Kinda' sucks after laying out over $1500 on this puppy!

Stuart

[Miguel Lombana]

Originally Posted by David Taylor

Miguel, we haven't let you down because this was never a feature we advertised. In fact we've made it clear that we don't support the BM cards for output.

With that as preamble, we're exploring whether we might be able to add playout and timeline monitoring support (PPro/Windows) for BM cards - Intensity in particular. No promises and no schedule yet, but we're looking at it....

Thanks David, Cineform has never let me down, didn't want you guys to think that I meant that. I just want to see a sub-super expensive solution for realtime playback and after investing 400 on an APVe for lack luster results and now 350 for a card that has potential, I just want to get my system working the way my old SD system worked.

I know that you guys are going to make it happen, I'll be along for the ride, just wish it was tomorrow and not a long way off. Thanks again for keeping us in mind and up to date via this forum.

Miguel

[Paul Cronin]

Thanks David,

I look foward to the update when I can use my BMD Intensity Pro card to view a HDTV realtime while in FCS2. Then I can use my dual monitors for timeline and menus only.

[Miguel Lombana]

Originally Posted by Mike McCarthy

With the Xena HS, LH, or LHe, you can get dedicated fullscreen playback to SDI or component or (DVI via SDI converter) plus the two monitors on you VGA card for the application UI in spanned or Dualview mode. I have setup a number of systems in this fasion.

So Mike I'm reading your page and getting very interested, what is the proper workflow for say an AJA Card to work in a Cineform Prospect or Aspect intermediate, since I've already determined that my machine is just a few clock cycles slow for uncompressed HD captured via component and the BM Intensity.

Installing an AJA, would I still capture 1394 so that I can take advantage of scene detection? It appears that it will capture to Cineform or can I just capture in Cineform via HDLink and would I run a PPro AJA Preset or Cineform preset?

On final output it appears that AJA will output just about anything, If I wanted an SD output in 16:9 suitable for DVD Encoding would the card offer accelerated performance from the timeline, today it's about 50% of realtime in a Cineform environment.

Thanks for your input thus far and nice use of Wordpress on your site BTW, I use it on all my sites.

BTW, I guess that I should mention I'm running a Dell PW380 with an Intel 955EE Processor, 4 G/Ram, 1x 150g boot drive (10k), 2x WD RAID Drives 500G/b each in a Zero array, NVidia 1500 card (PNY), BM Intensity Pro in PCiE 1x, 4x slot is free, and PPro CS3. You're in tune to what I'm trying to do, I have dual 19" LCDs on the 1500 running spanned and just want realtime and true preview to my widescreen monitoring.

Miguel

[Mike McCarthy]

Originally Posted by Miguel Lombana

So Mike I'm reading your page and getting very interested, what is the proper workflow for say an AJA Card to work in a Cineform Prospect or Aspect intermediate, since I've already determined that my machine is just a few clock cycles slow for uncompressed HD captured via component and the BM Intensity.

Installing an AJA, would I still capture 1394 so that I can take advantage of scene detection? It appears that it will capture to Cineform or can I just capture in Cineform via HDLink and would I run a PPro AJA Preset or Cineform preset?

On final output it appears that AJA will output just about anything, If I wanted an SD output in 16:9 suitable for DVD Encoding would the card offer accelerated performance from the timeline, today it's about 50% of realtime in a Cineform environment.

Thanks for your input thus far and nice use of Wordpress on your site BTW, I use it on all my sites.

BTW, I guess that I should mention I'm running a Dell PW380 with an Intel 955EE Processor, 4 G/Ram, 1x 150g boot drive (10k), 2x WD RAID Drives 500G/b each in a Zero array, NVidia 1500 card (PNY), BM Intensity Pro in PCiE 1x, 4x slot is free, and PPro CS3. You're in tune to what I'm trying to do, I have dual 19" LCDs on the 1500 running spanned and just want realtime and true preview to my widescreen monitoring.

Miguel

Thanks, glad you like my site, I just started getting into it a few weeks ago, but it is coming along.

I doubt clock cycles are your limitation for uncompressed capture. It is extremely likely that your storage system can't keep up. 2 Drives will rarely be able to support uncompressed HD. Luckily with Cineform, uncompressed data rates are not required.

With the AJA, you could still capture via firewire, and convert in HDlink. Another option would be to capture over Component (or SDI from a Canon camcorder) directly into Cineform, but I don't know if your CPU would be fast enough to support that. You might want input directly from Cineform about that. I know they recommend Core2Duo architecture, but you have one of the fastest Netburst systems created.

You would definitely want to use Cineform RT mode in your Premiere projects, since your disks won't support the uncompressed files AJA's modes require.

Not sure what you mean by accelerated performance from AJA. As far as I know, all Cineform processing takes place in the main CPU, and AJA is purely an I/O card. Cineform does have some SD presets that I have toyed with, but not very deeply. What did you mean by 50% of realtime in Cineform?

Also, what are you planning to use to monitor with. If you have an LCD that is less than 1920x1200, you may want to consider AJA's SDI convertor over the Blackmagic one, since I believe it supports scaling the DVI resolution. A 23-24" LCD is valuable though for pixel accurate monitoring.

[Miguel Lombana]

Not sure what you mean by accelerated performance from AJA. As far as I know, all Cineform processing takes place in the main CPU, and AJA is purely an I/O card. Cineform does have some SD presets that I have toyed with, but not very deeply. What did you mean by 50% of realtime in Cineform?


<ML> What I mean is export from the timeline for an HDV project, seems that the final output is about 50% of realtime so for a 20 minute project the export may be 40 to 50 minutes to get the final AVI. I was thinking that the AJA card has some acceleration in it but I guess not.

Also, what are you planning to use to monitor with. If you have an LCD that is less than 1920x1200, you may want to consider AJA's SDI convertor over the Blackmagic one, since I believe it supports scaling the DVI resolution. A 23-24" LCD is valuable though for pixel accurate monitoring.

<ML> The monitor that I'm looking at is a new JVC JV-DT-V24L1DU, I just saw it demoed at my local supply house and wow, it's worth the investment plus with the SDI capability the XENA will likely marry up to it nicely.

[Mike McCarthy]

I don't think the AJA will have any effect on export performance. I agree that Cineform exports take longer than they logically should, but I have not had a chance to try their encoder on an 8 core Xeon system yet, which should help. (My system can capture/encode in realtime, and playback in realtime, so why do exports take OVER 2x as long to render from CF to CF.)

That monitor should work well, directly out of the Xena LHe SDI out.