Aspect HD

[Alex Raskin]

Ken, I promise not to mention VIA :)

Overlay quality: I do not know what the tech specs say (and from your quote the reply on Matrox forum was not so sure anyway) but hee's what I *actually* see:

Start AE (Parhelia's driver for it installed beforehand, of course).

Open a project. (My Workspace is already configured/memorized so Preview Window is showing in the Second monitor, which is a HD monitor connected to Parhelia's DVI output).

What I see first is a somewhat soft image on my HD monitor.

At the same time, there's a small Matrox button hovering on my First monitor with label "View Desktop".

I click on that button; AE driver now disappears, and what I see on the Second monitor now is the same image as before, but super-sharp, in AE's preview window.

Because all I did was disabling Parhelia's special AE driver, the monitor, its DVI input, and the image itself being all the same, I can assure you that driver-produced image is visibly softer.

I have read somewhere that video overlay is actually limited to NTSC resolution, and so far my own experience seems to confirm that.

Compare for yourself, and see the difference.

Steve, this NOTE is for you: Do NOT assume that Parhelia's AE driver (see above) even uses video overlay as other software does.

You see, I unchecked "Use Video Overlay" box in Parhelia as I was dissatisfied with its quality after uprading to HD monitor.

Consequently, my Second monitor stopped showing "features" - which is anything that produced by any overlay-using program.

But! It still does show AE's output generated by that special Parhelia driver!

I thought you should know about this, because you seem to be really interested in the overlay thing, and this is an important development that probably suggests that AE driver doesn't even use traditional overlay feature, but communicates with the card some other way (??). OR, that unchecking "Overlay" box in Parhelia does not prevent its own AE overlay driver from working still.

It's rather crazy, I know.

Bottom line is that I stopped using overlay features altogether after upgrading to HD monitor, as overlay quality is visibly inferior to the same video playing in the application's window.

[Bob England]

<<<-- Originally posted by Kevin Sturges : How does Vegas Video work with HD? Is the display realtime? -->>>

Because Vegas is software-only, it depends entirely on your pc's performance capabilities. Not just cpu speed, but bus speed, memory and graphics card performance. On my 3 Ghz Pentium 4 with 800 Mhz frontside bus, 1 Gig of memory, and nVidia Geforce4 graphics card, I am able to work with JVC m2t files without dropping frames during playback. Timeline performance is also smooth, with no stuttering while scrubbing, etc.

[Mike Eby]

<<<-- Originally posted by Bob England :Because Vegas is software-only, it depends entirely on your pc's performance capabilities. Not just cpu speed, but bus speed, memory and graphics card performance. On my 3 Ghz Pentium 4 with 800 Mhz frontside bus, 1 Gig of memory, and nVidia Geforce4 graphics card, I am able to work with JVC m2t files without dropping frames during playback. Timeline performance is also smooth, with no stuttering while scrubbing, etc. -->>>

I second you opinion on Vega, I am very happy with the results. My PC is very similar to your. I just added a Matrox Parhelia video card and did not see much performance improvement over the ATI 9600 but the PQ is slightly improved. I am considering a dual Xeon 3.06 just to see if my multiple track performance improves. I think Vega is very underrated for HD editing clips from this camera. I have had other say they had to jump though hoops to edit in Vegas but I just don’t see being that big of a problem.

Mike

[Steve Mullen]

I too had no problem playing HDV with Vega.

But, I did not find it Vegas able to play transitions without stuttering with a 2.8GHz.

How does your machine handle FX?

[Josef Crow]

does the alpha channel info get saved with HDV and does Aspect handle this as well?

and would Aspect/Premiere be adequate for color correction?

thanks.

[David Newman]

<<<-- Originally posted by Josef Crow : does the alpha channel info get saved with HDV and does Aspect handle this as well?

and would Aspect/Premiere be adequate for color correction?

thanks. -->>>

There is no alpha information in HDV, just there isn't in any camera source. All alpha mixing is handled either by the CineForm pipeline (for real-time operations) or by Premiere's rendered filters. However, CFHD doesn't store alpha information on export (it is a three channel compressor not four) -- key channels need to be stored separately if you intend to do that type on downstream compositing work.

Aspect HD has two real-time color correctors. One is a linear channel corrector (brightness, contrast, saturation and RGB levels) and the other a three point gamma corrector (shadows, midtones, highlights.) These two can be used together for an excellent range of color control. You can also use the Premiere color corrector for additional flexibility -- but that one will need rendering.

[Mike Posehn]

Is there one available. It would answer a lot of questions.

[Chris Gordon]

I too am interested in a demo version of Aspect HD. I am probably going to buy Aspect for Premiere Pro, but I would like to "try before I buy".

Also, one more question for David Newman:

You mentioned a color corrector that has gamma control. How well do these compensate for the JVC HD camera's highlight/shadow shortcomings?

-Chris Gordon

[David Newman]

A downloadable demo version may happen in the future but I don't know when. Currently there is a demo version on Darren Kelly HDV training DVD.

Gamma style color correction is exactly what you need to tweek highlight and shadow characters.

[Dustin Cross]

We are planning to shoot a low budget feature soon. We are planning to shoot using HDV. Right now we are thinking ahead about post and wondering if we would be better off using AspectHD ($1200) for editing or converting all of the MPEG2 files to Blackmagic Codec and using the Decklink HD ($1900) on Final Cut Pro? We are mostly concerned about performance.

We are comfortable using either FCP or Premiere Pro. All of our compositing and color corection (color finesse) will be done in After Effects, so we like being able to open Premiere Pro projects nativly.

Will we see better performance from using the Decklink HD hardware or AspectHD software. We will mostly just be doing cuts and disolves.

[David Newman]

I hoped someone other than myself would chime in on this one. Here is how I see the difference:

Aspect HD is designed for preformance editing of HDV 720p30 (and soon many more HDV resolutions as a free upgrade.) Decklink HD is more an HD-SDI I/O card than an accelerator, mostly used for transporting uncompressed HD video to and from the computer. If you intend to shoot with HD-SDI equipment then using HD-SDI will give you the best quality, but you performance will be limited to your drive speed. As you are shooting with HDV, you will not be using the Decklink card for input (there are no quality advantages in using an expensive extenal YPrPB to HD-SDI convertor.) Useless you are thinking about future projects, the Decklink card will not be helping you here. It is never good to purchase something that you might needed in the future, as technology changes too rapidly for anyone to make wise advanced purchases. Aspect HD will serve you well, today.

David Newman
CTO, CineForm.

[Heath McKnight]

And, for the record for all you Mac nutcases out there like me, the guys and gals at AJA say their Kona HD card is tops for bringing in HDV to edit. But I think you need something else. Do a search here on the site for KONA HD and HDV and I think you'll find something written by Darren Kelly, who uses it.

heath

[Frederic Lumiere]

David,

Wouldn't you say that there is a process advantage to using the Decklink HD card to capture HDV via an extenal YPrPB to HD-SDI convertor.

Simply because the footage is ready for capture and does not have to be demultiplexed and reprocessed into a codec.

Also, my understanding of the Decklink HD card is that it will allow for realtime uncompressed editing of HD in the timeline, at least on the G5.

Finally, the card also allows for capture of other HD material (other than HDV) which is definitely a plus for a post production professional trying to capture (no pund intended) as much business as he/she can.

[David Newman]

Frederic,

No, I wouldn't say there is any advantage is going out analog and converting to HD-SDI, then capturing uncompressed. First there is the unnecessary cost, then there is the slight reduction in quality (particular for 8bit sampling), and finially the large waste of disk space. The disk space is twice as bad as uncompressed normally is as you are now capturing 60p. All this assumes you can do it to. Users have been struggling with the 29.97p to 60p vs 59.94p issues.

As Aspect HD can demultiplex and encode into an AVI effectively in real-time -- it can't get much simplier.

You are correct that the Decklink card could allow real-time, however just two uncompressed 720p60 streams (i.e. a dissolve) will require a sustained disk performance 221MBytes per second. Technically this is possible but very expensive, and I have never seen it work. So with Aspect HD you can typically do four streams of the JVC footage off two SATA or IDE 7200rpm drives, which will only set you back $200.

I absolutely agree that HD-SDI does allow you to capture other materials, but this user asked about an HDV project. HD-SDI is a bad fit for today's HDV projects. If his next project requires HD-SDI, I'm sure the cost of HD-SDI and the disks required will be greatly lower than they are today.

[Frederic Lumiere]

David,

You make some good arguments.