Cineform Prospect HD with PPCS3 or PPCS4 with cineform importer??

[Simon Zimmer]

Now it is my turn to go off tangent. ;)

Cinema Craft is good huh?

How are the results for h.264?

I was never impressed with Adobe media encoder. I use procoder 3 which is pretty good.

Simon

[William Urschel]

Originally Posted by Matt Vanecek

Just as a side note and not to detract from the thread, but what are you using for cooling that thing? I have a hard time keeping the CPU temp down even with after-market fan, and still keeping the system relatively quiet. Next step is fanless liquid cooling....

Thanks,
Matt

Matt.........

I have no idea what Boxx has inside the case for cooling, except that their sale's department indicates "liquid cooling". I can hear a fan when I turn it on (which may or may not largely be the fan on that NVidia board) - it's much quieter than any Boxx I've had previously. Running the processor at 98% for extended periods has never presented a problem. For more info on the Boxx, please go to their site and look up the "4850 Extreme Series".

[William Urschel]

Originally Posted by Simon Zimmer

Now it is my turn to go off tangent. ;)

Cinema Craft is good huh?

How are the results for h.264?

I was never impressed with Adobe media encoder. I use procoder 3 which is pretty good.

Simon

Simon.....(with apologies to the rest of you for "going off tangent".)

Cinema Craft products I've been testing are ONLY for DVD production, retail for between about $100 and $2,000. For the last two years Cinema Craft apparently has had a piece of hardware for HD, but I won't be going for it, since it currently goes for $74,000!!!!!!!!

I just finished my latest complete tests with the EX-1 outputting interlaced, and attempts to produce acceptable looking results with AME were a failure. Tested were various combinations and permutations of such parameters as EX-1 straight out, shutter speed from 1/60 to 1/125, detail at various levels from minus 10 to 35, and then in the computer using only Adobe workflow, bringing BPAV files directly into Premiere, exporting and downrezzing with AME, and burning DVDs with Encore, OR using Cineform HD Link to convert the BPAV files for Premiere, exporting from Premiere with Cineform Prospect 4k (downrezzing to 720x480, with various and sundry other variables such as output as progressive, lower field first, upper field first, etc.). As you can imagine, all of these combinations resulted in dozens of different output clips - amazingly enough (to me, at least) was that the cleanest result with Cineform was upper field first, a variation I was put on to by a post on this Forum!

And by the way, one of the MANY programs I have purchased and tested is Procoder 3 - I may be mistaken, but I believe it utilizes the same dreaded MPEG2 generator as AME. In any event, my very preliminary tests with even the very basic form of Cinema Craft indicate that for EX-1 files, it runs circles around Procoder 3.

Given that my over 1,000 hours of such testing over the last nine months, and my current testing, is only done in evenings and weekends, it will probably be several weeks before I finish my tests on both versions of Cinema Craft (the $2,000 version presents enough variables that several centuries could probably produce a thorough review!).

My problems in producing decent looking DVDs have only and ever been an issue with the blasted EX-1. I have five HDV cameras that result in gorgeous DVDs. So, one might ask, why don't I just toss the EX-1 (apart from the $18,000 I've spent on the camera, cards, and other accessories directly associated with it)? Well, just because, as EVERYONE knows, it makes superb HD (even for me). Regarding EX-1 produced DVDs, on this and many other forums, I have repeatedly seen that most seem to have no issue, and appear to get the best looking DVDs ever. And then there is what seems to be the extreme minority, such as me, who indicate that EX-1 DVDs are just the worst looking garbage. Also often sited is Doug Jensen's Vortex intro to the EX-1 as an obvious example of how great DVDs look produced from the EX-1.

Now just a minute! Almost all of his production was shot with some other unidentified camera, and NOT the EX-1. And everything was shot in progressive, not interlaced! And when I view the EX-1 shots at the beginning of his program on any one of my lower rez, smaller computer monitors, they look great! BUT put them up on a combo of my test viewers, and when the content is a straight vertical edge (such as the mast on the passing speedboat) I see the same problems of vertical twitter that I see on my productions! I have been designing and installing home theater for 25 years, and I'm expert in that field - I use three of my theaters for testing, which theaters include players and screens as: Sony Playstation 3 - 65 inch plasma screen; Sony 300 BD Player - 42 inch Samsung LCD; and Panasonic 3000U projector - 109 inch Stewart Firehawk Screen. Everything I put up on the screens of these theaters looks great, except for some early produced heavily artifacted DVDs, and ANY DVDs resulting from the EX-1s very distracting vertical twitter. The first and only exception re the EX-1 that I've seen so far is with utilization of Cinema Craft's programs.

Finally, and to return to the real topic of this thread, Boxx told me that their in-house testing exhibited great results with many qualified programs running on Vista 64 bit, including Adobe CS4 - based on my experience with a couple of other, much lesser (and other branded) Vista machines, I objected, and said I wouldn't touch Vista with the proverbial pole. But they highly recommended Vista 64 bit, on their machine. The only reason I was willing to consider this and purchase what I did was my prior experience with Boxx - they have always steered me in the superior direction, and their technical staff - testing and assistance - just run circles around anything else with which I've had experience - boy, does Vista 64 hummmmmmm. Nuff said, except that when I've finished my testing of the Adobe/Cineform/Cinema Craft combo for EX-1 output (both progressive and interlaced), I'll post my results on a new thread in this and several other forums.

[Simon Zimmer]

Very interesting information.

Looks like I need to try out the cheaper version of cinema craft.

Thanks for the information.

Simon