Aspect HD questions -- all versions

[Dave Campbell]

What extra does Aspect HD get you compared to just using PPro 1.51 for editing HDV?

Thanks

Dave

[David Taylor]

Dave, this question is specifically answered on the Aspect HD product page. Scoll down a bit. There is a section that tells you exactly what Aspect HD offers over Premiere's support in v1.5.1: http://www.cineform.com/products/AspectHDPPro.htm

Once you check out the text you can also download a 15-day fully-functional trial from the CineForm site.

[Dave Campbell]

thanks

dave

[Ken Hodson]

Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

[David Newman]

The filter is designed primarily for cleaning up the chroma for the HD10U. It is a render only filter. It works like just any other premiere filter, yet it is subtle as it only removed noise from the chroma channels -- luma is uneffected.

[Andrew J Hall]

I'm just starting with HDV and Aspect HD / Premiere Pro so apologies for some newbie questions. I'll say in advance that these questions in NO WAY imply a complaint, I am just trying to understand things better.

First, frame rate (I live in a PAL zone).

If I am starting with 50i fps why is the PPro / Aspect HD option (project presets) 25i, might I not prefer to stay with 50i.

I also see that the options include 1080 25i, 30i and *30p* but no 25p. Is that significant. Is data being lost here (I presume not).

Does this 25 fps have significance for uploading back to tape, what goes back 25i, 25p or 50i and does it matter.

Finally what does this (25i) imply in relation to deinterlacing.

Second,

'On a 3GHz P4 you will edit 3 - 4 HD streams of 1440 x 1080i (5-6 streams of 720p30) in real time on the Premiere Pro timeline including transitions, effects, titles, and motion – with no dropped frames. '

Given I am working with a new P4 3 GHz, what does 3-4 HD streams mean (is that 3-4 'video+audio' streams or 2 of each) and does opacity fit into the real time picture.

What should ones export rendering settings be if it will at some stage go back out to tape (deinterlace vs the fields options).

Third,

'you never have to conform a project at completion'

- what does this mean.

My very preliminary tests are showing export rendering times (just back to cineform avi) of close to 10x (longer) real time on typical uncomplicated footage (two streams, mild Aspect filtered color adjustment and the odd transition).

I'm going to go into all this thoroughly in the next few days but would appreciate any response which will help me understand this stuff better, use it better and set reasonable expectations.

Andrew

[David Newman]

>If I am starting with 50i fps why is the PPro / Aspect HD option (project presets) 25i, might I not prefer to stay with 50i.

25i and 50i are the same thing. 50i is really miss-named as it is a field rate not a frame rate. 25i just means 25 frames per second -- 50i also means 25 frames per second.

>I also see that the options include 1080 25i, 30i and *30p* but no 25p. Is that significant. Is data being lost here (I presume not).

30p is for the JVC HDV camera. However, if you are doing a project in CineFrame 25, you can create your own 25p (1440x1080) preset -- just select 25i then customize it and turn the fiels off (i.e. progressive.)

>Does this 25 fps have significance for uploading back to tape, what goes back 25i, 25p or 50i and does it matter.

They are all the same. 25p will only differ in the way transition and motion overlays are rendered (frame based rather than field based.)

>Finally what does this (25i) imply in relation to deinterlacing.

It isn't related. Deinterlacing is a option for interlaces source going out to progressive or interlaced exports.

>'On a 3GHz P4 you will edit 3 - 4 HD streams of 1440 x 1080i (5-6 streams of 720p30) in real time on the Premiere Pro timeline including transitions, effects, titles, and motion – with no dropped frames. '
Given I am working with a new P4 3 GHz, what does 3-4 HD streams mean (is that 3-4 'video+audio' streams or 2 of each) and does opacity fit into the real time picture.

3-4 streams of video (we don't count audio -- although a lot of audio will reduce video streams.) Do get this number we add a long dissolve (or any transition) for two streams then add video on top using opacity (each layer being an additional stream.) On some systems we can get more than 4 total streams -- although often not sustained. The system allow for peak loads above the 3-4 sustained limit.

>What should ones export rendering settings be if it will at some stage go back out to tape (deinterlace vs the fields options).

The defaults will be fine for interlaced content. Aspect HD will advise you if you have the setting wrong for the current mode.

>'you never have to conform a project at completion'
>- what does this mean.

Conform is a profession term that describes using proxy files then recapturing at higher quality for master. As CineForm are on-line quality they are not proxys, no recapture (and conform) is necessary.

>My very preliminary tests are showing export rendering times (just back to cineform avi) of close to 10x (longer) real time on typical uncomplicated footage (two streams, mild Aspect filtered color adjustment and the odd transition).

On single streams I see around 5X, and longer for layered streams. The export uses Premieres rendering engine, Aspect HD doesn't accelerate this stage, and Premiere is a little slow.

[Andrew J Hall]

Just want to say thank you David for your patience and your thorough response - I kind of thought that the 25i / 50i had to be the same thing but now I know.

Andrew

[Andrew J Hall]

I captured a full HD tape to my PC. I did it from within Premiere 1.5.1. My system is P4 3 GHz, 800 Mhz FSB - pretty much the basic Aspect HD spec.

I find there are no dropped frames at all but the is a fair amount of pixellation (ie blocked pixels out of sync for a few frames in a row).

I noticed a comment in another thread suggesting this was a capture problem and that capturing using HD Link or even straight M2T might be better, is that likely to be the case?

I should perhaps add that this is standaerd DV tape, not the HD variant, however as I said no dropped frames at all but enough pixellation to potentially be a problem.

Andrew

[David Newman]

"MPEG Splats" as we call them can be due to tape drop out, or to system loading (in this case the packets are dropped over firewire.) If it is the second case you can capture M2T files directly and converting them after capture using HDLink.

[Andrew J Hall]

Hmmm, this is embarrassing, was asking for a levels type filter and just found exactly what I wanted in the color balance filter - don't know how I missed it last night, too late I guess.

Will further RT filters be added to Aspect HD over time?

Andrew

[David Newman]

Yes there will be more over time. I'm glad you discovered Color Balance.

[Andrew J Hall]

I've got to say the support / response Cineform provides in this forum is outstanding.

I've had a play with the Color Balance filter now.

Approaching this from the other end (the 'I wish' list), in the past I used the Premiere Levels filter a great deal, mostly the luminence input sliders (shadow clip, gamma, highlight clip), less often the same on an individual color channel.

Setting the R, G and B sliders equally away from zero for the three ranges (shadow, midtone, highlight) would appear to be equivalent to the levels filter (with presumably negative values being the equivalent to the 'output' sliders in levels) . Is that roughly right.

I would find single r=g=b sliders useful (and perhaps these would reduce the processing load when individual RGB adjustments are not necessary). Similarly, perhaps even more, I would find a gamma slider in the Color Corrector tool useful.

My RT previews with the Color Balance filter do not seem to be working particularly well.

If I apply say r+20, g+10, b=15 to the midtones then the static preview appears to show the changes. When I pay the timeline these changes disappear (so in my example the reddish tinge completely vanishes) and I also get very visible vertical luminence banding.

Also if I set Luma Preserve to anything other than 0, all the effects of the Color Balance filter disappear in the static preview (and no difference between any value between 1 and 100), however when I play the timeline, as before, I get vertical banding and I do not see the color adjustments made (nor any 'luminence only' color adjustments). I tested this by having the luma preserve start at 0, do a jump from 0-1 after a few seconds and then do a fairly rapid increase from 1-100 over the next few seconds. Playing the timeline I saw no sign of change at all (but plenty of vertical banding).

This is with a single layer of video using P4, 3 GHz.

Andrew

[David Newman]

Andrew there is a fix for the the real-time playback of Color Balance (it was broken in one of the downloads -- it worked in the earlier releases.) It will be fixed (again) in Aspect HD 3.1 (another free upgrade) which shouldn't be too far off. If you urgently need the fixed color balance, file a trouble ticket with message "May I please have the latest Color Balance -- David said it was OK." -- we do our best to email it to you.

[Andrew J Hall]

Thanks again David, for the time being I can wait - it's good to hear its a bug that will be fixed rather than something wrong with my system.

Gamma adjustment either on it's own or in Color Corrector would be very useful :-)

Andrew