One last 4.0 beta.

[David Dwyer]

Originally Posted by Marty Hudzik

Leaving Cineform out of the equation, it important to know that Adobe is famous for each version getting slower at the same things the previous version did easily. So when I moved from 1.5 to 2.0 I noticed a performance hit doing the same exact things. CS3 was an even bigger dog than PPRO2 and CS4 has outdone all of them.

Seriously, unlike Vegas (which I don't regularly use but I admit seems to get faster and faster with each version) Adobe seems to show little to no interest in optimizing their code for performance. They seem to only focus on new features with each version, the price of using it with any kind of responsiveness equal to the previous version is a serious hardware upgrade. I have to come to terms that simple HDV projects are going to take much longer to render in CS4 than CS3, even when I am not using any new feature or filters. Same simple HD clips in timeline with same exact effects take sooo much longer in CS4 and playback is not nearly as responsive.....yet.

I love Adobe products but if I have a project that does not require features of the newer versions, I can edit them so much faster in older versions.

In short, (too late...I know) I don't know that it is realistic to expect the same performance from CS4 that you see from PPRO 1.5 on the same hardware. Maybe Cineform will neutralize this a little....but PPRO CS4 requires much more processing in general.

haha Cheers Marty,

My hardware has increased but I guess not enough. I went from a 32bit Windows Xp with 3GB of DDR memory with a dual core XP 4800 2.4GHZ with PP 1.5 to

amd opteron quad core 2.1GHZ with 4GB of ECC memory (another 4GB on order) and 64bit W7 (tried Vista) but same jerky play back.

146GB Sata 1500rpm OS drive
800GB Raid 0 media
750GB scratch

[David Dwyer]

Originally Posted by Marty Hudzik

Leaving Cineform out of the equation, it important to know that Adobe is famous for each version getting slower at the same things the previous version did easily. So when I moved from 1.5 to 2.0 I noticed a performance hit doing the same exact things. CS3 was an even bigger dog than PPRO2 and CS4 has outdone all of them.

Seriously, unlike Vegas (which I don't regularly use but I admit seems to get faster and faster with each version) Adobe seems to show little to no interest in optimizing their code for performance. They seem to only focus on new features with each version, the price of using it with any kind of responsiveness equal to the previous version is a serious hardware upgrade. I have to come to terms that simple HDV projects are going to take much longer to render in CS4 than CS3, even when I am not using any new feature or filters. Same simple HD clips in timeline with same exact effects take sooo much longer in CS4 and playback is not nearly as responsive.....yet.

I love Adobe products but if I have a project that does not require features of the newer versions, I can edit them so much faster in older versions.

In short, (too late...I know) I don't know that it is realistic to expect the same performance from CS4 that you see from PPRO 1.5 on the same hardware. Maybe Cineform will neutralize this a little....but PPRO CS4 requires much more processing in general.

Also thinking of geting a proper GPU for CS4 but not sure (costs etc)

Quadro FX 580

or

Quadro FX 1800

prefer the 1800 but cost is a issue

[Bruce Gruber]

Well I got a importer process server crash again on export from PPCS4. I was a 45min timeline that said it would take 5 hours to export crash happened 45min into export.

Its almost like CS4 can't handle the CF file..

Did anyone else have any luck?

[Glenn Babcock]

David,

FWIW, I just upgraded my Dell XPS420 quadcore. I went from Vista 32-bit to Windows 7 64-bit and increased the RAM from 4GB to 8GB. It made a HUGE difference. Rendering on the old setup had the 4 CPU cores running between 50-75% and memory was maxed out. I couldn't run anything else. Now I see all 4 cores at 100%, memory in the 5-7GB range, renders are noticeably faster, there's no paging, and I can actually run other apps at the same time!

The additional RAM under Window 7 64-bit may help you a lot.

Regards,
Glenn

[David Dwyer]

Originally Posted by Glenn Babcock

David,

FWIW, I just upgraded my Dell XPS420 quadcore. I went from Vista 32-bit to Windows 7 64-bit and increased the RAM from 4GB to 8GB. It made a HUGE difference. Rendering on the old setup had the 4 CPU cores running between 50-75% and memory was maxed out. I couldn't run anything else. Now I see all 4 cores at 100%, memory in the 5-7GB range, renders are noticeably faster, there's no paging, and I can actually run other apps at the same time!

The additional RAM under Window 7 64-bit may help you a lot.

Regards,
Glenn

Cheers I'm so close to going back to Windows Xp32bit and 1.5 as I need to get projects paid off. I've spent so much time trying to get CS4 to work it's started to bug me now.

Only problem is I've editing the project in CS4 and I don't think I can put it back into 1.5 :(

HELP..

[Marty Hudzik]

I stayed in 2.0 for a long time until CS3 seemed more stable. In fact, I have really only been using cs3 fulltime for the last 6 months. I rebuilt my system and I didn't re-install CS2 so that is when you know you are committed to the latest build! :)

I can foresee myself still using CS3 for some time to come. It is stable, it is fast (first version of Premiere to take advantage of 4 cores finally pushed it ahead of PPRO 2.0). There are a few cool features of CS4 I would really love to use but even when it is working right, it is just so much slower....even in Vista 64 with 8 Gigs RAM.

Originally Posted by David Dwyer

Cheers I'm so close to going back to Windows Xp32bit and 1.5 as I need to get projects paid off. I've spent so much time trying to get CS4 to work it's started to bug me now.

Only problem is I've editing the project in CS4 and I don't think I can put it back into 1.5 :(

HELP..

[Robert Young]

Adobe has stated publicly that CS4 is really designed for 64 bit OS with 16 GB RAM to get the full performance.
I've just switched from Quad Core, XP 32, 4 GB, CS3 to Intel i7, Vista 64, 12 GB, CS4 and, so far, it seems like a huge improvement in performance. I am having none of the chronic memory management problems that plagued me on the CS3 system.
My big remaining issue is the fact that Premiere CS4 seems not to be a completely finished product yet. Hopefully the 4.1 update will do the trick.
The other bummer is the difficulty that CF is having with conforming PHD 4 to Premiere 4.
I am hoping that once Adobe gets Premiere cleaned up a bit, and CF gets PHD 4 out the door, running as smoothly as PHD 3 had been, it will be a done deal and I can get back to editing.

[Bruce Gruber]

Hi guys I think we are getting a little side tracked. We need to stay focused on solving the beta testing and keep providing Dave and support with information!

Sorry am I wrong for saying that?

[Glenn Babcock]

Good point, this thread has wandered a bit! :-)

[Ray Parkes]

While I appreciate the advantages of First Light it will probably not be a much used product in my studio. In the current project, which is an idie, the raw HDV footage is so visually stunning I very rarely adjust it and certainly never for a look.

With 4 if I understand correctly I will have to capture using HDLink where I can only set a base name to my captured footage. It will therefore be quicker to review and log it after it has been captured. I will miss the ability to review log and rough edit straight to cineform. With another 20 hours of tapes to view I will probably continue to do that in CS3.
Are there any other improvements in 4 to get me reaching for my credit card other than the, at presant, somewhat dubiouse advantage of being able to use CS4?

[Tim Bucklin]

For those of you still having First Light problems using Vista... is User Account Control (UAC) on or off? Also make sure you have the latest QuickTime installed.
Without QT installed, it *should* give you a corresponding message prompt and quit the player whenever you attempt to load a clip (AVI or MOV).

I have found that with UAC ON, any adjustments I make are disregarded. That's because with UAC on, Windows is prohibiting us from writing the necessary information to the metadata database, thus practically defeating the purpose of First Light!

Turning UAC off fixed this problem on our fresh test machine (2.13GHz Lynnfield, 2GB RAM, Vista 32-bit, nVidia GTX260).
For those of you concerned about Vista 64 compatibility, we ran First Light at NAB on Vista 64 machines from Lenovo without incident (Core i7, nVidia Quadro FX1800, 6GB RAM).

We will try to work around this limitation (although I can't imagine ever running a Vista system with UAC on -- I think I'd be institutionalized within 48 hours), but this is the workaround for the meantime.

If you are seeing just a gray window where your video should be, let me know your video card make, model, and driver version so we can figure out where the problems are.

Continue to send feedback directly to me at tbucklin@cineform.com and let me know of any First Light troubles you have. Any CS4-related problems should still be directed towards David Newman or our support department (support@cineform.com)

[Jay Bloomfield]

@Tim,

LOL, Does anyone run Vista with UAC on?

But back to beta testing.

1) First Light now displays the CFHD AVI videos nicely (Vista x64, 4GB, nVidia 9800GT, GeForce 182.50 ), except at 1/4 resolution, where it looks like a scrambled cable TV signal. As you go back and forth between half and full resolution, sometimes, the aspect ratio changes, but I can't see a pattern. I have to check both 1920x1080 files and 1440x1080 files further, in order to see what the heck the pattern of the distortion is, but it appears that 1920 x1080 files display fine in all 3 resolutions and it's the 1440x1080 (PAR=1.333) that are goofy. See what other folks have to say about this.This issue may related to my video card or driver.

2) 1920x1080 CFHD MOV files also work great in FL. I don't have any 1440x1080 CFHD MOV files to play around with, but I can make one to see what happens.

3) The old 30.00 fps files that were converted by previous versions of NEO from Canon 5d2 30.00 fps MOV files, display the frame rate in FL as 23.976 fps (Wouldn't that be nice if it was true!!!).

4) Else, the various FL settings for the active metadata work fine and they stick with the files in PP, AE, various media players (QT Pro, Media Player Classic), VirtualDub and Vegas. Very nice!

5) AE CS4 works fine with CFHD files.

6) If both the CS4 and CS3 suites are installed under Vista x64, you won't get any CS3 files installed (still) and you have to copy them manually to the various CS3 folders. You really need a dialog box that asks the user as to which version you want installed (or both maybe, until people wean themselves off of CS3). This might just be a problem with my computer, but I'd like to hear if anybody else got a good install on a machine with both PP CS3 and CS4 installed.


More later. Gotta do some real work. ;-)

[Tim Bucklin]

Great feedback, Jay. Glad to see it's working (mostly) for you.

The quarter-res decode is really meant for 4K-res files to be decoded at 1k. Though, it is supposed to still work with 1080p content (and does on our nVidia Quadro-based test machines here.)

ATI cards are still not doing either the half- or quarter-res decodes correctly, but we are experimenting with different output pixel formats to see what the different cards like the best.

As for 30.00fps coming up as 23.976, I'll look into that.

Thanks again for the thorough response.

[Jay Bloomfield]

@Tim

I just checked everything out (Prospect HD V4 Build 208) on one of my XP (x86) computers that just has CS3 installed. Everything works perfectly, including FL. There are no problems at all, with either the menu items being grayed out or aspect ratios being wrong in the FL Player with 1440x1080 files. The 23.976 fps frame rate display in FL appears to be related to 60i and 30p CFHD MOV files of any type (not just those converted from the odd 30.00 fps Canon 5d2 files) and is duplicated on the XP computer. However, I did notice that the two CFHD "importer" prm (AVI & MOV) files were installed in the PP plug-ins folder. I thought that these were only for CS4.

I've run out of anything to test, but that's a good thing. This build is pretty solid for me.

JB

[Bruce Gruber]

Originally Posted by Jay Bloomfield

@Tim

I just checked everything out (Prospect HD V4 Build 208) on one of my XP (x86) computers that just has CS3 installed. Everything works perfectly, including FL. There are no problems at all, with either the menu items being grayed out or aspect ratios being wrong in the FL Player with 1440x1080 files. The 23.976 fps frame rate display in FL appears to be related to 60i and 30p CFHD MOV files of any type (not just those converted from the odd 30.00 fps Canon 5d2 files) and is duplicated on the XP computer. However, I did notice that the two CFHD "importer" prm (AVI & MOV) files were installed in the PP plug-ins folder. I thought that these were only for CS4.

I've run out of anything to test, but that's a good thing. This build is pretty solid for me.

JB

Jay do you have cs4? Does cs4 run on XP/64?