Connect HD questions.

[David Delaney]

Thank you very much. I know there are three variations, low, medium and large - but medium sounds good.

[David Newman]

Here is a first look at Connect HD 3.2 (we skipped 3.1 as there are many enhancements -- plus now all our products are at 2.2, 3.2 or 4.2, and we couldn't resist the symmetry.) All existing Connect HD users are welcome to download it from here : http://www.cineform.com/downloads/Co...320b25beta.zip

This is just some of what has been enhanced :

• HDLink now supports conversion of common media types (now most files that play with Media Player can be converted with HDLink.) You good old DV, WMV or any miscellaneous AVI (some MOV) files can now be batch converted into CineForm Intermediate.
• HDLink now supports resizing of all sources to standard HD sizes. Previously you could up-convert SD, or any non-standard image size.
• Enhanced compression quality even further (across all encoding modes.)
• Connect HD now includes the After Effects CineForm I/O module, for higher quality control over CineForm AE exports.
• HDLink fix for long file batch M2T to AVI conversions
• Many many other small fixes and refinements

Of course never run a beta if you are in the middle of a project, otherwise please give the new features a try and tell us if you have any issues.

Thanks,

[Robert Kirkpatrick]

Silly question: once 3.2 is released (and not as a beta), will this be a free upgrade, or will we need to buy Connect HD 3.2 as a new version?

[David Newman]

All point releases are free to existing 3.x customers.

[Joe Carney]

Another silly question..will ConnectHD support 10bit editing and rendering output?

[David Newman]

No. Connect HD is only licensed for 8-bit work, but that is fine as Vegas is only 8-bit.

[Jay Hancock]

David:
We are noticing in Vegas 7 that raw HDV .m2t files are getting a lot faster playback than CFDIs. We still prefer to use CFDIs for anything more complicated than simple cut edits and the like, because we don't want to suffer from generation loss. But it sure would be a big help to get faster playback from the Vegas timeline for CFDIs. This has a huge impact on editing. It seems strange that a raw HDV file would get such a better result (for playback) than a Cineform intermediate.

Clearly the Vegas team did a lot of work to improve HDV performance. Surely there are ways they could make better use of CFDIs for faster frame rates on playback. And perhaps improvements in the CF codec that Vegas uses could speed up the playback? Or is this a result of Vegas using VFW instead of DirectShow? Or, is it a licensing ($$) issue? I paid for Connect HD 2, paid the upgrade price for version 3 (total $300 invested), and would be willing to pay again if it advanced us leaps and bounds in playback performance.

It might hurt the feelings of some PPro users, but hey, tough cookies!

[David Newman]

VfW and RGB only is a limiting for Vegas performance, yes in PPro we using DirectShow and YUV (faster and no color space conversions.) But another difference is the DirectShow components are threaded, and the VfW is not so multi-cores will not help VfW much. That is about to change, the next beta (later today hopefully) will have a threaded VfW decoder, so even with limited VfW interface to Vegas, multi-cores will be used more effectively.

[Paul Cascio]

I purchased an earlier version of Connect HD (Version 2 I believe), but never really used it much because my plans didn't progress as expected.

Now, I have upgraded to Vegas 7 and looked on the Cineform website for an upgrade of Connect HD, but the product isn't even listed anymore. Did I miss something? Do I need an upgrade for Vegas 7? Where is it and how much?

Thanks. I know David is very active here and I've always been impressed by his responiveness to questions and problems. I sure wish other companies were like this.

Paul Cascio

[David Newman]

Connect HD can be upgraded to NEO HDV for $59. The Connect name was dropped in favor of NEO, which does a lot more (now and future.)

[Paul Cascio]

Thanks David. I've been on hold for tech support from other companies for longer than 57 minutes. Here, the CTO of the company answers my questions on a Satruday night in less than 1 hour. Great job. Great company.

[Stuart Campbell]

All my HDV material to date has been 24p. I use Connect HD to convert to an intermediate AVI. never had any probs....until now!

I recently shot on 25p and converted using HD link to intermediate avi and BANG! Everything I do on the timeline causes Vegas to Hang, crash, go bonkers, you name it! Mainly, the avi's go Offline (that nice little red screen everywhere) then it all hangs)

I've tried replicating the problem in all my other projects, but, as I said, this is the first 25p job, and had no luck, so I'm inclined to assume it's not Vegas or a HDD issue. Project settings are correct for a 25p job, all the footage came in ok (apart from the incredibly irritating way HD Link splits into scene files to avoid audio sync probs). Each of my rushes tapes for this edit are organised into bins in project media and have maybe 100 individual AVI's in each bin.

As soon as I start shuttling through a file in the Trimmer or the timeline...Vegas crashes. Sometimes i can work for up to 2 minutes without the crash! Whooppeee!

Anyone know of any known issues regarding Connect and 25p???? help please!

edit machine is;
Pentium Dual e6700 2x266
2 x 500g sata video store drives
1 x 100g sata drive for software etc
2 g ram

p.s Been away from my edit machine (out of the country for a few months). Just went to check for software updates and I've missed the free upgrade to NEO! Damn that's irritating. Do I really need NEO right now. Seems to be no firm answer on this site! Will this solve my problem?

[David Newman]

Please download and try NEO, you can also re-install Connect HD if you don't like NEO.

[Stuart Campbell]

Is that going to solve my problem? It sounds like a suggestion that Connect does not work very well with 25p in Vegas? and NEO does.

...not that I'm cynical or anything, but shelling out for more software to solve a problem I shouldn't have in the first place is a little irritating!

...if Cineform is the problem in this case of course!

[David Newman]

No, I have never heard of any of these problems with 25p (that is pretty crazy,) but it is easy for you to test, that was all I was suggesting. Vegas 7e is newer than Connect HD, make sure your Vegas upgrade didn't wipe out your CineForm codec (it can.) The codec version in Connect will be around v2.8, vegas ships v2.5, Neo current version is 3.2. Check your version by opening the Codec's properties within Vegas.