Feedback from Aspect HD 3.1 Beta?

[David Newman]

The beta version for Aspect HD 3.1 has been out for four days, so I was wondering how many DVinfo users have given it a go (we know it was downloaded a lot.)

Particularly interested if users have tried either the Cineframe 24 reverse pull-down option or the Cineframe 25 to 24p modes. As the instructions for the new AHD 3.1 features are not fully updated, here is how to use these new features:

1. Start a new project using the "Aspect HD 1440x1080 24p" preset.

2. Press 'F5' to bring up the capture window.

3. Click on the "Settings" tab within the capture window and press "Edit" on that page.

http://www.cineform.com/downloads/capsettings.png

4. Click on the "CineForm HDV Settings..." button to see the new capture control panel.

http://www.cineform.com/downloads/CF24.png

For both CF24 and CF25 modes you will want to select progressive encoding -- this increases image quality while slightly lowering the bit-rate. The automatic mode for 1080 content assumes interlaced, so you don't want that (although you video will still look excellent.)

The new "Frame Rate Change" fields allows the incoming video to be altered in interesting ways. For Cineframe 24 (CF24) you only need to select the "Remove 3:2 Pulldown" option. This will takes the 60i Sony camera mode and outputs 24 progressive frame per second. This don't remove the inherent temporal jitter, but it works surprisingly well for everything but heavy motion (just like real 24p.)

http://www.cineform.com/downloads/CF25.png

The Cineframe 25 (CF25) modes you not not want to remove any pulldown. Instead you can use the "Rate Change:" field to convert 25 to 24p or to the more common 23.976p (your choice). This results in true 24p with any temporal jitter. Note: the "Aspect HD 1440x1080 24p" preset is running at 23.976p -- if you want exactly 24p it is very easy to create your own preset. For any frame rate change you will want the "Maintain audio pitch" control active, this preserves your audio quality through the speed change.

Feedback is welcome, particularly before Aspect HD 3.1 becomes an official release (very close now.)

Thanks,

[Jaromir Pesr]

Hello David,

After installing AHD 3.1 I'm experiencing this: I'm not able to capture entire tape via Premiere even the detect scene change is uncheck. The tape runs to the end but there is just first shot encoded to Cineform every time. I prefer to have "rolls" captured instead of thousands of separate files. And this is also necessary to do it for off the house offline editing. I hope it's just a beta bug...

But this is not the worst:
I am not able to capture m2t files at all. Each time there are some dv drop-like artefacts (www.intimate.cz/files/hdv/dropouts.jpg) within the reel and each time at different places. Usually there is about 5 minutes of drop-outs within 50 min footage (I do not know if this happens when I capture shorter reels or split scenes. But it's the same thing as above). Sometimes at the begining, sometimes at middle or the end. It seems like some lost sync or what. The tape plays well from the camera. I tried to reinstall whole system again (and I lost the activation code because my system number has changed suddenly - so I cannot even deactivate my copy) and I've done it really carefully and clean. No waste software installed. But no success. I'm a little bit desperate because I need to work but I cannot reach the usable setup for a two weeks or more. Chroma artefacts in 3.0, now these drop outs.

My system is fast enough, I could say the fastest available:
Dual Xeon 3,6GHz, 2GB of memory, Quadro FX 3400 graphic, 1,2TB Raid 0 via Adaptec controller (I tried to capture to 10.000 rpm system disk as well with the same result), I'm using Sony HDV Z1 camcorder for capturing 50i footage which is the only one IE1394 device connected.

I really appreciate your help

Thanks

[Peter Ferling]

Please don't take this wrong, but in this business I hear this all the time on many forums, so I'll post this as a warning to all:

1. Never test beta software on real paying work.
2. Never install or change the settings on your pc in the middle of a project.

Pete

[Jaromir Pesr]

Pete,
I'm not a rookie... It's usual to discover some serious problems right during the real work. And in this case I've found one even with nonbeta (3.0) version. See this thread: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=43382

[Peter Ferling]

I understand, which is why I said take no offense, as this post is for others out there whom might risk an otherwise stable install on real work. (Your looking for a fix, and found another issue -obviously you knew the risks).

My advice is from my own experience.

Pete

[David Newman]

Jaromir,

The beta release mentioned scene detection most be on under the know issues decriptor from the page you downloaded 3.1. It is required for the beta version -- sorry you missed reading that. Note: even after the release version, it is not recommended to capture without scene breaking for HDV, as there is no garrantee of audio sync after a scene break. Many competing products recommend the same, this hasn't changed from earlier releases. It is issue of broken MPEG GOPs and what to do with them.

When you say you can't capture m2t files, you mean files automatically converted to CFHD? HDLink allows you to capture m2t files directly. Is this what you are using? Is the behavior different between HDLink and Premiere capture.

Note: the chroma issue you saw after AE de-interlacing has been fixed.

[Jaromir Pesr]

David,
thanks for reply

ad1
I understand, it's a limitation of this technology, but it really makes possible off-line editing more complicated.

ad2
I only capture m2t file without automatic conversion. These m2t files seems to be corrupted (Just parts of them, but each time at different place) as you can see on posted picture. Conversion itself is ok.
I cannot try it within Premiere because I haven't shots without scene breaks longer then several seconds. And as I wrote, just the first shot is converted and imported to Premiere from the reel with scene change checkbox off.

ad3
Yes I noticed that and it's great...

And finaly: I've just received a new activation code. Thanks.

[David Newman]

OK, very interesting. Capturing raw M2T is very simple, i.e. Aspect HD does very little, it simply sends the M2T to the disk. So this could be a system issue, so please file a trouble ticket on this very issue so that support can help you out. Also you can try using CapDVHS or similar to next if that works or you have the same issues.

[Steven White]

Hi David,

Well I downloaded the AHD3.1 demo today. Big mistake. It's awesome. *sniff* How will I ever go back? The editing really is real time on my 2.8 GHz P4HT 1 GB DDR400 machine... and the CF24 support is impressive. The pull-down removal and 24p timelines seem spot-on. THe few transitions I tested worked perfectly. What amazes me most is how fast your software renders files. In After Effects, rendering out an M2T and removing the pull-down to an uncompressed file takes me for-ev-er. But AHD does it at about 50-60% of playback speed... Nifty!

I did encounter a bug though... but before I get to that I have a suggestion: In the HDLink software, can you add *.mpg to the list of acceptable file names? I notice it isn't changable (which it should be IMO)... and all of my previously acquired transport streams are *.mpg. I could always re-capture - but it wouldn't be too hard to implement.

Here's my bug... this only occurs in some of the Cineframe24 files I convert (mind you, I've seen it happen with CF30 and 60i acquisitions in PPro 1.5.1 as well). Some times the Cineform files have blocky patches in them, for example:

http://s94963366.onlinehome.us/HDRFX1/blocking.jpg

What is interesting is that this only occurs in one particular field. Again, I've seen it on other files (60i and CF30) as well. Following two or three frames of blocking, I got interlaced frames for the next few fields, before the pull-down removal kicked in again. Bizarre.

Finally a question: If I render to "large" will this adversely affect editing performance? For most projects I would be happy with medium, but if ANY quality is retained by large, for my special effects intensive stuff, I'd want to retain as much quality as possible.

Cheers,
-Steve

[David Newman]

Hey Steve,

Thanks for the nice comments. I did start this thread hoping some people would try the CF24 to 24p pulldown removal feature (and report on it) just as you have.

HDLink is only able to convert transport streams, not MPEG program streams. So we are assuming that *.mpg is a program stream. Technically it isn't too hard to add the support for *.mpg (as a program stream or as a misnamed transport stream *.ts or *.m2t.) This could be added in a future verison (we want to add support for multiple input formats.)

The conversion error you are seeing is likely a scene boundry condition, as you descibe it as happening just before the "pull-down removal kicked in". ** These frames are being supplied to us from the MPEG decoder (full screen wavelets never have block actifacts.) Is there any reason your MPEG may have glitches or be incompatible with our MPEG decoder? Were these errors only seen at the begin of MPEG files captured with other tools, or with HDLink?

** You noticed the pull-down kicks in after a few frames. I think this is pretty neat, the converison dynamically determines the pulldown in real-time as the frames are coming it, sometimes it takes a few frames but in the end it gets it right very quickly. We needed to make it dynamic as some scene breaks throw off the pull-down (have a different 2-3 pattern) so we have to detect it on the fly.

The "large" will not impact the editing performance much at all if you disk(s) can keep up. Decoding speed doesn't vary too much on file size, maybe only 5% for large compared to medium. Yet the data rate is 20-25% higher, so your disks will work harder. Large is the quality setting used on Dust to Glory -- so it is a nice mode. Yes, it is best for special effects work.

[Steven White]

Actually I should be more careful - This particular blocking occurs halfway through a clip. The clips were acquired with CapDVHS back in November. CapDVHS automatically named the files *.mpg... I could re-name all the files *.m2t (which is what I did for a select few) but that's probably more painful than re-capturing.

At any rate, I played back the original m2t and I noticed the same glitch... It doesn't have the same appearance as the Cineform render, rather it appears as a suddenly sped-up jerk in the video... so it isn't Aspect HD's fault, but rather a glitch in the transport stream (it isn't long enough to be a drop-out, so maybe its a capture error. Who knows...).

This would suggest AspectHD did a fine job with cruddy source. Congrats!

-Steve

[David Newman]

Good catch, and thanks for report we don't have a bug. :) The MPEG decoding differences you see are important. Some players (and MPEG decoders) will drop corrupted MPEG frames so that you don't see them at all, this is bad for post production where every frame can be important. We instruct the MPEG decoder to present every frame in the best way it can then encode those results into CineForm Intermediate.

[Jeff Youel]

Originally Posted by Steven White

CapDVHS automatically named the files *.mpg... I could re-name all the files *.m2t (which is what I did for a select few) but that's probably more painful than re-capturing.

FWIW, in the HDLink convert file selection dialog, you can type *.mpg as the file name and hit Open to select the files. Of course, they will only be convertible if they're really HDV.

Jeff