Some questions about Aspect HD

[David Newman]

Hypertransport and hyperthreading are to very different technologies.Hypertransport is AMD's CPU to CPU and CPU to peripheral communications bus (it is awesome when you have two CPUs, but otherwise I'm not sure that it offers huge advantages for Aspect HD.) Hyperthreading is an Intel only feature that make one CPU core behave as two CPU -- this does give a moderate performance boost. A Hyperthreaded CPU appears as two CPU to the Aspect HD software so it will using the multi-threaded conversion tools, which are faster. A dual core AMD is way better than a single hyperthreaded Intel Proc.

[Yasser Kassana]

Originally Posted by David Newman

... Part of the slowdown maybe as Aspect HD 3.3 has bumped up the quality of the 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 upconversion, but the results are so worth it we didn't make it optional... .

Hi David, How is exactly does it do that? Surely if you're recording 4:2:0 HDV how does one bump up to 4:2:2 HDV?

[David Newman]

The 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 up conversion involves chroma interlopation techniques to generate the missing data. The new quality page on our website highlights this well, see : http://www.cineform.com/technology/H...ysis051011.htm The interpolation doesn't touch luma resolution but it fixes of the chroma jaggies that are very annoying in 4:2:0 interlaced sources. The resulting images are far more natural looking.

[Yasser Kassana]

Thank you Sir.

[Kyle Fasanella]

Hey guys I am looknig to buy a rendering card for premiere pro and aspect HD editing. I am usieng Z1U footage in HDV. what do you guys recomend and what else are rendeing cards good for besides less rendering?

[Jason Rodriguez]

Just a quick question,

But like the subject title suggests, will a standard Premiere Pro 1.5 setup (with the HDV upgrade from Adobe) be able to playback and edit a CFHD file (single stream, not real-time effects like Aspect is capable of) without Aspect or Connect being installed?

I know you can't encode, but I'm just wondering if you can still read the files too.

Also if you captured a file at 1920x1080/10-bit in Prospect HD, can the file then be read (in 8-bit HDV resolution) in Premiere Pro with the Adobe HDV upgrade, or are the two files now incompatable?

Thanks,

Jason

[David Newman]

This is not recommended and in many cases it will not work. The codec has evolved a lot since the Adobe-CineForm license. The only limit compatibility remains for progressive encoding (like the 30p modes from the HD10/HD100 JVC cameras.) Interlaced footage from Adobe Premiere 1.5.1 works in Aspect HD, but not the other way around. If think there will be issues for any 10-bit content in 1.5.1 without Aspect HD or Prospect HD. Note: Aspect HD will import 10-bit 1920x1080 content.

[Anton Galimzyanov]

Hi,

I have a Z-1 camera, but quite often I need progressive videos (for green screen etc). IMHO Magic Bullet de-interlacer does it's job pretty cool. So my primary question is: should I apply Magic Bullet prior to converting to AspectHD (TS > AE MB > Cineform AVI), or after converting (TS > Cineform AVI > AE MB > Cineform AVI)? The second method needs additional render generation, but as far as I know, native mpeg uses 4.2.0 color space workflow, and Cineform uses 4.2.2 colorspace, maybe it's an advantage in this case ... How do you think guys, which method is the best?

thanx in advance,
Anton

[Serge Victorovich]

ts->cineform->MB

[David Newman]

True both. Generation loss is not the concern, find out what looks the best. My guess is with Serge, I think the Aspect HD 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 upconversion can only help.

[Anton Galimzyanov]

thanks guys for a quick answer. I think you are right - I should start with cineform conversion first!

One more question.. Magic Bullet has a great feature called "deartifacting", it tries to kill compression artifacts somehow. There are three options, 4:2:0 (HDV), 4:2:2 (DVCProHD) and 3:1:1 (HDCAM). Assuming I have converted to cineform format already, which deartifacting option should I select for best results - 4:2:2 or maybe 4:2:0?


thanx in advance,
Anton

[David Newman]

Their 4:2:0 de-artifacting might be like Aspect HD's. Again experiment.

[John Hewat]

So Cineform recommends Dual Opterons for Prospect HD.

As a complete beginner, I have a few questions (for David maybe):

I am about to build a new editing system supporting either Aspect HD or Prospect HD and want to make sure I understand everything.

Question 1: If I purchase one Tyan Thunder motherboard and one Opteron 265 am I taking advantage of the motherboard's dual processor capacity or do I need to purchase a second 265 processor to take advantage of that? (I am confused because I always thought that dual core and dual processor was the same thing)

Question 2: Is this configuation appropriate/below par/over-kill (I was considering a 180 instead of a 265 - how would that be?

Question 3: The Tyan Thunder features 2 PCI-Express slots; am I able to use one for a GeForce 7800GTX for gaming and the other for the Component Out video card like the Matrox Parhelia APVe?

Question 4: Is Aspect HD 100% capable of handling 2+ hours of footage in the timeline or are feature length productions more akin to Prospect's uses?


Thank you very much for your help, I can't wait to purchase all this stuff - I just can't bear to do it until I feel like I know everything I need to first.
-- John.

[David Newman]

Q1. Dual core (two CPUs in one 'chip' package) and Dual processor (two CPUs in two separate packages) are not the same thing, particularly with the Opterons. Dual processor AMD solutions are still faster as they can two memory buses instead of just one (so memory speed theoretically doubles.) That said, all the CPU you mention are faster enough for Aspect HD, but you will need a dual processor setup for Prospect HD Ingest.

Q2. The Opteron 180 will be perfect for Aspect HD, but it has no upgrade path to dual processor (so no need for a dual proc motherboard.)

Q3. I don't know if that will work.

Q4. Yes. Aspect HD and Prospect HD are based of the same core, Prospect HD adds 10-bit compression, 16-bit processing, resolutions up to 1920x1080 and HDSDI input and output.

[John Hewat]

Originally Posted by David Newman

Q1. Dual core (two CPUs in one 'chip' package) and Dual processor (two CPUs in two separate packages) are not the same thing, particularly with the Opterons. Dual processor AMD solutions are still faster as they can two memory buses instead of just one (so memory speed theoretically doubles.) That said, all the CPU you mention are faster enough for Aspect HD, but you will need a dual processor setup for Prospect HD Ingest.

Q2. The Opteron 180 will be perfect for Aspect HD, but it has no upgrade path to dual processor (so no need for a dual proc motherboard.)

Q3. I don't know if that will work.

Q4. Yes. Aspect HD and Prospect HD are based of the same core, Prospect HD adds 10-bit compression, 16-bit processing, resolutions up to 1920x1080 and HDSDI input and output.

Thanks David - that's excellent (and prompt) information.

So if I decide to go with Aspect HD and a single processor, is a dual core Opteron recommended or will a regular dual core Athlon do the job just as well?

Now please forgive me for the following question - I am going to sound stupid I think, for Prospect HD, if I shoot with the Z1 and get an image of 1440x1080i, is that converted to 1920x1080? Or do I need a camera that shoots in 1920x1080? Both the Z1 and the new Canon only shoot in 1440x1080 don't they?

Thank you so much for your help, you've made my mind much clearer.
-- John.