NEO HD Conversion times ridiculously long? at DVinfo.net

Marty Hudzik · May 22nd, 2010, 11:31 PM

I just recently updated from Prospect HD to NEO HD for CS5 compatibility. The first project I am working on is an HDV project shot on a Canon XLh1 in 24p mode and a Canon HV20 in 24P mode. As you know the HV20 embeds the 24P into a 29.97 stream. So, my intention is to use HDlink to convert these files to true 24P avis. I have done this with previous versons but it has been a while however I am certain I have never seen conversion times like these before.

The first tape was 36 minutes long. I tried capturing and converting in realtime but when the 36 minute capture time was done, HDlink took an additional 2.5 hours to finish encoding the clip to Cineform. This is on a Windows 7 64bit machine with 8gig of Ram and a Core i7 processor. All 8 cores are darn near maxed with a CPU utilization of 80-95% at all times. When this finished, I loaded a 33 minute XLH1 24P mpg and started the conversion there, thinking that the removal of duplicate frames had caused the delay.

Well, let me tell you as I type this HDlink is just reaching the 2/3 mark on the progress bar and it has been 2 hours. This is for a 33 minute clip. Now....I can only say this for certain...nearly 4 years ago I was using aspect HD on a Pentium 4 single core machine with 1gig of Ram and when I would finish capturing a 1 hour tape, it would only need an extra 10 minutes to finish encoding to cineform. that's just a tad longer than realtime. At my office I had a dual core xeon that would encode in realtime. When the capture was done, HDlink would spit out a finished Cineform file almost instantly.

So how is it that NEO HD is taking 2-3 hours to convert a 33minute HDV clip? Something surely is wrong here....right?

Thanks in advance. I will install this on my Core 2 Quad and see if it is any better.

Marty Hudzik · May 22nd, 2010, 11:48 PM

To quickly reply to myself I have determined one thing. I loaded the software on my older Core2 Quad with an identical memory config and I encoded a 12 minute HV20 24P(in a 29.97 stream) to a cineform file removing the pulldown and converting to true 1920x1080 in just over 15 minutes. Still not quite realtime but much better.

So maybe there's a config issue on my Core I7 machine. Still, why was the conversion time on older version of Aspect HD, on a dinosaur PC, so much faster. I tell you I used to be able to capture m2t files and have Hdlink convert in just over the time it took to actually capture the footage on a P4 2.3GHZ machine with a gig of ram.

David Newman · May 23rd, 2010, 10:46 AM

Something does sound odd on that i7, yet there is a reason not to compare with Aspect HD, is it had no upscaling option. Leaving your sources at 1440x1080 is 3X faster than RT on my i7. The 1920x1080 is using a Lanzcos3 scaling, pretty but compute intensive. You can set the "Fast Scale" option to get good scaling at twice the speed of Lanzcos3.

Marty Hudzik · May 23rd, 2010, 01:24 PM

David,
I did try converting some XLh1 true 24P clips and turned the scaling off and it converted a 6 minute clip in under 3 minutes. Indeed it appears to the scaling that is causing the super long render times. I assume that on the HV20 clips there is more computation going on to remove the 3:2 pulldown that is present that makes the conversion time even longer.

I do have an additional question regarding first light in Windows 7. Do I still need to disable UAC controls to allow it to work? My very first attempts are not showing anything when I make adjustments in FIrst Light.

Thanks.

David Newman · May 23rd, 2010, 01:33 PM

Some system my require UAC disable once, but I don't disable it any more (under Win 7 where it is less annoying.)

Make sure the registry key: HKCU/Software/CineForm/ColorProcessing/LUTPath
points to a directory that you have read and write permissions. I move mine to my DropBox folder so I can do this:

May 22nd, 2010, 11:31 PM	#1
Marty Hudzik Trustee Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Canton, Ohio Posts: 1,771	NEO HD Conversion times ridiculously long? I just recently updated from Prospect HD to NEO HD for CS5 compatibility. The first project I am working on is an HDV project shot on a Canon XLh1 in 24p mode and a Canon HV20 in 24P mode. As you know the HV20 embeds the 24P into a 29.97 stream. So, my intention is to use HDlink to convert these files to true 24P avis. I have done this with previous versons but it has been a while however I am certain I have never seen conversion times like these before. The first tape was 36 minutes long. I tried capturing and converting in realtime but when the 36 minute capture time was done, HDlink took an additional 2.5 hours to finish encoding the clip to Cineform. This is on a Windows 7 64bit machine with 8gig of Ram and a Core i7 processor. All 8 cores are darn near maxed with a CPU utilization of 80-95% at all times. When this finished, I loaded a 33 minute XLH1 24P mpg and started the conversion there, thinking that the removal of duplicate frames had caused the delay. Well, let me tell you as I type this HDlink is just reaching the 2/3 mark on the progress bar and it has been 2 hours. This is for a 33 minute clip. Now....I can only say this for certain...nearly 4 years ago I was using aspect HD on a Pentium 4 single core machine with 1gig of Ram and when I would finish capturing a 1 hour tape, it would only need an extra 10 minutes to finish encoding to cineform. that's just a tad longer than realtime. At my office I had a dual core xeon that would encode in realtime. When the capture was done, HDlink would spit out a finished Cineform file almost instantly. So how is it that NEO HD is taking 2-3 hours to convert a 33minute HDV clip? Something surely is wrong here....right? Thanks in advance. I will install this on my Core 2 Quad and see if it is any better.

May 23rd, 2010, 10:46 AM	#3
David Newman CTO, CineForm Inc. Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California Posts: 8,095	Something does sound odd on that i7, yet there is a reason not to compare with Aspect HD, is it had no upscaling option. Leaving your sources at 1440x1080 is 3X faster than RT on my i7. The 1920x1080 is using a Lanzcos3 scaling, pretty but compute intensive. You can set the "Fast Scale" option to get good scaling at twice the speed of Lanzcos3. __________________ David Newman -- web: www.gopro.com blog: cineform.blogspot.com -- twitter: twitter.com/David_Newman

May 23rd, 2010, 01:33 PM	#5
David Newman CTO, CineForm Inc. Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California Posts: 8,095	Some system my require UAC disable once, but I don't disable it any more (under Win 7 where it is less annoying.) Make sure the registry key: HKCU/Software/CineForm/ColorProcessing/LUTPath points to a directory that you have read and write permissions. I move mine to my DropBox folder so I can do this: CineForm FirstLight color correction through Dropbox on Vimeo __________________ David Newman -- web: www.gopro.com blog: cineform.blogspot.com -- twitter: twitter.com/David_Newman

May 22nd, 2010, 11:48 PM	#2
Marty Hudzik Trustee Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Canton, Ohio Posts: 1,771	To quickly reply to myself I have determined one thing. I loaded the software on my older Core2 Quad with an identical memory config and I encoded a 12 minute HV20 24P(in a 29.97 stream) to a cineform file removing the pulldown and converting to true 1920x1080 in just over 15 minutes. Still not quite realtime but much better. So maybe there's a config issue on my Core I7 machine. Still, why was the conversion time on older version of Aspect HD, on a dinosaur PC, so much faster. I tell you I used to be able to capture m2t files and have Hdlink convert in just over the time it took to actually capture the footage on a P4 2.3GHZ machine with a gig of ram.

May 23rd, 2010, 01:24 PM	#4
Marty Hudzik Trustee Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Canton, Ohio Posts: 1,771	David, I did try converting some XLh1 true 24P clips and turned the scaling off and it converted a 6 minute clip in under 3 minutes. Indeed it appears to the scaling that is causing the super long render times. I assume that on the HV20 clips there is more computation going on to remove the 3:2 pulldown that is present that makes the conversion time even longer. I do have an additional question regarding first light in Windows 7. Do I still need to disable UAC controls to allow it to work? My very first attempts are not showing anything when I make adjustments in FIrst Light. Thanks.