Cineform and Premiere Pro 2.0

[John Hewat]

Originally Posted by Randy Donato

I hear from certain birds that the playback is very very sluggish and if you capture .m2t and it wasn't done in 2.0 it will not work...how dumb is that?

Well all this sucks - I just finally decided on a system based on PPro 1.5 and Aspect for my Z1 footage and now I may have to rethink it. But PPro is by far my favourite NLE and I'd hate to have to change now. Updates to programs are supposed to be upgrades, not downgrades.

[Steven Gotz]

Just because Premiere Pro may no longer use the Cineform codec does not mean that Aspect HD won't work. I am sure that Cineform is on top of the situation. Since I never used Premiere Pro 1.5.1 for HDV work without Aspect HD, I imagine that using Premiere Pro 2.0 with Aspect HD will be more of the same. No difference.

[Earl Thurston]

This weekend I asked my filmmaking buddy to get the Premiere Pro 1.5 upgrade (from 1.0, which we currently have) before it disappears when 2.0 launches. I've had a few instances in the past where I wish I had've gotten a previous version of an Adobe product but waited too long and found the newest version unsuitable. Problem is, once Adobe ships an upgrade, they do everything they can to pull previous versions from the market.

I know PPro 1.5 with Aspect HD works (even with my older P4 2.66GHz), so don't want to take the chance 2.0 will give us grief.

[Randy Donato]

I don't think that is necessary and I am very sure Aspect will not have a problem at all pluging into 2.0....I am sure Cineform is in a tough position since they have to deal with Adobe whether Adobe uses CFHD as there primary means of editing HDV or not so you can bet they will not be able to give you all the behind the scenes reasons for this development.

But I would bet the farm that Adobe for invented reasons thought Cineform and their solution for some absurd reason wasn't up to their vision of what they want for Ppro and HDV...the fact is Adobe hates it that someone who is a third party vendor can do it better than they can and that is exactly what CFHD was/is...better than Adobe can do it in house.My bet is once Adobe realises how poor their implementation is they will be very happy that Cineform is there to give HDV users an alternative. Otherwise chalk one more up to FCP. Tell your friend if he wants to wait on 2.0 and use Aspect he will be just fine.

The US release of 2.0 information should happen this week and that should free up the Cineform folks from their Non disclosure agreement's and allow them to comment in a more direct manner on the situation....I wouldn't do a thing until you hear from them.

[Don Blish]

I, for one won't be upgrading anything till it purports to master a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Version 2.0 may well be hiding HD capability, but won't advertise it till validated on an early burner, like the Pioneer BDR-101A, out in a few months. Then I expect a version 2.0.1!

A quickie update for HD menus and video, but still supporting only the Mpeg codec, I expect. The full text of the Blu-ray "movie distribution" spec has a lot of elaborate menu enhancements, extra "video layers" and such that will take some significant rewriting to support in full.

[Richard Leadbetter]

Originally Posted by Don Blish

I, for one won't be upgrading anything till it purports to master a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD. Version 2.0 may well be hiding HD capability, but won't advertise it till validated on an early burner, like the Pioneer BDR-101A, out in a few months. Then I expect a version 2.0.1!

A quickie update for HD menus and video, but still supporting only the Mpeg codec, I expect. The full text of the Blu-ray "movie distribution" spec has a lot of elaborate menu enhancements, extra "video layers" and such that will take some significant rewriting to support in full.

I have to admit that I'm not 100% up with the HD-DVD or BluRay specs, but would it not be the case that preparation of final assets for authoring would most likely be done with an encoder or muxer separate or distinct from Premiere Pro?

If you're looking to actually master straight to BluRay or HD-DVD disks wouldn't an authoring program need to be used? If I remember correctly, BluRay will be using a rendition of Java to run its front-end menus and HD-DVD uses something called iHD - another programming language that's most likely very similar. Extra video layers and such would surely be organised within the authoring tools rather than in Premiere Pro?

Surely the workflow will be Premiere Pro for editing, exporting of assets -> Encoder to create MPEG2/MPEG4s -> Authoring tool to master and burn BluRay/HD-DVDs?

As it is, Premiere Pro 1.5 should be able to handle the editing and processing of your base high definition BluRay/HD-DVD assets and 2.0 will too.

[Don Blish]

Right. Final encoding and menu prep should be to Encore, not PPro. So depending on the pricing, I may only upgrade Encore, not the whole Video bundle.

[Randy Donato]

Not to offend but what does blue ray and encore have to do with the topic of this thread which is cineform and ppro?

[Earl Thurston]

Originally Posted by Randy Donato

I don't think that is necessary and I am very sure Aspect will not have a problem at all pluging into 2.0....

Oh, I'm quite confident about CineForm's stuff -- it's PPro by itself I'm being cautious about. My plan to get 1.5 before 2.0 comes out is just in case 2.0 has other issues (i.e. higher hardware demands, sluggish interface, bugs, etc.) I seldom upgrade software unless there's a compelling need for it, and do so very cautiously. (Hence why we're still using PPro 1.0, which has satisfied our needs until recently.)

[Richard Leadbetter]

Originally Posted by Randy Donato

Not to offend but what does blue ray and encore have to do with the topic of this thread which is cineform and ppro?

CineFormHD and Premiere Pro (whether 1.5 or 2.0) will definitely have a place in any workflow relating to preparation of HD-DVD or BluRay assets. My post and Don's merely clarified where PPro would fit within that workflow.

[Pete Bauer]

New announcement coincident with the release of PPro 2.0. Here's the quick FAQ for Aspect and Prospect users:

http://www.cineform.com/products/FAQ.htm

[Steven White]

Here's my $0.02:

I have a Sony HDR-FX1, Premiere Pro 1.5.1, AspectHD 3.4 and After Effects 6.5 running on a 2.8 GHz machine with 1 GB of RAM.

All of my acquisition is painless and automatically scene detected through HDLink. Quality is selectable, pull-downs are removed and the files play back beautifully.

I can shoot a project in 60i and edit it in real time in a 60i timeline.

I can shoot a project in CF30 and edit in real time in a 30p timeline.

I can shoot a project in CF24 and edit in real time in a 24p timeline.

I can copy and paste from any of these projects directly into After Effects, which handles the Cineform files about as well as it handles DV files, with the exception that render times are 4x larger as there are 4x as many pixels. From here I can add any titles, effects, keys, and colour correction in 16-bit compositions that produce excellent results (IMHO).

I can export Cineform files or uncompressed avi's from After Effects, import them into Premiere Pro and seemlessly export SD footage for DVD - and thanks to Cineform it handles fields and framerates perfectly.

Every single function of my camera is supported, and my workflow could not be easier.

Why the heck would I need to upgrade?

-Steve

[David Newman]

Steve, good question, effectivity Aspect HD is all the upgrade you need. :) Aspect HD users may prefer the window layout controls for 2.0, although this is primarily a cosmetic feature (although I like it a lot.) The biggest changes in PPro 2.0 are underneith with the deeper color processing that will primarily benefit Prospect HD users, the change to support all this color richness will push Prospect HD features a lot more than Aspect HD (but expect some Aspect HD bonuses in the future -- I don't know what yet.) We expect Aspect HD to maintain a very similar feature set on both Premiere Pro 1.5.1 and PPro 2.0.

For more information on this thread topic, please vist my blog here : http://cineform.blogspot.com/2006/01...re-pro-20.html

[Matt Vanecek]

When will Aspect HD 4.0 be made available for purchase? According to your FAQ, 4.0 will still work with PPro 1.5.1, correct (the FAQ says v1.5)? I'm not planning on upgrading my Adobe suite anytime soon. When I look under Products|AspectHD on the CineForm Web site, y'all still have v3.4 up there.

Thanks,
Matt

[David Newman]

The FAQ say January 20th for Aspect HD 4.0 -- so we had better try for that. :)