Prospect HD -- various questions

[Edward Natale]

By the way, whats up with the AMD only support for Prospect 1080 capture? I'm not an Intel fan boy but I have 0 experience with AMD. I've only put together Intel systems.

Hopefully when the dual core Intel CPU's become available they will be supported. Although the dual core AMD is still going to be supposedly faster.

I would love to see some benchmarks. Hint Hint. :)

Eddie

[David Newman]

Well today Intel systems are not quite fast enough for high quality CineForm real-time compression from HDSDI and AMD Opterons are. We are working with Intel to optimize more for their architecture -- after all we want to support the widest range of workstations. The main issue is HD is big -- much bigger than the CPU L1 & L2 caches -- HD compression needs to read and write the entire frame several times, which means raw memory speed -- AMD currently does this a little better. The reason is the dual Xeon architecture shares one memory bus, whereas the dual Opteron shares two memory buses (one for each CPU.) When both CPUs are working hard there is less collision over memory accesses with the Opterons.

For HDSDI some approximate comparisions (data is old now -- tests done in Feb '05 -- not using current systems.)

Encoder 10bit 1920x1080
Single Thread (one CPU) : Xeon (3.4Ghz) 19fps - Opteron (2.2Ghz) 19fps
Dual Threads (two CPUs) : Xeon (3.4Ghz) 21fps - Opteron (2.2Ghz) 28fps *

* This is why we recommend Opteron 252s (2.6Ghz) for Prospect HD to comfortable exceed 30fps. For 24p projects the Opteron 248 (2.2Ghz) works great.

So the data shows that the Opterons (running CineForm compression) scales better over multiple CPUs than Xeon. We have yet to try four encoding threads to use hyperthreading on the Xeon's -- we believe that will add 2-3 fps (from prior experience.) Note: We like memory bandwidth more than most applications so that is not a general indication of one CPU dominance.

We are keeping up with the lastest systems from both CPU vendors, and we will continue to optimize our software to get more speed, quality and resolution.

[Geoff Murillo]

Hi David,

Have you been able to certify Cineform Prospect HD-SDI capture (at all resolutions and frame rates) with two dual-core AMD 275s?

Also, have you had any success with HD-SDI capture with a single dual-core Pentium Extreme Edition processor?

And, will Cineform Prospect soon support Redrock Micro's M2 like Aspect and Connect do?

Thanks,

Geoff Murillo

[David Newman]

Yes Prospect HD has been tested with dual core dual proc Opteron 275 systems -- works well. We modified the encoding as that is will used all four cores.

We haven't tried Pentium D with HD_SDI cpature yet (motherboards with PCI-X and Penitum D support are extremely rare at the moment.) We are working to try this out. For playback performance the Opteron setup still wins.

Next release of Prospect HD (in a couple of weeks) will include the Redrock Micro M2 support. This is already working in house. Very nice to flip the import and upconvert to 1920x1080 10-bit from a HDV source all in real-time.

[Geoff Murillo]

Great news! Thanks.

-Geoff

[Dave Campbell]

Okay, I am trying to start my editing of my christmas video using a combo of tools and clips. But, when I render, I get this error
"Sorry, a serious error has occured that requires Adobe PPro to shut down. We will attempt to save your current project."

So, this is what I have. I started off PPro and made a custom setting, (which I assume I needed) since Prospect HD did not have what I thought was the correct thing to use.
So I made one with
editing mode: Cineform HD RT
Timecode" 29.97

Video
Frame Size 1440 by 1080 16:9
Pixel Aspect Ratio: HD Anamorphic 1080 (1.333) (I have not idea if this is correct, but was told not to use square pixels)
Fields upper field first.

Video rendering
compressor - CF HD codec

So, I have then proceeded to capture video. For the HDV from my Sony, the avi file in project setting says it is 1920 x 1080 (Is this right? )
For the DV capture, where I changed the capture to DV, the image size says 720x480. Now, I took some of the HDV avi files from above, put them into Serious Magic Ultra, and made a new avi. Now, these avi's have a image size of 1440x1080.

So, I am at a total lose as to have I screwed stuff up and what is causing PPro to crash on all render attempts.

(Boy was plan old DV 4x3 so much easier!!)

The only reason I went from Aspect HD to Prospect HD is I read that the 10 bit mode on prospect HD was better. I never had this issue using Aspect HD.


Dave

[David Newman]

You may need to work through this with support. Sounds like you created a preset will a combination of 1440 and 1920 modes, which is causing your issues. Prospect HD is set up for 1920x1080 not 1440x1080, so there are several places where 1440 must be set. It seems you have the capture module scaling 1440 to 1920, you will want that turned off in 1440 modes. So either run everything in 1440 or 1920, 1440 clip will work in 1920 project, yet 1920 clips in 1440 project may be trouble.

[Dave Campbell]

So, anyone other than me using this combo? Based on few customer requests, Ultra only puts our 8 bit code, not 10 bit like Prospect. So, if others have the need, would be nice to have folks ask SM for 10 bit output option in Ultra to work with Prospect in 10 bit mode.

Dave

[Daniel Rudd]

I'd be curious to know if anyone's been using it with the 8bit Aspect HD?
How are your results, and what are you doing with it?

[Dave Campbell]

I had used Apect HD 8 bit first with Ultra. Worked great.

Dave

[Daniel Rudd]

Thanks Dave. What did you do with it? What did you shoot with? I'd love to see a still if you had time.

Daniel

[Dave Campbell]

I used a sony Z1 in HDV.

I used it for my and my parents christmas video. We used it for the grandkids interviews, and opening of segments. My dad had the grandkids talk in the interview and then say where they would want to be transported to. I then changed the background on that frame. If was pretty cool!!

Will try to get a still but its just normal stuff like a weather person.

Dave

[Dave Campbell]

So, here is what I have done, know, and issues to resolve.

First, I have started with DV, HDV, PPro 1.51, and Prospect HD. I want to do my project with Prospect HD setting of 1920by1080, square pixels, 10 bit format. I choose the option to have any HDV video that is captured
converted from 1440x1080 to 1920x1080 10 bit. (An hour is about 80 gig. I have 4 hours of video. Ouch)

So, the HDV process works fine, so I will leave it alone.

The issue is the DV work process flow within the HD Prospect Project. So, since it looks like scaling, etc issues, this is what I have tried, but have run into issues.

So, for the DV, I started a standard DV project with 720x480, .9 PAR. (standard Ppro DV default) I bring in the clips and they look fine in a 4x3 preview screen.

Now, I need to convert these to 1920x1080 before I can use in my HD project!!

So, I use the export movie function in PPro. I make the file type Cineform HD export.
Under Video
I use the cineform HD codec
Now, I assume I need to use for frame size 1920x1080 since this is the HD project with Prospect I am using. Is this correct?
Now, what PAR do I use? If I choose 1.0, it says its 16x9. But, is this what I want, since I want my 4x3 material in the 16x9 frame?
Now, what is the keyframe supposed to be set to? Upper or lower? I know HD is upper, and DV is lower. But, what is it set to when converting DV into an HD project?
(By the way, I tried both and could not see any difference with my eye.)

So, I did the above and the clip went into my HD project as 1920x1080, PAR of 1.0 But, the video was stretched to 16x9, and the top and bottoms were chopped off.
(Now, these clips seems to preview correctly in the original 720x480 project as 16x9 with a 4x3 picture in the preview screen. The project time line preview has it chopped)

So, I then tried to do the export with 1440x1080 with PAR of 1.0 . It said 4x3 which I thought, maybe this would put my 4x3 into the 16x9 space. But, when I did the process again,
the video was still messed up. But what was weird, is the video said it was 1440x1080 and a PAR of 1.33. But, I exported it as a PAR of 1.0.


Once I can get this resolved, I know the next step I have tried is I then export from my HD project, into a 720x480 frame size, using CFHD export with a Par of 1.2 for 16x9.
But, do I use upper field or lower field? (Again, I can not seem to find what the rules are of when to use what) When I did this, the DV video was NOT fuzzy, just framed wrong.

So, am making progress. I continue to ask for help since there seems to be so few using Prospect HD this way, that I have yet to find solutions. Also, for what ever reasons, after I try some of these conversions,
then PPro starts shutting down when I try another export saying serious error. I have yet to figure out what causes, and then what causes it to start working generally after a cold reboot.

I know you are busy, so I will also post this on DVinfo since I am really getting to the point I need to figure this out. I hope next year to have NO DV footage to integrate which will solve this issue, for me.

Again, thanks for the help. I am so so close.

Dave

[Jim Long]

I have a doc that I have cut in Prospect HD. Before the holidays, I had burned some dvds for demo purposes and the quality was great.

After the holidays, I fired up the system, tweaked the cut in the Premiere timeline and began burning another demo disc BUT, now there are jagged lines and moire patterns that make the thing nearly unwatchable. Can the system default by itself to an old setting?

I tried to solve the problem--when trancoding--by setting a pre-encode for de-interlace. That help a little. Is this an Adobe issue? What transcode settings do you recommed for burning dvds from Cineform projects?

[David Newman]

Jim,

Have you seen this FAQ entry : http://www.cineform.com/products/FAQ.htm#Aspect1 as that might be what you are looking for.