Prospect HD -- various questions

[Ron Nakano]

Hello,

Just curious, has anyone captured HDMI via Blackmagic while recording to tape, and then captured the HDV version and comparing the difference to see the damage that going to HDV does?

Thanks,
Ron

[David Newman]

Read my lastest blog entry on this subject : http://cineform.blogspot.com/index.html The pixelcorps guys just did this test.

[Jack Kelly]

Hi there,

I'm planning to finally make the leap to HD. I've done a price comparison for upgrading to a fully uncompressed HD system with a RAID6 array versus buying the Cineform "Ingest (HD-SDI & component HD I/O) bundle". It looks like I'll save a few hundred quid by going for the Cineform option and I also like the fact that the Cineform option will give me far less data backup and archive headaches.

Please may I ask some questions about Prospect HD:

1) What is the price of the Prospect HD-Ingest + (HD-SDI & component HD I/O) bundle for UK customers? The US price is $3989. Will the UK price be around £2030? (That currency conversion was done on XE.com).

2) Can I ingest HD-SDI to Cineform RAW? Or is Cineform RAW only available when capturing directly from the Silicon Imaging cameras?

3) I've heard that Cineform are developing a 4:4:4 codec. Will that be a free update to Prospect HD? Will I be able to ingest dual-link HD-SDI to Cineform 4:4:4?

4) Which AJA card is supplied with the Prospect HD ingest + (HD-SDI & component HD I/O) bundle? Is the card PCI-e?

5) is my processor fast enough for ingesting HD-SDI to Cineform? I have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 running at 2.2GHz with 3GB of RAM.

6) Which performs best with Cineform & AJA - WinXP-64bit or WinXP-32bit?

7) Will Prospect HD with the bundled AJA card downconvert to SD on the fly so I can symaltaneously monitor in SD and HD?

8) Will Cineform support Premiere Pro CS3 and AE CS3?

Sorry for all the questions! Thanks in advance,
Jack

[David Taylor]

Originally Posted by Jack Kelly

Hi there,

I'm planning to finally make the leap to HD. I've done a price comparison for upgrading to a fully uncompressed HD system with a RAID6 array versus buying the Cineform "Ingest (HD-SDI & component HD I/O) bundle". It looks like I'll save a few hundred quid by going for the Cineform option and I also like the fact that the Cineform option will give me far less data backup and archive headaches.

Please may I ask some questions about Prospect HD:

1) What is the price of the Prospect HD-Ingest + (HD-SDI & component HD I/O) bundle for UK customers? The US price is $3989. Will the UK price be around £2030? (That currency conversion was done on XE.com).

We accept dollars, so your credit card will convert using whatever conversion metrics are applicable at the time.

2) Can I ingest HD-SDI to Cineform RAW? Or is Cineform RAW only available when capturing directly from the Silicon Imaging cameras?

CineForm RAW is only an ingest format directly from Bayer sensors, or from uncompressed RAW files that were captured directly from Bayer sensors. Once an image has been processed in-camera it no longer qualifies for CineForm RAW encoding.

3) I've heard that Cineform are developing a 4:4:4 codec. Will that be a free update to Prospect HD? Will I be able to ingest dual-link HD-SDI to Cineform 4:4:4?

We will be announcing our product strategy with our 444 codec before NAB. But suffice it to say that any existing Prospect HD customer will get the CineForm 444 codec at no charge.

Regarding 444 ingest, you will need an AJA Xena 2K card and Prospect 2K, BUT we don't currently support that card yet. We will support it sometime in the next couple months however. In the mean time the 444 codec is best used for rendering into or out of. Also, no product announcement here, but the visual quality testing we did vs HDCam SR was performed on a Wafian D2D recorder prototype that used a Xena 2K card.

4) Which AJA card is supplied with the Prospect HD ingest + (HD-SDI & component HD I/O) bundle? Is the card PCI-e?

We have an order option for the OEM version of the Xena LH (PCIX) or LHe (PCIe). In this case OEM means that AJA disables the use of their Machina software (uncompressed) on the OEM version we provide.

5) is my processor fast enough for ingesting HD-SDI to Cineform? I have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 running at 2.2GHz with 3GB of RAM.

No. You'll need more horsepower. Please see our Prospect HD product page and read the HW configuration section.

6) Which performs best with Cineform & AJA - WinXP-64bit or WinXP-32bit?

XP 32-bit. There are numerous HW driver issues on 64-bit.

7) Will Prospect HD with the bundled AJA card downconvert to SD on the fly so I can symaltaneously monitor in SD and HD?

I assume you mean for timeline monitoring, right? If so, I'll have to answer this later. There is a subtlety about timeline monitoring an HD project at SD that I'll have to check on....

8) Will Cineform support Premiere Pro CS3 and AE CS3?

Yes.

Sorry for all the questions! Thanks in advance,
Jack

No problem - glad to help....

[Jack Kelly]

Brilliant! Thanks loads for the very swift and informative reply.

Originally Posted by David Taylor

CineForm RAW is only an ingest format directly from Bayer sensors, or from uncompressed RAW files that were captured directly from Bayer sensors. Once an image has been processed in-camera it no longer qualifies for CineForm RAW encoding.

Ahh, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the explanation.

Originally Posted by David Taylor

But suffice it to say that any existing Prospect HD customer will get the CineForm 444 codec at no charge. Regarding 444 ingest, you will need an AJA Xena 2K card and Prospect 2K...

OK - just to make sure I understand this correctly... say I buy Prospect HD with an AJA LHe card - am I correct in thinking that I'll be able to render and playback 4:4:4 but I wont be able to injest 4:4:4?

Originally Posted by David Taylor

We have an order option for the OEM version of the Xena LH (PCIX) or LHe (PCIe). In this case OEM means that AJA disables the use of their Machina software (uncompressed) on the OEM version we provide.

OK. Say I want a system which can do BOTH uncompressed HD and Cineform. Could I buy myself a fast RAID array, a retail AJA LHe card (for doing uncompressed) and also buy a copy of Cineform Aspect HD? (I understand that Aspect HD can't encode-on-ingest). Could I then capture as uncompressed, render those uncompressed files to Cineform and playback those Cineform files using my AJA LHe card? (The reason I'd like this setup is because most of my projects are short-form like short films and music videos - I will have enough storage space to keep these projects uncompressed and I do quite a lot of effects work where 4:4:4 would be really helpful. Occasionally I do longer-form projects where it'd be really useful to be able to compress the HD files)

Originally Posted by David Taylor

I assume you mean for timeline monitoring, right? If so, I'll have to answer this later. There is a subtlety about timeline monitoring an HD project at SD that I'll have to check on....

Yes, you're right - I'd like to be able to monitor in SD when playing back from the timeline.

Thanks again for all your help!

Jack

[David Taylor]

Originally Posted by Jack Kelly

Brilliant! Thanks loads for the very swift and informative reply.



Ahh, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the explanation.



OK - just to make sure I understand this correctly... say I buy Prospect HD with an AJA LHe card - am I correct in thinking that I'll be able to render and playback 4:4:4 but I wont be able to injest 4:4:4?

That is correct. But remember the material you ingest through the LHe card is single-link (YUV 4:2:2) not dual-link (RGB 4:4:4). To ingest 4:4:4 (uncompressed or compressed) you need a Xena 2K card.

OK. Say I want a system which can do BOTH uncompressed HD and Cineform. Could I buy myself a fast RAID array, a retail AJA LHe card (for doing uncompressed) and also buy a copy of Cineform Aspect HD? (I understand that Aspect HD can't encode-on-ingest). Could I then capture as uncompressed, render those uncompressed files to Cineform and playback those Cineform files using my AJA LHe card? (The reason I'd like this setup is because most of my projects are short-form like short films and music videos - I will have enough storage space to keep these projects uncompressed and I do quite a lot of effects work where 4:4:4 would be really helpful. Occasionally I do longer-form projects where it'd be really useful to be able to compress the HD files)

Yes, you can do exactly as you describe. You can always capture uncompressed and render into any resolution or chroma format CineForm files. But ... Aspect HD is not the right product - AHD is limited to HDV 4:2:2 resolution (1440x1080) upon rendering. Our RGB 4:4:4 codec will be part of Prospect 2K which is what you will need. Also...we are making some product announcements ahead of NAB that I think everybody will like, including both features and pricing updates, and rolling our 444 technology into the mix. Remember, we haven't formally announced it yet, so I don't want to go into all those details quite yet.

Yes, you're right - I'd like to be able to monitor in SD when playing back from the timeline.

Update: Yes, you can monitor component SD as output when using the OEM Xena card from a CineForm HD timeline.

Thanks again for all your help!

Jack

[Jack Kelly]

Brilliant, thanks loads for your reply.

[Peter Ferling]

Tonight I'm watching the timeline on what is the final render of four-month long project. Not that I worked all four-months on it, mind you, but a particularly difficult shoot that involved four separate shoots in three locations covering a rather simple or routine Peripherally inserted central line catheter (or PICC for short).

The shoot was my first experiment in HD, and so involved a Sony HDR-HC1, a rented HVX200, and some follow-up with my newly acquired Canon XH-G1.

This is not a high-end, heavy budget, Hollywood feature. It's more or less your basic product instructional video that will appeal to a small niche audience: The nurses who are taking over the responsibility of placing PICCs. So, other than praise from my boss, it's unlikely I'll get any nominations or awards for this work.

So, then why bother even posting? Well, it's not the content that makes Prospect what it is; it's what prospect can do to the content.

When I started this project some months ago, I cracked open my newly install Premiere Pro 1.5 and tried working in HDV. It was a struggle in futility. Fortunately I read about cineform on this forum and installed the Prospect trial. A simple test convinced me to start over from scratch and recapture and convert the media to CFHD. Unfortunately the project hit a long delay, and my trial expired before I could resume.

Resolved, I halted production and editing until a budget was drawn to purchase a prospect license. In fact, I would not be using Premiere today if it wasn't for cineform. I don't care how fast a machine is, as there are very few faster than a BOXX 7400 quad, as raw horses don't make a good thoroughbred like Cineform.

Second, I believe that cineform, like any software, is only good as the folks whom stand behind it, and I am convinced that both Jake Segraves and David Newman are on my team. I'd have to pay a consultants fee to get the same service elsewhere.

The bottom line is that it's a great feeling to have a system of support and software, comparable to high budget Hollywood production, in the hands of the everyday average editing grunt like me.

To think that I no longer have to be the expert at keying 4:1:1 dv, or being able to perform real 10bit color correction rather than just reading about in a rag, and wishing I have the six-figure budget needed to do even half the things I can do now. To watch folks walk by an HD monitor, stop and stare at something that I shot and cut, and the finished piece looks exactly like the edit right on the timeline! To wonder who managed to cough up the huge budget to get that kind of quality?

Yeah, Prospect Rocks!

[Salah Baker]

When will CineForm 2k/I be able to make HDlink = to Machina?
I would love to have the same features/framerates/Control ,422 control guys please)that Machina has but with a CineForm back, and extras.

[David Newman]

Of course HDLink does a lot more than Machina. However AJA might add CineForm compression to Machina if enough ask.

[Salah Baker]

I would love that

[Salah Baker]

I guess the day we can boot from the same OS Drive with both would be cool too.

[David Newman]

Again an AJA request. ;)

[Bob Hart]

I have downloaded Prospect V3 upgrade, uninstalled Aspect and installed Prospect.

On existing already captured files (AspectHD and its HDLink function) it works fine but on new captures in HD link, it has a problem. On capture and conversion in HD link, the capture rolls through to the end but the conversion stalls. Indicated CPU usage is practically zero but close out of Prospect, start another app and it hangs. CPU usage is then reported as 100%.

Capturing the M2T file works fine on its own. Separately converting the M2T file also stalls. Despite there being no scene detection selected, the conversion runs to 76mb, suggests the job as done by the "start" tile re-appearing. The separately completed .avi file plays fine.

The uncompleted .avi file locks the whole system up into 100% CPU usage if any attempt is made to play it.

The M2T file plays fine in VideoLan.

My computer OS is XP Professional with Service Pack 2 installed. NLE is Premiere Pro 2. With Aspect HD installed, everything worked trouble-free so this new turn of events is a bit of a worry.

The computer however is a no-name and not an Adobe approved system.


In an earlier separate enquiry relating to 2K files I got this advice here at dvinfo.

"You may want to consider either NEO HD ($599) or NEO 2K ($799) for converting DPX files up to 1920x1080 4:2:2 10-bit or 2048x2048 4:4:4 12-bit. You can upgrade Aspect HD to Prospect HD for only $400 this month and that comes with NEO HD."

In the Prospect v3 that I have installed, I can find no reference to DPX fles or Neo HD. Is the Neo HD function buried in the guts somewhere slaving away in the background?


Any advice appreciated.

[David Newman]

Try a reinstall as if Aspect HD work Prospect HD will. NEO HD is in the guts of Prospect, however the DPX conversion has not been added yet -- in the meantime use After Effects for DPX conversions.