Adobe CS3/CS4 + MainConcept = Great News

[Steve Kalle]

Davis, no, I am using a PC (tested Calibrated XD on Vista x64 and Mainconcept on 7 x64).

If you are editing MXFs, I assume you don't have control over which format is used when recording. Right or wrong?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought I read somewhere here that CD has a program for re-wrapping MXFs to MOVs and vice versa.

[David Cherniack]

Steve, I have no wish to edit Quicktime files. MXFs are real time in Axio. Quicktime is far from it. Besides, without CD MXF suppport in After Effects the desireability of the codec for acquistion is considerably reduced.

[Dan Keaton]

Originally Posted by Steve Kalle

Davis, no, I am using a PC (tested Calibrated XD on Vista x64 and Mainconcept on 7 x64).

If you are editing MXFs, I assume you don't have control over which format is used when recording. Right or wrong?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought I read somewhere here that CD has a program for re-wrapping MXFs to MOVs and vice versa.

Dear Steve,

We have a free "File Converter", which converts our Quicktime files (".MOV") to ".MXF". This is currently a Mac based program. Thus, one must have a Mac to run this program.

With our next firmware release, we will record MXF files in Sony Optical Disk format. As such, one can use the Sony FCP Plug-In to use MXF files in FCP, or to just view the MXF files in a Mac.

[Dan Keaton]

Originally Posted by David Cherniack

Steve, I have no wish to edit Quicktime files. MXFs are real time in Axio. Quicktime is far from it. Besides, without CD MXF suppport in After Effects the desireability of the codec for acquistion is considerably reduced.

Dear David,

I checked with MainConcept.

They have confirmed that "We officially only support Adobe Premier Pro with our Plug-In."

I am still researching this.

[David Cherniack]

Dear Dan,

As you probably know Pr is just one arm of the Adobe workflow. It's tightly integrated with After Effects, Encore, Soundbooth and Media Encoder so that clips and the timelines that they're in move seamlessly between all 5 apps. They also can be acquired via On Location. Media Encoder will handle your MXF clips. After Effects won't. The other apps I haven't tested and I don't know if On location would make any sense with the nanoFlash. I can check Encore later today. As for After Effects if you have no contact with the development team I can ask my contacts in the video group who to talk to over there if you'd like me to. It's probably too late for CS4 but not for CS5. For CS4 the only workaround would be to render and replace the MC MXFs with an Ae supported codec.

David
AllinOneFilms.com

[Aaron Newsome]

Originally Posted by David Cherniack

I don't know if On location would make any sense with the nanoFlash.

sure it does. you could monitor the live signal coming out of the nanoFlash to make sure you're getting a good recording on flash.

[David Cherniack]

But how would you imput the signal to the laptop? AFAIK CS4 OL only accepts firewire as an input. It's one of the limitations of OL. Of course this may change with CS5.

[Aaron Newsome]

Originally Posted by David Cherniack

But how would you imput the signal to the laptop? AFAIK CS4 OL only accepts firewire as an input. It's one of the limitations of OL. Of course this may change with CS5.

Oh well. I've never used it so I wasn't aware of that. I thought maybe with a SDI input on your computer you could monitor the signal with OnLocation.

I suppose if your camera had a FW out, monitoring the FW signal with OnLocation and recording the SDI with a nano would still beat no monitoring at all, wouldn't you agree?

[David Cherniack]

I think it will make sense if you really need monitoring via a laptop or desktop computer. Many newer cameras are providing waveform and/or histogram display in the viewfinder/LCD. For most field work this is a more practical solution.

David
AllinOneFilms.com

[Steve Kalle]

Wow. I can't believe Mainconcept would screw up so badly by not supporting AE. I have a feeling that many people who buy their plug-in will be extremely ticked off.

Back to .MOV files - I can't believe these files don't playback in Premiere easily. Can anyone else confirm this as I was planning to use the Calibrated XD software and record .MOV in the Nanoflash at least until CS5 comes out. I remember testing the greenscreen .MOV clip from CD's site within AE CS4 and had no problem playing it back. And yes, AE was set to full res.

[David Cherniack]

I've never tried the Calibrated XD decode software. But I see on their site that they suppprt it only in XP and 32 bit Vista...which even if it does facilitate playback in Pr would make it not very useful as Pr CS4 works far better in a 64 bit OS. The other thing is that Ae has always been more Quicktime friendly in Windows than Pr.

For my use with the RT features of Axio I don't think the MC mov files will work at all as Axio supports MXF.

David
AllinOneFilms.com

[Paul Cronin]

Aaron sorry to jump in late here but I have the same problem. I shot with the Nano today at 100Mbps Long GOP in .mov. Could you let me know the steps you took so I can solve this problem and have the editor use PP on a PC?

I was told after our flight that the editor was going to use PP on a PC. Yikes, you should have told me of the change, originally it was going to be editing in FCP.

[Greg Booth]

Hi,

Vista 64-bit is supported with all of our products. The requirements on the website need to be updated.

In regards to realtime playback in AE, Steve are you sure that you weren't using RAM Preview for RT playback - as AE doesnt 'really' play anything back in RT except in RAM Preview.

As for Premiere Pro playback, Calibrated{Q} XD Decode will let you import the MOV files within PPro - but most likely it will not playback in realtime as Premiere Pro does not call our quicktime codec in an optimized way (calling for RGB data instead of YUV, etc). Playback speed would really depend on speed of computer, project settings, etc But you would be able to render any MOV files on a PPro timeline to I-frame only MPEG2 (or whatever compiler you are using in your timeline) for realtime playback in Premiere.

Cheers,
Greg

Cheers,
Greg

Calibrated Software

[Aaron Newsome]

Originally Posted by Steve Kalle

Wow. I can't believe Mainconcept would screw up so badly by not supporting AE. I have a feeling that many people who buy their plug-in will be extremely ticked off.

Back to .MOV files - I can't believe these files don't playback in Premiere easily. Can anyone else confirm this as I was planning to use the Calibrated XD software and record .MOV in the Nanoflash at least until CS5 comes out. I remember testing the greenscreen .MOV clip from CD's site within AE CS4 and had no problem playing it back. And yes, AE was set to full res.

Premiere Pro DOES support .MOV files (Quicktime files). Remember though, Quicktime is not a codec, it is a container format. The video encoding for the data inside a Quicktime file can be using a dozen different codecs at an infinite number of bitrates, bit depths and color spaces.

Saying that Premiere supports .MOV files is really not answering anything but the most basic question. A better question is "Does Premiere Pro support Quicktime files using "codec" at "bitrate", with "bits per pixel" and "colorspace".

Having said that, Premiere Pro DOES support LongGOP MPEG-II at a maximum bitrate of 35Mb/s (if I recall correctly).

[Aaron Newsome]

Originally Posted by Paul Cronin

Aaron sorry to jump in late here but I have the same problem. I shot with the Nano today at 100Mbps Long GOP in .mov. Could you let me know the steps you took so I can solve this problem and have the editor use PP on a PC?

I was told after our flight that the editor was going to use PP on a PC. Yikes, you should have told me of the change, originally it was going to be editing in FCP.

I just transcoded to ProRes422 HQ, which worked fine in Premiere Pro. No extra plugins required. The ProRes422 files are 10 bit and 220Mbs, very high quality.