Canopus Eduis 3.0 Vs. Liquid Edition 6.0 For HDV Capture and Real time editing

Paulo Figueiredo · February 14th, 2005, 08:06 AM

Thanks for the advice Kevin and Darren.

Despite my 3 month long searching/analisys of the different NLE solutions I missed that 64bit PCI issue.

I am putting the dual CPU's aside (budget goes very high with those).

So you made me think of going with a "step upgrade" solution: right now i'm building the system stated above with no extra card (as it seems it will handle most of the SD realtime editing needs) and ia a year or two I'll go with a HD camera and capture card.

Do you think it's wise?

Thanks again everybody for the great forum...it sure helps a lot!!
also learning a lot of ways to spend time I dont have...35mm adapters and home-built stabilizer project on the way :)

Randall Morton · February 14th, 2005, 11:42 AM

I hope Edius is worth it. I'm beginning to wish I had gone with a different program. Maybe the program will be good but the customer service sucks. I'm on hold now at about 35 minutes as I type.

I requested 2nd day air when I ordered. It even stated ship second day air on the packing list, but they shipped it ground. It came on a Friday and I installed it Friday night. It took a few hours to get it installed, registered etc. I briefly checked it out and imported a few clips from my JVC HD10. It was very late and I didn't do anything else.

I tried to use the program Saturday and I get the registration expired notice. I tried reinstalling but the same thing happened again. I'm still on hold at 40 minutes. My program serial number and activation code match but don't work.

At this point I would never recommend anyone buy this product because of the custormer service. I'm going to hang up and call the sales line. I bet they answer immediately.

Well, I called the customer service line and as I thought they answered immediately. Told me I would just have to wait for tech support as Monday is a heavy day. Also told me that the software is unreturnable. They can hire enough people to sell the product but not support the product.

I wish I had gone with a more reputable company.

Kevin Shaw · February 14th, 2005, 11:59 AM

Randall: I've heard other people complain about lack of service from Canopus, but they have some good people there if you can manage to get ahold of them. I've been using Edius for a while now and have come to like it a lot, especially its ability to do significant real-time DV editing even on my laptop. If for some reason things don't work out with Edius, I'd suggest you look into either Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere Pro. Those would be my two top choices if I was looking for another editing solution, based on what I've read about each of them.

Mark Kubat · February 14th, 2005, 05:17 PM

Edius was the first product we got at our indie t.v. station in Toronto when migrating to HDV. We thought, oh, okay, this is what HDV editing is like - my own station is a bit sub-par for HDV: 2 GHz Pentium IV, 1 Gig RAM, 128 Mb Graphics, etc...

We then upgraded our Vegas to 5b and Premiere Pro with Mainconcept Mpeg-pro HD (supporting HDV) and test-drove Connect HD from Cineform...

Cineform avi's play more "choppy" in Vegas on said system than original m2t does in Canopus! Premiere Pro - also more "lacklustre" than Edius in terms of navigating though the timeline, trying to edit with some sort of "pace."

Ultimately, we know we'll have to be upgrading the hardware a bit. But really, if Canopus can play so "smoothly" on said crappy system, what are the coders at Adobe and Sony doing wrong? Or, to look at it the other way, I'm glad the coders at Canopus are doing something very right!

Deinterlacing in Premiere Pro correcting 1080/60i to 29.97p is AMAZING and we do it as a final "run through" to give HDV a more filmic look...

Really, not to seem to trash Cineform - it's a great idea - but with all the "inconvenience" of converting and storage to allow for intermediary codec route, we were expecting an avi that "plays" as effortlessly on said system as a mini-dv avi does now... To kinda get a "taste" of what Cineform does, render out in vegas a mini-dv avi as "uncompressed" and try to play it back in realtime on the timeline - that is sort of like what you get. We were hoping Cineform would be the way to go to "cheat" to get HDV to be editable on a system that doesn't meet the common specs for m2t editing being bandied about (3 GHz, dual Pentium IV, etc.) but alas...

We understand that Edius is a bit buggy - but we're impressed that ver. 3.22 came out so quickly... Most of the issues we discovered were re: capture but to be honest, a lot of the apps are having trouble - seems like freeware capDVHS is the way to go for now and definitely, definitely, Edius renders out 1080/60i HDV faster on said system compared to other two apps...

Edius isn't THAT bad!

Cheers!

Mark Kubat · February 14th, 2005, 05:18 PM

To clarify, just want to say we're not using Edius NX or SP or anything like that - just Edius ver. 3 standalone... so all comparisons with other apps for us have been on "level" playing field...

Cheers again!

Steven Gotz · February 14th, 2005, 05:37 PM

If you are not getting smooth, realtime editing from Cineform AVI in Premiere Pro 1.5 then you are doing something wrong if you have the minimum requirements. I have a 3GHz PC and it runs as smooth as butter.

With an old 2GHz PC, if Edius works better for you, go for it.

But if people can afford a new camcorder for over $3K, then I would assume a new PC can not be too far behind. For most people anyway.

Randall Morton · February 15th, 2005, 10:37 AM

Well after some more phone waiting I talked to Tech Support about the expired message for Edius 3. He emailed me a program called ACcheck which I ran and it fixed the problem. Everything seems to be working now but I won't have time to start learning the program before this weekend. At least its working now.

Ron Evans · February 15th, 2005, 08:50 PM

I have an AMD XP2500, with Canopus DVRaptor RT2 normally edit with Premiere 6.5 or Premiere Pro 1.5. I now have Edius Pro3 to learn for editing HDV , choosen partly because it also works with my DVaptore RT2 for DV editing. With my XP2500 Edius capture will not work probably because it has a preview screen and my XP2500 cannot process all this data in realtime. CapDVHS will capture just fine and I tend to agree that it seems the best at this time for capture. Edius will not also playback m2T but once converted to Canopus HQ with Procoder will play/edit just fine. I really will get a more powerful system but will try and wait till this summer. Transcoding to HQ took Edius just about as long as Cineform took to encode the m2t . Playback of the intermediate codecs of both are fine on my XP2500 ( I know it is way below the spec for HDV editing). My dealings were very good with tech support as I also had a problem with activation code. I have been a Canopus user for many years now, DVRaptor, DVRaptorRT2 and have always had good service.

Ron Evans

Ken Hodson · February 15th, 2005, 11:34 PM

What are the advantages, if any of the Edius system over AspectHD (NLE preference aside)?
The harware requirements seem awfully high on the Canopus end, where Cineform just needs a 800+fsb and your rocking. Even lower memory bandwidth sytems perform well.

Mark Kubat · February 16th, 2005, 12:27 AM

Hi Ken.

My specs are posted higher up in the thread - I think Canopus is playing it safe with recommended/minimum specs to make sure people who are used to getting by editing mini-dv don't expect comparable performance for HDV...

That being said, I'm very happy with the performance of Edius on my low-end editing station... I'm using it now for my "basic" HDV editing - the JKL jog-shuttle works quite well playing back the HDV preview onscreen in semi-real-time, rather than "stuttering" along. Of course, I'm editing native m2t's - so that alone to us is an advantage in terms of time, disk space...

Aesthetically, I like Sony Vegas the best - I'm used to editing in it. Nothing is easier than just overlapping clips in timeline to create easy, nice automatic crossfades/dissolves...

There's alot to be said too for the mainconcept mpeg-pro HD (1.05 ver. supports Sony HDV) in Premiere Pro...

As mentioned, Canopus seems to render out fastest and nice touch with procoder 2 export built-in to Edius is you can export out to VOB's immediately if you want to burn to DVD ASAP...

I'm surprised by Ron's comment - I AM editing native m2t in Edius 3 timeline without transcoding to HQ codec... Maybe Ron is alluding to real-time playback through the Raptor out to a monitor-preview via firewire? Certainly on the "computer" you can play out your basic clip in realtime - of course, the better your specs, the better your performance in terms of layers and titles etc...

Randall Morton · February 16th, 2005, 10:49 AM

I'm still having trouble with activation. I have to run the ACcheck program each new calendar day to reactivate the program. Probably easier to run the program than to deal with tech support wait times again.

Ron Evans · February 16th, 2005, 07:42 PM

Randall.
My activation problem was with my Serial Number not being in the data base. They sent me an email a few days later and when I then tried it responded correctly giving me an activation code and registering correctly.
For Mark. I cannot play m2t on my AMD XP2500 ( which is really a 1.8Ghz processor ) the preview screen just displays "stop playback" after a few seconds. Same problem as when capturing and I am sure now it is a problem with my processor/motherboard ( MSI KT600 board) not being able to decode fast enough. This is true whether or not I monitor through the DVRaptor RT2, just PC screen or motherboard 1394 to DHR1000 then to TV/Monitor.

Ron Evans

Derek Serra · February 17th, 2005, 09:25 AM

Mark - did understand you to say that you used Edius 3.1 with an ohci compliant firewire and managed to get hdv into a P4 system, edit in RT and then export hdv via firewire to tape?

I've used a NX, and found it impressive - editing hdv is just like editing dv on my DVREX-RT system using the fully configured NX on a Xeon system. I'm trying to determine if Edius 3.1 can work as a software only hdv solution. Can it capture, convert to HQ codec, edit with some RT using HQ, and encode to M2V which can be exported to the FX1/Z1? Any feedback is much appreciated.

Mark Kubat · February 17th, 2005, 06:28 PM

Derek, alas, no...

BTW, there are clearly capture issues with Edius with re: to HDV - I thought it was my sub-par specs but visiting Edius forum at Canopus, everyone is in the same boat....

I capture via CapDVHS freeware.

I edit in Edius.

I render out a downconvert to mpeg-2 SD DVD via procoder express, etc.

I have not yet tested firewire out to cam - I'm always editing way after the fact, so to speak, and we are a digital t.v. station broadcasting mpeg-2 program streams - so now need to go back to cam...

Well, other than that, I'm happy...

I think Edius "standing alone" would need a lot of muscle behind it to perform as you're hoping - I understand now why everyone is talking these crazy specs for HDV... that being said, I think you're one of the "smarter ones" - if I recall the posts at Canopus forum correctly, Raptor dudes are having good luck with Edius while some of the other cards are more iffy....???? The forum there is the best - are you on it? If not, join it - you will benefit tremendously (not to take anything away from here - there just isn't as big a group of Edius users here, that's all! :))

Hope this helps...

Cheers!

Kevin Shaw · February 17th, 2005, 10:50 PM

<<< I'm trying to determine if Edius 3.1 can work as a software only hdv solution. Can it capture, convert to HQ codec, edit with some RT using HQ, and encode to M2V which can be exported to the FX1/Z1? Any feedback is much appreciated. >>>

As I understand things based on comments on the Canopus forums, the NX/SP hardware doesn't directly accelerate the editing process but rather helps with things like real-time HD monitoring and upscaling and downscaling between various formats on the timeline. If that's true, you should be able to do effective software-only editing with Edius Pro 3 on a sufficiently powerful computer, provided you don't need the features described above.

But since most people interested in HDV seem to want HD monitoring, that's an important consideration. With the possible exception of Pinnacle Liquid Edition 6 Pro, no one else currently offers an out-of-the-box solution for HDV editing with HD monitoring. And there's no way Liquid Edition can rival Edius for performance on any given computer setup, since they're editing directly in the HDV format--which is very processor intensive.

February 14th, 2005, 05:17 PM	#34
Mark Kubat Major Player Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 375	Actually, we're starting to prefer Edius again... Edius was the first product we got at our indie t.v. station in Toronto when migrating to HDV. We thought, oh, okay, this is what HDV editing is like - my own station is a bit sub-par for HDV: 2 GHz Pentium IV, 1 Gig RAM, 128 Mb Graphics, etc... We then upgraded our Vegas to 5b and Premiere Pro with Mainconcept Mpeg-pro HD (supporting HDV) and test-drove Connect HD from Cineform... Cineform avi's play more "choppy" in Vegas on said system than original m2t does in Canopus! Premiere Pro - also more "lacklustre" than Edius in terms of navigating though the timeline, trying to edit with some sort of "pace." Ultimately, we know we'll have to be upgrading the hardware a bit. But really, if Canopus can play so "smoothly" on said crappy system, what are the coders at Adobe and Sony doing wrong? Or, to look at it the other way, I'm glad the coders at Canopus are doing something very right! Deinterlacing in Premiere Pro correcting 1080/60i to 29.97p is AMAZING and we do it as a final "run through" to give HDV a more filmic look... Really, not to seem to trash Cineform - it's a great idea - but with all the "inconvenience" of converting and storage to allow for intermediary codec route, we were expecting an avi that "plays" as effortlessly on said system as a mini-dv avi does now... To kinda get a "taste" of what Cineform does, render out in vegas a mini-dv avi as "uncompressed" and try to play it back in realtime on the timeline - that is sort of like what you get. We were hoping Cineform would be the way to go to "cheat" to get HDV to be editable on a system that doesn't meet the common specs for m2t editing being bandied about (3 GHz, dual Pentium IV, etc.) but alas... We understand that Edius is a bit buggy - but we're impressed that ver. 3.22 came out so quickly... Most of the issues we discovered were re: capture but to be honest, a lot of the apps are having trouble - seems like freeware capDVHS is the way to go for now and definitely, definitely, Edius renders out 1080/60i HDV faster on said system compared to other two apps... Edius isn't THAT bad! Cheers!

February 14th, 2005, 05:18 PM	#35
Mark Kubat Major Player Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 375	We're NOT using Edius NX or any real-time Canopus: just software To clarify, just want to say we're not using Edius NX or SP or anything like that - just Edius ver. 3 standalone... so all comparisons with other apps for us have been on "level" playing field... Cheers again!

February 14th, 2005, 05:37 PM	#36
Steven Gotz Trustee Join Date: May 2002 Location: Clermont, FL Posts: 1,520	If you are not getting smooth, realtime editing from Cineform AVI in Premiere Pro 1.5 then you are doing something wrong if you have the minimum requirements. I have a 3GHz PC and it runs as smooth as butter. With an old 2GHz PC, if Edius works better for you, go for it. But if people can afford a new camcorder for over $3K, then I would assume a new PC can not be too far behind. For most people anyway. __________________ Steven Gotz http://www.stevengotz.com

February 15th, 2005, 11:34 PM	#39
Ken Hodson Trustee Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Vancouver BC Canada Posts: 1,315	What are the advantages, if any of the Edius system over AspectHD (NLE preference aside)? The harware requirements seem awfully high on the Canopus end, where Cineform just needs a 800+fsb and your rocking. Even lower memory bandwidth sytems perform well. __________________ Damnit Jim, I'm a film maker not a sysytems tech.

February 16th, 2005, 12:27 AM	#40
Mark Kubat Major Player Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 375	Edius standalone seems to work well on "sub-par" system config. Hi Ken. My specs are posted higher up in the thread - I think Canopus is playing it safe with recommended/minimum specs to make sure people who are used to getting by editing mini-dv don't expect comparable performance for HDV... That being said, I'm very happy with the performance of Edius on my low-end editing station... I'm using it now for my "basic" HDV editing - the JKL jog-shuttle works quite well playing back the HDV preview onscreen in semi-real-time, rather than "stuttering" along. Of course, I'm editing native m2t's - so that alone to us is an advantage in terms of time, disk space... Aesthetically, I like Sony Vegas the best - I'm used to editing in it. Nothing is easier than just overlapping clips in timeline to create easy, nice automatic crossfades/dissolves... There's alot to be said too for the mainconcept mpeg-pro HD (1.05 ver. supports Sony HDV) in Premiere Pro... As mentioned, Canopus seems to render out fastest and nice touch with procoder 2 export built-in to Edius is you can export out to VOB's immediately if you want to burn to DVD ASAP... I'm surprised by Ron's comment - I AM editing native m2t in Edius 3 timeline without transcoding to HQ codec... Maybe Ron is alluding to real-time playback through the Raptor out to a monitor-preview via firewire? Certainly on the "computer" you can play out your basic clip in realtime - of course, the better your specs, the better your performance in terms of layers and titles etc...

February 14th, 2005, 08:06 AM	#31
Paulo Figueiredo Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: mafra portugal Posts: 33	Thanks for the advice Kevin and Darren. Despite my 3 month long searching/analisys of the different NLE solutions I missed that 64bit PCI issue. I am putting the dual CPU's aside (budget goes very high with those). So you made me think of going with a "step upgrade" solution: right now i'm building the system stated above with no extra card (as it seems it will handle most of the SD realtime editing needs) and ia a year or two I'll go with a HD camera and capture card. Do you think it's wise? Thanks again everybody for the great forum...it sure helps a lot!! also learning a lot of ways to spend time I dont have...35mm adapters and home-built stabilizer project on the way :)

February 14th, 2005, 11:42 AM	#32
Randall Morton Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Memphis, TN Posts: 39	I hope Edius is worth it. I'm beginning to wish I had gone with a different program. Maybe the program will be good but the customer service sucks. I'm on hold now at about 35 minutes as I type. I requested 2nd day air when I ordered. It even stated ship second day air on the packing list, but they shipped it ground. It came on a Friday and I installed it Friday night. It took a few hours to get it installed, registered etc. I briefly checked it out and imported a few clips from my JVC HD10. It was very late and I didn't do anything else. I tried to use the program Saturday and I get the registration expired notice. I tried reinstalling but the same thing happened again. I'm still on hold at 40 minutes. My program serial number and activation code match but don't work. At this point I would never recommend anyone buy this product because of the custormer service. I'm going to hang up and call the sales line. I bet they answer immediately. Well, I called the customer service line and as I thought they answered immediately. Told me I would just have to wait for tech support as Monday is a heavy day. Also told me that the software is unreturnable. They can hire enough people to sell the product but not support the product. I wish I had gone with a more reputable company.

February 14th, 2005, 11:59 AM	#33
Kevin Shaw Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Sacramento, CA Posts: 2,488	Randall: I've heard other people complain about lack of service from Canopus, but they have some good people there if you can manage to get ahold of them. I've been using Edius for a while now and have come to like it a lot, especially its ability to do significant real-time DV editing even on my laptop. If for some reason things don't work out with Edius, I'd suggest you look into either Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere Pro. Those would be my two top choices if I was looking for another editing solution, based on what I've read about each of them.

February 15th, 2005, 10:37 AM	#37
Randall Morton Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Memphis, TN Posts: 39	Well after some more phone waiting I talked to Tech Support about the expired message for Edius 3. He emailed me a program called ACcheck which I ran and it fixed the problem. Everything seems to be working now but I won't have time to start learning the program before this weekend. At least its working now.

February 15th, 2005, 08:50 PM	#38
Ron Evans Inner Circle Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Posts: 4,220	I have an AMD XP2500, with Canopus DVRaptor RT2 normally edit with Premiere 6.5 or Premiere Pro 1.5. I now have Edius Pro3 to learn for editing HDV , choosen partly because it also works with my DVaptore RT2 for DV editing. With my XP2500 Edius capture will not work probably because it has a preview screen and my XP2500 cannot process all this data in realtime. CapDVHS will capture just fine and I tend to agree that it seems the best at this time for capture. Edius will not also playback m2T but once converted to Canopus HQ with Procoder will play/edit just fine. I really will get a more powerful system but will try and wait till this summer. Transcoding to HQ took Edius just about as long as Cineform took to encode the m2t . Playback of the intermediate codecs of both are fine on my XP2500 ( I know it is way below the spec for HDV editing). My dealings were very good with tech support as I also had a problem with activation code. I have been a Canopus user for many years now, DVRaptor, DVRaptorRT2 and have always had good service. Ron Evans

February 16th, 2005, 10:49 AM	#41
Randall Morton Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Memphis, TN Posts: 39	I'm still having trouble with activation. I have to run the ACcheck program each new calendar day to reactivate the program. Probably easier to run the program than to deal with tech support wait times again.

February 16th, 2005, 07:42 PM	#42
Ron Evans Inner Circle Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Posts: 4,220	Randall. My activation problem was with my Serial Number not being in the data base. They sent me an email a few days later and when I then tried it responded correctly giving me an activation code and registering correctly. For Mark. I cannot play m2t on my AMD XP2500 ( which is really a 1.8Ghz processor ) the preview screen just displays "stop playback" after a few seconds. Same problem as when capturing and I am sure now it is a problem with my processor/motherboard ( MSI KT600 board) not being able to decode fast enough. This is true whether or not I monitor through the DVRaptor RT2, just PC screen or motherboard 1394 to DHR1000 then to TV/Monitor. Ron Evans

February 17th, 2005, 09:25 AM	#43
Derek Serra Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Cape Town, South Africa Posts: 76	Edius 3.1 as software only hdv solution? Mark - did understand you to say that you used Edius 3.1 with an ohci compliant firewire and managed to get hdv into a P4 system, edit in RT and then export hdv via firewire to tape? I've used a NX, and found it impressive - editing hdv is just like editing dv on my DVREX-RT system using the fully configured NX on a Xeon system. I'm trying to determine if Edius 3.1 can work as a software only hdv solution. Can it capture, convert to HQ codec, edit with some RT using HQ, and encode to M2V which can be exported to the FX1/Z1? Any feedback is much appreciated. __________________ Derek Antonio Serra Indie Filmmaker www.indv.co.za

February 17th, 2005, 06:28 PM	#44
Mark Kubat Major Player Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 375	Not 100% workflow with Edius... Derek, alas, no... BTW, there are clearly capture issues with Edius with re: to HDV - I thought it was my sub-par specs but visiting Edius forum at Canopus, everyone is in the same boat.... I capture via CapDVHS freeware. I edit in Edius. I render out a downconvert to mpeg-2 SD DVD via procoder express, etc. I have not yet tested firewire out to cam - I'm always editing way after the fact, so to speak, and we are a digital t.v. station broadcasting mpeg-2 program streams - so now need to go back to cam... Well, other than that, I'm happy... I think Edius "standing alone" would need a lot of muscle behind it to perform as you're hoping - I understand now why everyone is talking these crazy specs for HDV... that being said, I think you're one of the "smarter ones" - if I recall the posts at Canopus forum correctly, Raptor dudes are having good luck with Edius while some of the other cards are more iffy....???? The forum there is the best - are you on it? If not, join it - you will benefit tremendously (not to take anything away from here - there just isn't as big a group of Edius users here, that's all! :)) Hope this helps... Cheers!

February 17th, 2005, 10:50 PM	#45
Kevin Shaw Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Sacramento, CA Posts: 2,488	Re: Edius 3.1 as software only hdv solution? <<< I'm trying to determine if Edius 3.1 can work as a software only hdv solution. Can it capture, convert to HQ codec, edit with some RT using HQ, and encode to M2V which can be exported to the FX1/Z1? Any feedback is much appreciated. >>> As I understand things based on comments on the Canopus forums, the NX/SP hardware doesn't directly accelerate the editing process but rather helps with things like real-time HD monitoring and upscaling and downscaling between various formats on the timeline. If that's true, you should be able to do effective software-only editing with Edius Pro 3 on a sufficiently powerful computer, provided you don't need the features described above. But since most people interested in HDV seem to want HD monitoring, that's an important consideration. With the possible exception of Pinnacle Liquid Edition 6 Pro, no one else currently offers an out-of-the-box solution for HDV editing with HD monitoring. And there's no way Liquid Edition can rival Edius for performance on any given computer setup, since they're editing directly in the HDV format--which is very processor intensive.