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

Derek Serra · February 18th, 2005, 01:02 AM

Ummm - I tested LE6 for a week on a Dual Xeon 3.4ghx extreme system and we couldn't even get the fancy Ferrari-designed breakout box to work! Apparently it DOES NOT offer HD monitoring when it does work. It also cannot export to tape yet, or batch capture hdv footage. At present the NX is the only solution that does. As a long-time Canopus DVREX-RT user, this doesn't surprise me. Hardware solutions tend to be more stable, faster and offer a lot more than software-only solutions.

Kevin Shaw · February 18th, 2005, 09:33 AM

<<< I tested LE6 for a week on a Dual Xeon 3.4ghx extreme system and we couldn't even get the fancy Ferrari-designed breakout box to work! Apparently it DOES NOT offer HD monitoring when it does work. It also cannot export to tape yet, or batch capture hdv footage. At present the NX is the only solution that does. >>>

Thanks Derek. I've heard mixed reports on whether the LE6 breakout box is capable of true HD output, but your experience seems to be the norm for that product for now. So I'd agree that Canopus is ahead of everyone else on this point, and deserves a lot of credit for offering this feature. And like I said before, even if LE6 did have real-time HD monitoring, it couldn't possibly rival Canopus for HDV editing performance because of the codec differences.

You suggested that Edius NX is capable of doing batch capture of HDV footage--is that correct? I was under the impression that no one currently offers proper batch capture of footage from the Sony FX1, and I know a lot of people who would love to hear otherwise. Can you give more details about this?

Derek Serra · February 18th, 2005, 10:16 AM

Sorry - bad syntax there - sadly Edius does not support batch capture either, but does support monitor output and export to tape. Strangely, Ulead MSP does support batch capture from reports I've read, which proves that it CAN be done, even by a minor NLE player.

George Ellis · February 20th, 2005, 10:25 AM

<<<-- Originally posted by Derek Serra : Ummm - I tested LE6 for a week on a Dual Xeon 3.4ghx extreme system and we couldn't even get the fancy Ferrari-designed breakout box to work! Apparently it DOES NOT offer HD monitoring when it does work. It also cannot export to tape yet, or batch capture hdv footage. At present the NX is the only solution that does. As a long-time Canopus DVREX-RT user, this doesn't surprise me. Hardware solutions tend to be more stable, faster and offer a lot more than software-only solutions. -->>>
Actually, I think it is Porsche Design Studios... ;)

There have been issues with Firewire (I remember comments on out not working yet). I would not run a Firewire connection through it anyway. Firewire -> USB -> Computer? It never made sense to me.

Plus, Pinnacle does seem to admit to the press that native firewire from the Sonys is not working yet. The 6.1 patch is supposed to fix it.

Derek Serra · February 20th, 2005, 10:33 AM

Yes, rumour has it that LE6.1 will support HDV batch capture and export to tape - I'm not sure about external monitoring though. I do know that for some reason it's difficult to get a third party video card with TV out to work with it - only the expensive pro box sort of works, if you don't have a hardware clash as others have reported.

Randy Donato · February 23rd, 2005, 10:02 AM

Life is very good with Canopus and Nx....and more to come.

Kevin Shaw · March 21st, 2005, 08:03 AM

This weekend my brother and I loaded Edius Pro 3 onto his new Pentium 4 computer running at 3.0 GHz with a two-drive IDE RAID. We were able to use the Canopus MPEGCapture utility to record from the Sony FX1 to the Canopus HQ codec at "standard" quality setting in real time, and then easily play one layer of video with a color correction filter in real time without rendering. Two layers with a chromakey filter could play in fast-forward or reverse without rendering but not at standard play speed (go figure). Two layers with a 3D picture-in-picture filter would not play without rendering.

My conclusion is that a good single-processor PC is barely adequate for basic HDV capture and editing with Edius, which is actually more than I'd hoped for. This makes sense when you consider that a single layer of HDV contains as many pixels of information as 4.5 layers of DV, plus requires the computer to scale this information from 1440x1080 to 1920x1080 to display properly. There shouldn't be any question that a fast dual-processor computer is recommended for effective HDV editing, and even then you won't be stacking layers in real time like we can these days for DV.

I don't see much discussion on the internet from people using Pinnacle Liquid Edition to edit HDV. This doesn't surprise me, given that working with the "native" HDV format is even more processor-intensive than using intermediate editing codecs. By comparison, Canopus has a functional solution which can work in real time as described above without any special hardware support, and offers full-quality HD output in real time with the NX and SP hardware cards on properly configured computers. As I understand it, Premiere Pro with Cineform only offers a handful of filters in real time for HDV work, whereas Edius has a complete set of filters, transitions and keyers which will work in real time if you put enough horsepower behind them. By some accounts the new Apple HDV codec has obvious artifacts with even simple edits, and they haven't even incorporated this into their flagship editing program yet. That leaves Canopus in pretty good shape compared to all other shipping HDV solutions, provided you're willing to work with the Edius software which is still missing a few high-end editing features.

Gary Bettan · March 21st, 2005, 11:41 AM

a few points here

1) For HDV 1080i you're going to need a ton of computer performance. This Dual Xeon or Opeteron with 2Gb of RAM. Anything less may work, but the workflow will be slow.

2) Pinnacle just releaased LE6.1 - dramatic improvement here with Sony HDV cams.

3) Avid just purchased Pinnacle. Short term impact very little. long term - who knows. I think the technology in LE6 and Xpress pro compliment eachother and a future 'merged' prodcut would be a killer app. Time will tell.

Gary
Videoguys.com

Ed Szarleta · March 21st, 2005, 12:00 PM

Gary,

Preimier Pro 1.5.1 with Aspect HD 3.0 works just fine on a P4 3.4. Pushing almost 4 layers of 1080i with transitions and color correction. You sell it.

Darren Kelly · March 21st, 2005, 12:06 PM

<<<-- Originally posted by Ed Szarleta :

Preimier Pro 1.5.1 with Aspect HD 3.0 works just fine on a P4 3.4. Pushing almost 4 layers of 1080i with transitions and color correction. -->>>

Actually, you are not editing HDV, you are editing a proxy file. You are also not able to view the HDV signal on a broadcast monitor in Real Time.

Gary was suggesting you needed the big horsepower to edit actual HDV streams in RT, and see them on an external monitor, not the computer screen in RT.

Cineform is a great application, but for pro edit suites you need to see the output in RT on an HDTV screen - preferably a broadcast monitor.

Hope this helps

DBK

Ed Szarleta · March 21st, 2005, 12:56 PM

I am aware I am not editing in Long GOP format. Personally, I don't want to. And I output via component on my 6600GT to my HD 52in CRT just fine.

Kevin Shaw · March 21st, 2005, 11:21 PM

Ed: can you provide more information about what filters and transitions work in real time with Cineform in Premiere Pro? I've been told it's a very short list for real time purposes, and that all other effects need to be rendered to be played. Comments?

Joel Corral · March 22nd, 2005, 01:18 AM

No disrespect to the board moderators but,

Funny how i started this thread but my last post got deleted. i guess we can't state opinions around here or maybe i can't say that cineform falls very short of a practical choice for editing HDV when you have to re-encode before you can edit. and i guess i can't say to buy canopus edius 3.x for only 200.00 USD more than cineform and get a great NLE with RT editing on a p4 3.2 ghz machine.

This will probably be deleted as well but at least i tried.

Joel

Ed Szarleta · March 22nd, 2005, 07:00 AM

It is a fairly short list, but I do mostly narrative work and for me a few dissolves and color correction are the extent of my workflow. So, it is possible that AspectHD might not be for the transition heavy user. It suites my needs however. Trying to get a blog online with my experiences with Aspect. I will post when it is online.

Kevin Shaw · March 22nd, 2005, 08:30 AM

Joel: if you don't understand why your posts are getting deleted for using the phrase "g-y a-s plugin," you need to take some sensitivity training or something. If you'd just refrain from such unnecessary language and stick to more level-headed comments about why you prefer one solution over another, that would be better for all concerned (including you).

February 18th, 2005, 01:02 AM	#46
Derek Serra Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Cape Town, South Africa Posts: 76	LE6 HD monitoring? Ummm - I tested LE6 for a week on a Dual Xeon 3.4ghx extreme system and we couldn't even get the fancy Ferrari-designed breakout box to work! Apparently it DOES NOT offer HD monitoring when it does work. It also cannot export to tape yet, or batch capture hdv footage. At present the NX is the only solution that does. As a long-time Canopus DVREX-RT user, this doesn't surprise me. Hardware solutions tend to be more stable, faster and offer a lot more than software-only solutions. __________________ Derek Antonio Serra Indie Filmmaker www.indv.co.za

February 18th, 2005, 09:33 AM	#47
Kevin Shaw Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Sacramento, CA Posts: 2,488	Re: LE6 HD monitoring? <<< I tested LE6 for a week on a Dual Xeon 3.4ghx extreme system and we couldn't even get the fancy Ferrari-designed breakout box to work! Apparently it DOES NOT offer HD monitoring when it does work. It also cannot export to tape yet, or batch capture hdv footage. At present the NX is the only solution that does. >>> Thanks Derek. I've heard mixed reports on whether the LE6 breakout box is capable of true HD output, but your experience seems to be the norm for that product for now. So I'd agree that Canopus is ahead of everyone else on this point, and deserves a lot of credit for offering this feature. And like I said before, even if LE6 did have real-time HD monitoring, it couldn't possibly rival Canopus for HDV editing performance because of the codec differences. You suggested that Edius NX is capable of doing batch capture of HDV footage--is that correct? I was under the impression that no one currently offers proper batch capture of footage from the Sony FX1, and I know a lot of people who would love to hear otherwise. Can you give more details about this?

February 18th, 2005, 10:16 AM	#48
Derek Serra Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Cape Town, South Africa Posts: 76	Sorry - bad syntax there - sadly Edius does not support batch capture either, but does support monitor output and export to tape. Strangely, Ulead MSP does support batch capture from reports I've read, which proves that it CAN be done, even by a minor NLE player. __________________ Derek Antonio Serra Indie Filmmaker www.indv.co.za

February 20th, 2005, 10:25 AM	#49
George Ellis Trustee Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Suwanee, GA Posts: 1,241	Re: LE6 HD monitoring? <<<-- Originally posted by Derek Serra : Ummm - I tested LE6 for a week on a Dual Xeon 3.4ghx extreme system and we couldn't even get the fancy Ferrari-designed breakout box to work! Apparently it DOES NOT offer HD monitoring when it does work. It also cannot export to tape yet, or batch capture hdv footage. At present the NX is the only solution that does. As a long-time Canopus DVREX-RT user, this doesn't surprise me. Hardware solutions tend to be more stable, faster and offer a lot more than software-only solutions. -->>> Actually, I think it is Porsche Design Studios... ;) There have been issues with Firewire (I remember comments on out not working yet). I would not run a Firewire connection through it anyway. Firewire -> USB -> Computer? It never made sense to me. Plus, Pinnacle does seem to admit to the press that native firewire from the Sonys is not working yet. The 6.1 patch is supposed to fix it.

February 20th, 2005, 10:33 AM	#50
Derek Serra Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Cape Town, South Africa Posts: 76	Yes, rumour has it that LE6.1 will support HDV batch capture and export to tape - I'm not sure about external monitoring though. I do know that for some reason it's difficult to get a third party video card with TV out to work with it - only the expensive pro box sort of works, if you don't have a hardware clash as others have reported. __________________ Derek Antonio Serra Indie Filmmaker www.indv.co.za

February 23rd, 2005, 10:02 AM	#51
Randy Donato Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Houston, Texas Posts: 138	Life is very good with Canopus and Nx....and more to come.

March 21st, 2005, 08:03 AM	#52
Kevin Shaw Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Sacramento, CA Posts: 2,488	This weekend my brother and I loaded Edius Pro 3 onto his new Pentium 4 computer running at 3.0 GHz with a two-drive IDE RAID. We were able to use the Canopus MPEGCapture utility to record from the Sony FX1 to the Canopus HQ codec at "standard" quality setting in real time, and then easily play one layer of video with a color correction filter in real time without rendering. Two layers with a chromakey filter could play in fast-forward or reverse without rendering but not at standard play speed (go figure). Two layers with a 3D picture-in-picture filter would not play without rendering. My conclusion is that a good single-processor PC is barely adequate for basic HDV capture and editing with Edius, which is actually more than I'd hoped for. This makes sense when you consider that a single layer of HDV contains as many pixels of information as 4.5 layers of DV, plus requires the computer to scale this information from 1440x1080 to 1920x1080 to display properly. There shouldn't be any question that a fast dual-processor computer is recommended for effective HDV editing, and even then you won't be stacking layers in real time like we can these days for DV. I don't see much discussion on the internet from people using Pinnacle Liquid Edition to edit HDV. This doesn't surprise me, given that working with the "native" HDV format is even more processor-intensive than using intermediate editing codecs. By comparison, Canopus has a functional solution which can work in real time as described above without any special hardware support, and offers full-quality HD output in real time with the NX and SP hardware cards on properly configured computers. As I understand it, Premiere Pro with Cineform only offers a handful of filters in real time for HDV work, whereas Edius has a complete set of filters, transitions and keyers which will work in real time if you put enough horsepower behind them. By some accounts the new Apple HDV codec has obvious artifacts with even simple edits, and they haven't even incorporated this into their flagship editing program yet. That leaves Canopus in pretty good shape compared to all other shipping HDV solutions, provided you're willing to work with the Edius software which is still missing a few high-end editing features.

March 21st, 2005, 11:41 AM	#53
Gary Bettan Sponsor: Electronic Mailbox Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Glen Cove, NY Posts: 758	a few points here 1) For HDV 1080i you're going to need a ton of computer performance. This Dual Xeon or Opeteron with 2Gb of RAM. Anything less may work, but the workflow will be slow. 2) Pinnacle just releaased LE6.1 - dramatic improvement here with Sony HDV cams. 3) Avid just purchased Pinnacle. Short term impact very little. long term - who knows. I think the technology in LE6 and Xpress pro compliment eachother and a future 'merged' prodcut would be a killer app. Time will tell. Gary Videoguys.com __________________ Check out http://www.videoguys.com 800 323-2325 We are the video editing and live video production experts! DV InfoNet members save 5%! Use Coupon Code DVINFO5OFF

March 21st, 2005, 12:00 PM	#54
Ed Szarleta Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Florida Posts: 156	Gary, Preimier Pro 1.5.1 with Aspect HD 3.0 works just fine on a P4 3.4. Pushing almost 4 layers of 1080i with transitions and color correction. You sell it.

March 21st, 2005, 12:06 PM	#55
Darren Kelly Major Player Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Vancouver Posts: 351	<<<-- Originally posted by Ed Szarleta : Preimier Pro 1.5.1 with Aspect HD 3.0 works just fine on a P4 3.4. Pushing almost 4 layers of 1080i with transitions and color correction. -->>> Actually, you are not editing HDV, you are editing a proxy file. You are also not able to view the HDV signal on a broadcast monitor in Real Time. Gary was suggesting you needed the big horsepower to edit actual HDV streams in RT, and see them on an external monitor, not the computer screen in RT. Cineform is a great application, but for pro edit suites you need to see the output in RT on an HDTV screen - preferably a broadcast monitor. Hope this helps DBK __________________ Darren Kelly

March 21st, 2005, 12:56 PM	#56
Ed Szarleta Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Florida Posts: 156	I am aware I am not editing in Long GOP format. Personally, I don't want to. And I output via component on my 6600GT to my HD 52in CRT just fine.

March 21st, 2005, 11:21 PM	#57
Kevin Shaw Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Sacramento, CA Posts: 2,488	Ed: can you provide more information about what filters and transitions work in real time with Cineform in Premiere Pro? I've been told it's a very short list for real time purposes, and that all other effects need to be rendered to be played. Comments?

March 22nd, 2005, 01:18 AM	#58
Joel Corral Major Player Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Brea, CA Posts: 356	No disrespect to the board moderators but, Funny how i started this thread but my last post got deleted. i guess we can't state opinions around here or maybe i can't say that cineform falls very short of a practical choice for editing HDV when you have to re-encode before you can edit. and i guess i can't say to buy canopus edius 3.x for only 200.00 USD more than cineform and get a great NLE with RT editing on a p4 3.2 ghz machine. This will probably be deleted as well but at least i tried. Joel

March 22nd, 2005, 07:00 AM	#59
Ed Szarleta Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Florida Posts: 156	It is a fairly short list, but I do mostly narrative work and for me a few dissolves and color correction are the extent of my workflow. So, it is possible that AspectHD might not be for the transition heavy user. It suites my needs however. Trying to get a blog online with my experiences with Aspect. I will post when it is online.

March 22nd, 2005, 08:30 AM	#60
Kevin Shaw Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Sacramento, CA Posts: 2,488	Joel: if you don't understand why your posts are getting deleted for using the phrase "g-y a-s plugin," you need to take some sensitivity training or something. If you'd just refrain from such unnecessary language and stick to more level-headed comments about why you prefer one solution over another, that would be better for all concerned (including you).