Bye bye Cineform

There's simply too much hazzle involved working with the Cineform codec in the Production Studio Suite and between several systems like I do. I'm constantly jockying the 15 day trials even though I own a license. It's proven more convenient for me to reinstall WinXP and the entire suite and all the plugins than to actually wait for deactivation and activation procedures from Cineform.

I actually only own Connect HD since the only thing I need is the CFHD codec in my media architecture. I don't need any real time features in Premiere Pro. I never use PPro to capture HDV streams. All my files are already on disk and are mostly CG and FX plates.

So I'm going a different route. It's a shame because Cineform HAS the best wavelet codec around. No doubt about that. But this time piracy won the battle. Cineform is loosing a client - I was really close to getting the NEO 10-bit.

It's funny. It looks like my film YEAR ONE that started in Mjpeg 4:2:2 1,5:1 compression SD (Aurora Video's Igniter system) will be ending up in Mjpeg 4:2:2 HD. Right now all the files are being converted to Black Magic Design's Mjpeg codec. It's the kind of light weight codec I'm looking for and it hold's up for what I'm doing. And it's just there to install. It works.

Lossless codec nightmares

Cineform, Raylight, Sheer, Microcosm...I've tried them all including a bunch of Open Source projects like Lagarith. My deepes wish right now is that Adobe would bring me something like Apples ProRes but designed for the Adobe architecture. A lightweight 4:2:2 codec that could play HD of regular disks in RT and still hold up for some grading and chroma key work. A codec that is not surrounded by all the registration fuzz that Cineform has (come on! - serial, hardware key AND activation code).

Adobe. Make my world simpler. Now.

Premiere Pro on the Mac

Well...I couldn't tell you. I use Macs all day and I don't like them one bit. Too much bling-bling, candy colored buttons, metallic interfaces, glossy menus and other distractingly ugly things for my eyes - and no - I'm not running Vista yet - I'm still on XP for my main post work.

I have a hard time believing Premiere Pro CS3 will pull any users from the FCP crowd. They are hooked on Apple Evangelism (I used to be one of them) and is simply not ready to try something not connected with an Apple logo. Instead I believe Adobe has got a good chance with the new media crowd that works a lot in Flash.

Here's one of the first CS3 reviews over at Studio Daily.

Restart

This blog was kind of dead - so i figured it's time to change that.

Part of the reason is I've been betatesting Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 and I'm striving to do more of my work right in there in the edit timeline. The ambition is to do as little as possible outside of the app.

I'm currently setting up Premiere Pro 2 (no not CS3 yet - since there are a few plugins not yet supporting CS3) with Boris Continuum for chroma key work. I'm doing a lot of 2D-tracking in AE and I'm cutting and pasting the results from AE:s timeline into Premiere Pro's. BTW: I'm using AE CS3.

I'm doing a lot of my work on a simple MacBook (no not Pro) hooked to an 24" LCD 1920x1200. And I'm running boot camp on that machine and I have a few regular PC's on the network. One of them is an integrated finishing station hooked up with a Matrox Pharelia APVe for getting 720p out to a reference monitor. It all looks something like this:

I've recently started the Premiere Pro User Group Sweden. The website can be found here. The website will initially only be in Swedish.

Aja is releasing three cards and a break out box for SD and HD production to use with Adobe Premiere Pro. The cards are called Xena. What seems very attractive is the very slick plugins for capturing via After Effects, Combustion and even Photoshop. The Aja software looks really well designed.

FCP: Uncompressed on a powerbook hoopla...

I'm not sure why this is such a big deal but I'd thought I'd share it since it's a funny link. Gary Adcock of the Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group shows uncompressed HD running on his 1Ghz TiBook. He has no way to capture or output it but he can run one stream of uncompressed. I don't think he can edit it very we'll though. The thing is people like Scott Billups have been using PowerBooks as DDR's for several years using CineWave HD in PCI expansion chassis from Magma. I was close to building one for a job myself but found another solution. On a side note I'd say you could probably tweak a PowerBook to run several streams of uncompressed HD if you use a lossless wavelet codec.


Scott Billups rig running uncompressed HD on a PowerBook. CineWave hooked up via Magma underneath the TiBook. This is from an issue of DV magazine. In this particular case he used Premiere 6.0 on OSX for stop motion animation.

FCP/PPro: New FireWire Box for uncompressed!

Convert Design has a new box out that does uncompresed SD over FireWire. It will retail at about $1495 and it will support both Mac and PC with FCP and PPro as host apps. It has a nice 19" rack design.

Production update: Premiere Pro Long Form Performance

I promised to get back on this since we've just finished editing on STINGER for Shoreline Entertainment. PPro is performing ok on large timelines. But not great. It's still far from the Avid but equal to FCP. I've also discovered a few AAF bugs going in and from PPRO and AE. Some of the Pro bundle plugins stops working now and then when I've imported a timeline from PPro into AE. I still find our PPro setup less "buggy" that our FCP setup.

Format wars!

I predict an uneven battle between HDV and DVCPRO HD in the coming two or three years on the below $10K systems. And I predict HDV will win. Looking at the release of FCP4 I cant stop to think that Apple underestimated the HDV craze that's going on right now. There's nothing wrong with editing DVCPRO HD over FireWire. But the format do have one gigantic flaw that pulls the rug under Apples marketing feets here in Europe (and in places like Australia)...DVCPRO HD is a 30p format running on 29,97 clock. There is no possibility to edit DVCPRO HD in 25p in the 50Hz world and integrate it into a regular post production workflow. My suggestion is that Apple stops marketing DVCPRO HD and FCP HD in PAL countries until they have integrated HDV in the workflow (Hey, FCP has been HD since version 1.5). It's a waste of time and money and resources and the users have better things to do than discover the truth the hard way... HDV however has no problem anywhere in the world. It's 25p as well as 30p.

PPro: Link

Check out Digital Media Nets dedicated Premiere Pro site.

PPro: More expensive solutions for PPro!

Matrox announced the Axio on IBC.

Matrox Axio makes Adobe Premiere Pro the foremost realtime HD and SD editor for demanding broadcast and post-production environments. It features no-render HD and SD finishing in compressed and uncompressed formats, superior color correction tools, advanced realtime effects, and a full range of analog and digital audio and video inputs and outputs. It incorporates Matrox Flex 3D and Power of X technologies to leverage scalable CPU power with the explosive performance of dedicated 3D graphics hardware to provide the ultimate SD and HD editing environment.

The Matrox Axio family builds on solid expertise gained over several generations of Matrox DigiSuite and RT Series products. Well over 200,000 users worldwide currently enjoy the amazing value, stable reliability, and superior productivity of Matrox based realtime nonlinear editing systems. Close collaboration between the Matrox and Adobe engineering teams throughout development ensure the tightest hardware/software integration.

The Matrox Axio software and hardware components are integrated into an approved workstation and sold through a network of Matrox authorized resellers. These resellers also provide installation and training services to customers worldwide.

It's probably good. Still a bit pricey compared to a DeckLink solution. The HD configuration is $12,000.

PPro: The new HDV plugin from Adobe.

There has been some speulation regarding the soon to be released HDV plugin from Adobe that will let you edit HDV in Premiere Pro. The news about the Adobe plugin hit just when Sony showed their new HDV consumer camera (the FX-1) that will probably be used by a lot of independent filmmakers like myself. The rumors say the plugin is written by CineForm. If it's true it's great news because I don't think Adobes current collaboration with MainConcept is going anywhere and CineForms visually lossless codec is awsome. The HDV solution Mpeg Pro coming from MainConcept leaves a lit to be desired in terms of workflow and over all quality. I personally thing that goes for all of MainConcepts Mpeg products. That's sad because MainConcepts are CHAMPS(!) for bringing Non Linear Video Editing to Linux with MainActor. One of the few NLE's available on Linux.

I'm back!
Been gone for a while shooting a new movie...and it was a very tough shoot. This one was shot in a studio in Stockholm and we used a Vaio P4 2,8GHz as an off line suite in a corner of the place. The Vaio was hooked up to a LaCie Extreme BigDisk and a Sony J-H3 HDCAM player that downconverts to DV25 on the fly and outputs through a regular FireWire connection. Very cool.

In the next couple of weeks I'll be able to report how well Premiere Pro 1.5 does on a feature length project. This is my first one using Premiere Pro. The others have all been Avid or Final Cut Pro.

PPro: Where are my DeckLink HD PPro drivers?
Blackmagic Design just announced a $1000 dollar price drop on the DeckLink HD card. I need PPro drivers now.

PPro/FCP: More NAB.
Apple introduced the free update FCP HD. If you've got the new Panasonic DVCPRO HD machine you can edit DVCPRO HD (1080i/720p) over FireWire. Even on a Powerbook. Let's hope the codec is OK. The new update also introduced the coolest thing yet - something everyone on Avid has been spoiled with since the early days of NLE's - Digital Cinema Desktop. Preview DV, SD and HD content full screen on your monitor. No need for additional software. That's the way it should be done. Apple also introduced Motion - a motion graphics app - a bit like LiveType on steroids. And no - it's not an After Effects killer. I'm only guessing but it seems to me like Motion could as well be integrated into FCP. Let's wait and see what happens.

On the PPro side there is a new cool product called Prospect HD from Cineform. It uses an AJA Kona HD card and regular IDE drives and Cineform's own wavelet algorithm to capture and play out HD in a visually lossless fomat. It can do nine streams of RT. The downside to this product is that it seems to be extremely over priced. Disk drives are not that expensive these days that we can't live without the Prospect HD wavelet algorithm.

RT = Don't believe the hype. IMHO most RT effects are highly overrated and totally unusable.

Blog update:
Since I'm currently a 50/50 user of PPro and FCP I've decided to cover as much as I can for both editing systems. Mostly a way for myself to keep track with the two NLE's and the hardware world around them.

PPro: Matrox announces HD support at NAB.
Built around the "power of X" engine found in the lower end DV25 solutions coming from Matrox. I'm not sure if this is a HDV solution or actually uncompressed 4:2:2. It's supposed to do both 720 and 1080 formats. Check it out.

PPro: Premiere Pro 1.5 is here.
There are some major cool features added to release 1.5.

Project Management Tools:
Remove unused media. We've been missing that one.

24P/A support:
Support for true progressive footage.

Effect Favorites:
The first thing a noticed where missing when I started using PPro.

More AE integration:
Support for using clip board data. And cross reference use of AE plugins.

AAF and EDL I/O:
This my friends is what's finally making PPro a truly professional application. Move over all else.

This is a really nice upgrade.

PPro/FCP: Blackmagic Designs AGAIN.
I just got a mail from Grant Petty. He's introducing the new DeckLink Pro HD at NAB. It's dual 4:4:4 1080 HD uncompressed. The most quality you can get within the SDI broadcast specs. He's giving it away at $2,495. The mail doesn't mention WinXP support but I'll bet they're working on it. He' also got a neat product called HDLink that turns an Apple HD flatpanel into an editing monitor for full screen HD previews. Very cool indeed. The Apple flatpanels are awesome.