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CineForm Aspect HD?
Hi,
I’ve been playing with AspectHD and some test footage,
for a little while, but I just got my P2 card and
started really test driving the flow:My impression so far is that this is buggy and convoluted.
1) HDlink is very tempermental crashing without warning
if settings are exactly perfect.
2) Color/frame size/brightness change during previewing
in Premiere. The FAQ suggestion doesn’t fix the issue,
but does help and it is so old that it doesn’t match the
current Nvidia driver software so experimentation is
necessary.
3) The output to DVD from a CineForm HD project is terrible.
The conversion from 24p to 29.97 lower field, PAR=1.2
produces a file, that Premiere always thinks is a 0.9 PAR.
Using the interpret footage works for the aspect ratio, but then the red render bar pops up in the timeline.
In the one test, there were obvious field errors
as a wall edge would bounce back and forth like it was
a upper fields first file during a pan. Finally the color
of the DVD video wasn’t the same as the original AVI
produced by HDLink.I was really hoping for a nice workflow because I’ve
heard good things about it. Am I missing something?The goal is to film 720pN24, convert with HDlink to
AVIs with 1280×720(1.0). Bring this in to PPro CS3,
edit, color correct, and output to DVD. According
to the FAQs an export movie must be done before
using Adobe media encoder. Therefore I created a second
project that is a Widescreen DV project and imported
the exported AVI. Then I used this project to run
Adobe Media Encoder to generate the MPEG-DVD files.Does this sound reasonable for the AspectHD product?
MBW
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23 Replies
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Hi,
I had almost the same problem with Cineform but here is an other solution I just found, the new codec from MainConcept. First download the MainConcept MPEG Pro HD Plug-in v2.0.1https://www.mainconcept.com/site/consumer-products-4/mpeg-pro-hd-7850/demo-version-7854.html
then the DVCprod add on.
I just made it and it works but I still don’t have any playback from WMP.hope it helps
Mat
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1) All crashes should be reported to CineForm tech support. HDLink has been around for a long time, and P2 media is pretty easy to convert, there should be no crashes. Support should be able to find the issue for you.
2) The NVidia overlay is not calibrated, that is all we are suggesting in the readme. Unfortuately each NVidia card has the Overlay wrong in some slightly different way, so the sample values will not work for all NVidia cards. This is not an issue with ATI or Matrox cards. If you don’t want to calibrate your NVidia card, you can turn off the overlay with Aspect HD and the color will be prefect.
3) That is not a good away to export a DVD. 24p should export as 24p, no fields, as Premiere don’t inject pulldown correctly (it is not a Aspect HD function.) The only reason a CineForm HD export is suggested is the Adobe Media Encoder (AME) had a bug with alpha channels and titles, under PPro 2.0. With CS3 (if you are using that) it should be fixed and you can export directly. I personal use 24p CineForm AVI file and bring them in Encore, as I still don’t trust the AME.
– David Newman
– CTO, CineForm
– web: http://www.cineform.com
– blog: cineform.blogspot.com -
Mat,
When I emailed MainConcept about this plugin
a few weeks ago, they replied (after a week I might
add) that there plugin didn’t support CS3. Because
of this, I dropped looking at it. Are you using CS3?MBW
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David,
I will try and come up with a testcase for my issues
with HDLink and work with support. My obligation to
give an example….So how does one turn off the overlay in AspectHD? Is
this in the “playback options” located on the flyout from
the preview window in Premiere? I’d like to get the best
color I can. I did play with the overlay settings and
seem to have it right, but would like to check it against
the perfect results. The whole overlay concept in graphics
cards has never been fully clear to me anyway.Yes I am using CS3. I like the idea of output straight
from the timeline thanks for pointing out that the flow
works. Using 24p makes that simple except somewhere it
has to get converted back up to 29.97i. Where does this
occur in your flow? Also, isn’t AME the same software
that is in Encore? I just prefer to have all my encoding
done, by the time I get to DVD create… Personal
preference.Thanks for the response. I now have more ideas
to try. Just noticed the blog page. Looking forward to
reading through it.MBW
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Hi,
You are right I am not using CS3, still on 2.0. But the thing is that Cineform doesn’t work fine.
Bye
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“Using 24p makes that simple except somewhere it
has to get converted back up to 29.97i. Where does this
occur in your flow? Also, isn’t AME the same software
that is in Encore? I just prefer to have all my encoding
done, by the time I get to DVD create… Personal
preference.”Premiere assumes you want frame blended when going from 24p to 29i when using Export Movie, to any format, and you don’t want frame blending. I just tested that AME now works in CS3 correctly with Alpha channels, so exportly directly works. In the AME select MPEG2-DVD and 24p (23.976p.) While technically all NTSC DVDs are 29.97, this allows the 24p signal to be created with the correct repeat flags for 3-2 pulldown, for much wider support form progressive DVD players–adding pulldown first then encoding to 29.97 will give you no repeat flags and often lower quality on your DVD outputs.
– David Newman
– CTO, CineForm
– web: http://www.cineform.com
– blog: cineform.blogspot.com -
David,
Thanks for the info about 24p. The blended frames
is exactly what I was seeing in the output. I’ve always been
confused about the use of 24p with DVD players since
it has to be 29.97i for most TVs. What I here you saying
is that the DVD encoding will put correct flags for
the DVD player so that it adds the pull-down. All
that in a little $30 box, connected to a 5 year old
analog TV. It’s amazing. 🙂Thanks for the help with this. I will be making a
DVD TEST case ASAP. Glad to hear that CS3 fixed the
alpha problem. Didn’t even run into it with CS2, but
I always worked with interlaced video anyway.MBW
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David,
I still have not found a way to turn off the overlay
so no matter what I do, the colors are different when
the preview is running.
Also, whenever I export a cineformHD avi using the
Export->movie command it is always recognized by Premiere
as a PAR=0.9 even though it is a PAR=1.2. When I
use the interpret footage to set it correctly it looks
right, but that means the timeline needs to render.
With the MPEG output from CS3 I get flickers in
the video.
Any rendering(AME or Export->Movie) there it a greening
of the video.Any suggestions… I know… I’ll contact tech support. 🙂
So far, though AspectHD is not usable for me. Dang…
Here is my website showing some of my issues:
https://www.caribeblueproductions.com/AspectHDIssues.html
MBW
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Have you contacted support, as you issues are not typical? I did confirm that SD imports as 0.9 — likely a simple fix for something that broke between PPro2.0 and CS3. As for the timeline needing to render, that is not an issue if you going to immediately encode to MPEG, you don’t need to render the timeline, you don’t even need to put it on a timeline to make a DVD Export. That greening could be a color space issue, remember HD is 709 and SD is 601, mixing can be an issue in some conditions, but I’m not see it here. Please talk to support, as that is what they are for.
– David Newman
– CTO, CineForm
– web: http://www.cineform.com
– blog: cineform.blogspot.com -
David,
I opened a ticket last night and gave them the same
web link. Wanted to say “Thanks” for taking a look at
my issues. At least I’m not crazy on the PAR issue. 🙂
Hopefully the greening is just something simple that
I’ve done. I do have the 709 color space selected in the
playback options.Will work with tech support.
Mark
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