CS3 — P2 card—yes or no?

[Blast1]

[Vincent Becquiot] “Edius also supports DVCPro HD natively without Raylight.”
Edius Pro v4.51 does not support DVCPro HD natively, Edius Pro Broadcast does support, Panasonic DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO HD,
Panasonic DVCPRO P2, Panasonic VariCam, Sony XDCAM at a premium of $400 extra.

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

During the Public Preview stage, PPro product manager Giles Baker revealed that P2/DVCPRO HD support was already in the works, and that they are hoping to add this functionality to PPro CS3 within this year.

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
ar(AT)adolforozenfeld.com

[Blast1]

Did they mention whether it was a free upgrade?

[Vince Becquiot]

I missed that, great to hear…

Vince

[Hhv_pro]

The licensing issue is a myth…because DVCPRO50/HD is a SMPTE standard. That’s how other vendor without entering the licensing agreement with Panasonic has developed support for DVCPRO50/HD. So it must be a ROI/technical issue for Adobe to implement native support.

[Adolfo Rozenfeld]

[Blast1] “Did they mention whether it was a free upgrade?
“

Giles didn’t provide specific information. Personally, my impression was that he meant an update for Premiere Pro CS3, rather than an upgrade.

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
ar(AT)adolforozenfeld.com

[Tim Kolb]

[hhv_pro] ”
The licensing issue is a myth…because DVCPRO50/HD is a SMPTE standard. That’s how other vendor without entering the licensing agreement with Panasonic has developed support for DVCPRO50/HD”

The structure of the codec is standard certainly, (Canopus HD is basically the same codec structure and it’s been around for some time) but what other proprietary components does one need for things like taking the P2 (MXF) file direct to the timeline or capturing from/recording to a DVCPHD VTR direct via FireWire? There is a reason why even DVCPro25 isn’t exactly the same as DV25…

I’m not personally interested in whether or not this support is in PPro as I transcode to something higher quality, but this topic has been active since FCP support for it came online with (what seems to be to me anyway) a lot of voices requesting it.

The Matrox Axio systems do cost something and Edius includes this support for an extra 400.00 USD (a quarter of the cost of the entire CS3 suite itself), so either these companies are just making hay and Adobe is completely asleep, or there has to be a catch…

Perhaps the license had been available to Adobe, but was so expensive that it would have added far too much to the cost of the software.

I’m not saying that I’ve never seen Adobe do something that I didn’t agree with, but I’ve typically been under the impression that this issue was, to at least some degree, external to Adobe…

TimK,
Director,
Kolb Productions,

Creative Cow Host,
Author/Trainer
http://www.focalpress.com
http://www.classondemand.net

[Matthew Mulholland]

Hey Tim,
You have mentioned twice that you up convert to a high quality 10 bit format for editing in Premier. I would love to know how that is done. My understanding is that the MXF P2 format is limited to 8 bit no matter what the camera can see. Any up converting of MXF media is surely going to be based on software assumption as the bandwidth is lost as it goes to the card. I know up-resing is effective in a limited fuzzy way with clever interpolation algorithms. I would love to know if you have done a comparative chrome-key between the native 8 bit footage and up-converted 10 bit equivalent. Is it an avenue worth pursuing or is it as I suspect a lot of time & work for a fuzzy gain?
I work in Premier Pro & Final Cut Pro. Though FCP is an amazing editor (and compositor) it does not have seamless integration with MXF as it takes time to unpack the files into QuickTime (+-real time in HD 720 on the 2.8 GHz Mac Pro) and does not support all shooting formats including in my opinion the very useful 720P50! Go figure. I looked at the Edius Broadcast demo today which is lightning fast but of course requires the additional cost of a Canopus card for any sort of quality output. These two piece of software are a secondary focus & have been developed to sell computers and cards respectively so when a company like Adobe whose primary focus is software falls so short of the mark with CS3 regarding format compatibility (no Panasonic cameras even listed in there compatibility chart) & perhaps even as a comparable edit package, one has to ask whether the moneys not in hardware. They need to make a bold statement to get my, and I am sure many others upgrade money. We also have VT Edit (Video Toaster) which makes MXF claims but is a real dog with MXF and not really a workable solution. In conclusion my extremely cheap Panasonic HPX 500 camera has turned into a extremely expensive and frustrating post production nightmare. Research, research, research!
Regards Matthew

PS: I withhold my opinion on up-resing from 720P 50 to 1080i as interlaced footage is inherently half the res to start with.

[Peter Corbett]

Some of your answers can be found here;

https://blogs.adobe.com/genesisproject/2007/09/p2_support_in_premiere_pro_aud.html

Peter

Peter Corbett
Powerhouse Productions
http://www.php.com.au

[Matthew Mulholland]

Hi Peter,
Thank you so very much! Careful what you ask for. It’s all a bit George Orwellish!!
Power to you.
Matthew