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DV100 vs DNxHD vs CFHD
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David,
[David Cherniack] “AFA popularity goes you can bet that as a superb codec that’s a cheaper alternative to Axio and a more powerful editing solution than Decklink, they’re going to do very well with PremierePro as their base.”
Irregardless of compress codec quality, the problem with the wholey software solutions to HD editing is that there is no true full rez, full speed output to monitor like there is with hardware accellerated solutions. Perhaps not a problem for you or many others, but definitely something to be considered.
Ron Shook
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[Jason J Rodriguez] “Frankly, from the testing I’ve done, I would never go through post-production on a film using DVCProHD. I would readily choose CFHD because it gives the picture quality of uncompressed 10-bit, can withstand multi-generation passes like an uncompressed 10-bit codec, yet still give the editing speed of a compressed codec like DVCProHD. “
Jason, I’ve never actually seen or tested CFHD (though I’ve been reading about Cineform since the advent of HDV). Could you give me a quick rundown of how you would see the workflow going with something like P2 cameras?
Obviously you wouldn’t convert your footage upon capture, because there is no capturing to be done. So what would we use to convert the DVCProHD footage to CFHD, and how long do you think that transcode would take?
Would this work within FCP or Avid based systems?
Just curious, and I want to get a handle on all the post workflow options that are out there.
By the way, I’m glad to see you chiming in here on the new P2 forum. I’ve read your posts for a while on the CML and other places, and it’s great to have you, and your experience, adding to the pot here.
Welcome!
Luis Caffesse
Studio 3 Productions, Inc.
Austin, Texas -
[Ron Shook] “Irregardless of compress codec quality, the problem with the wholey software solutions to HD editing is that there is no true full rez, full speed output to monitor like there is with hardware accellerated solutions. “
In fact because it uses the overlay of video cards, Aspect and prospect can output to HD monitors from the new Matrox Parhelia and Nvidia 3 headed cards. I believe it’s full rez.
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
[Luis Caffesse] “Obviously you wouldn’t convert your footage upon capture, because there is no capturing to be done. So what would we use to convert the DVCProHD footage to CFHD, and how long do you think that transcode would take? “
The workflow is play out of a DVCproHD deck into the HDSDI Xena card. AFAIK the footage is converted in real time on a dual Opteron.
https://www.cineform.com/products/ProspectHD.htm
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
[David Cherniack] “The workflow is play out of a DVCproHD”
David,
I was asking how we could use CFHD in relation to P2 media.
I realize the you would normally use a deck to play back your DVCProHD tapes, but with the HVX200 we will have no tapes. When using P2, there is no capturing to be done as all the clips are already accessible on the solid state memory.I assume there is some way to easily convert DVCProHD footage to CFHD.
Of course, then we would need twice the hard drive space.Luis Caffesse
Studio 3 Productions, Inc.
Austin, Texas -
[Luis Caffesse] “I assume there is some way to easily convert DVCProHD footage to CFHD”
Probably not just yet. Directly through their convert utility. But I’m sure it will happen once the P2 cameras come on stream.
[Luis Caffesse] “Of course, then we would need twice the hard drive space. “
I believe the DVCProHD codec and the CFHD codec use about the same amount of bandwidth. Last time I looked they did.
David
AllinOneFilms.com -
I’m not sure right now there is an “easy” way to go from DVCProHD to CFHD, unless you play-out from a DVCProHD deck via HD-SDI.
The problem for P2 is that there’s no direct MXF to CFHD converter on the market, and CFHD outside of ProspectHD/PremierePro/AfterEffects is no longer 10-bit. In other words, if you use another program to render CFHD files (as AVI), you’re limited to the 8-bit “problem” of Video for Windows. But then of course I’ve had no information about Premiere Pro or After Effects being able to work with the MXF files of the P2 card. Sort of a chicken-vs-egg thing.
I wish that Cineform was a more flexible in it’s conversion/import/export options, because again, it is one of THE BEST real-time “online quality” intermediate codecs out there on the market right now that gives you less-than-SD-data-rates but full raster HD frames with no artifacting. The only other one on the market is DNxHD, and I haven’t been able to test that against Cineform.
Unfortunetly Apple’s “online” real-time compressed intermediate codec, DVCProHD, is no-where near the quality of these two codecs from Cineform and AVID, and will not tolerate multi-generation workflows the way these other two codecs can. Frankly DVCProHD is not an intermediate codec (in the true sense like DNxHD and CFHD), it’s an aquisition format, like DV, DV50, etc.
Jason Rodriguez
Virginia Beach, VA -
. . . to CFHD if things keep going the way they do with Panasonic and Apple would be native D-5 editing. Of course the data-rate is going to be higher for D-5 than CFHD, but they’d be comparable in quality. I’d still give the edge to CFHD just because it’s wavelet-based, so there’s no chance of DCT-blocks cropping up (for a cleaner looking image), but native D-5 editing would be in the same league as DNxHD and CFHD.
Jason Rodriguez
Virginia Beach, VA -
But the whole idea of DVCproHD is that it’s edit friends. No sensible edit workflow would go down more than one DVCproHD generation anyway. If you need to export to a compositing app to do something funky, you can export either very lightly compressed, or totally uncompressed, or even as is. As long as you ensure there’s only ever one decompression and recompression to DVCproHD you’ll not suffer any real issues.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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