Xena vs Decklink?

[Gary Taylor]

Hi Lance,
When you do you mean when you say the Cineform codecs far surpass anything available on the Mac? Are you saying that when footage captured is over HD-SDI that the Cineform footage is somehow better than the same footage captured to a 10 bit uncompressed codec in Final Cut, or are you comparing workflows? I have heard and seen quite a few good things about the Cineform codecs but I have never heard anyone say it was somehow better than 10 bit uncompressed in quality.
Thanks,
Gary

[Barend Onneweer]

[Gary Taylor] “I have heard and seen quite a few good things about the Cineform codecs but I have never heard anyone say it was somehow better than 10 bit uncompressed in quality.”

I’m pretty sure that that’s not what was meant.

I think they meant something like this: as a COMPRESSED codec that will play from a single hard drive, there’s nothing that beats the Cineform codec.

So at a tiny loss of image quality (hardly visible) you gain a lot in workflow.

Bar3nd

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[Jason J rodriguez]

Actually if you take Marco Solario’s test pattern on the codecs.onerivermedia.com site, and do his render tests with the Cineform codec (the 10-bit Prospect HD version), it could easily pass as a 10-bit 4:2:2 Uncompressed codec (i.e., like some of the ones that do a lot of filtering so they’re not really 1:1. If you go through Marco’s site, you’ll see that not all “uncompressed” codecs are created alike, and if you were to fit Cineform into the bunch, it could actually fit at the bottom of the scale of what some of these 4:2:2 uncompressed codecs are like).

After using Prospect HD, the visual quality differences between it and uncompressed 4:2:2 codecs would be like complaining about Digibeta not being a D-1.

And of course in return you gain A WHOLE LOT in workflow advantages.

Jason Rodriguez
Virginia Beach, VA

[Gary Taylor]

Hi Jason,
That would be a great comparison to make quantitively. Have you actually run Marco’s test to see what the white count etc would be for Prospect HD? I know Marco’s site hasn’t been updated for a while but it would be interesting to have an objective measure.

I certainly wasn’t trying to imply there was anything wrong with Prospect HD. It was just that praise was a little ambiguous. It certainly appears to be a killer package if you can afford it, and now that they are supporting the Xena LH I am really seeing a system in my future. I just waiting to find out if there if it will be possible to do ingest on a system with a single dual core processor.
Thanks,
Gary

[Vsv]

[quote]Aspect does up to 1440×1080 8 bit and Prospect does full 1920×1080 at 8 or 10 bit[/quote]
Do you really can record with Xena HS+Aspect HD ? Cineform indicates only Prospect HD 10bit codec
for ingest through HD-SDI.

[Tim Kolb]

If you are referring to an Intel dual core, yes you can do ingest. We had an 840 processor on the Adobe tour running Prospect doing a direct HDSDI capture from a Canon H1 (but not capturing HDV…capturing 1920×1080 full res HD), and the 955 Extremes just scream in the very preliminary testing done to-date.

My Prospect system is a dual single core AMD and it sounds as if a single 955 Extreme might even be a slight step up. Once the dual-dual cores from both Intel and AMD are really out there in some numbers, I think we’ll all get spoiled in a hurry.

TimK,

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

[Gary Taylor]

Thanks for that update. I was actually thinking of the dual core Athlon64 X2 processors but that is good news about your early results with the Intel’s dual core chips.
I thought Cineform hadn’t validated the dual processor Xeon chips for ingest. It is interesting that a single dual core Pentium 4 would work when a dual processor Xeon wouldn’t. Can’t wait to hear more.
Thanks,
Gary

[Stormdave]

Does the Xena HS accelerate anything or it’s just an I/O card like the BlackMagic cards?

[Tim Kolb]

Interesting update…there are several studies that seem to imply the 955s run a little toasty.

No problems were encountered in the tests I’m aware of, but apparently the 955 Extremes seem to be available/unavailable at various times on Dell’s site.

…maybe availability of the chips isn’t up to full capacity either…

Dual dual core Opterons sure aren’t a bad system either. My “State of the art as of NAB 2005” dual single-core Opteron system has been great as well…though more is always better.

TimK,

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