Matthew Sonnenfeld
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Joel,
Glad to hear that it’s working out for you! Please do keep me posted on how everything goes! I am definitely interested to see how it works especially with ultra-books coming onto the market. Many may be underpowered to sacrifice size and weight and I think that a lot of people will be interested in what you find.
Yes, Cineform Studio looks like a great product! I paid for Neo which was the step above Neoscene. It included the bundled applications like FirstLight and ReMaster. They give you a lot of pre-processing controls before you go into the edit. And they all use active meta-data so it doesn’t sacrifice speed at all. But yes, all very robust. I’ve been thrilled with Cineform’s products, and their support is fantastic. I don’t mean to sound like a fanboy here, but it really has made a very big difference to my workflow and the quality of my work.
Glad I was able to help! Again, keep me posted!
Best,
MattPanasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
AJA IoXT
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of William and Mary -
Wow, that is quite the workaround! But well done indeed!
Yes, the issues of the MXO2 line really were very frustrating for me to say the least. Especially as I purchased mine with an Adobe switcher bundle, I had expected it to work. This was back in September. As it turned out, the drivers for CS5.5 were unusable. After countless calls and waiting for months, I got fed up and got the vendor to switch it for me with the AJA IoXT which has performed much better for the tasks I need it for. I do miss the RCA audio ins and the S-Video (would’ve been nice to still have as I just had to buy the blackmagic analogue to SDI mini converter to get that functionality back), but as editing hardware, I couldn’t go on. Matrox only just released new 5.5 software a couple weeks ago and even that is still beta. How long will it take for CS6?
The MXO2 was great for Final Cut Pro 7 and performed very well there. No one would have noticed that it was lack-luster on Adobe. The functionality that it has available to it is great, but it should just work.
Anyway, that was a long ramble. I’m glad that you got what you needed done and I’m glad that I was able to help!
Best,
MattPanasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
AJA IoXT
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of William and Mary -
I used to have an MXO2LE w/ MAX and I also have a Mackie VLZ3 mixer so I’m very familiar with your setup and what you’re trying to do.
Unfortunately, even Matrox will tell you that the MXO2 line is not meant for capturing audio on its own. A quick troll of the MXO2 user forum will show that in this case, they recommend you capture it as video and delete the video track. Which would mean of course that it would need to be converted to a video format, which of course can only be done on the computer anyway if you only have a DAT to start with so that leaves you in a tight spot.
Food for thought: https://forum.matrox.com/mxo/viewtopic.php?t=7408&highlight=audio+capture
Additionally, the MXO2 line does not support direct capture within Premiere Pro. MXO2 capture has to be done via one of Matrox’s bundles applications. Vetura Capture on the Mac, not sure about the PC.
Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
AJA IoXT
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of William and Mary -
Joel,
I stand corrected! You’re right. GoPro Cineform Studio does look to be brand new. I only purchased Neo in October and already they’ve changed everything.
But given that, I would say that this would be your best bet. Download GoPro Cineform Studio and try to make your conversions.
The reason I said that the idea of cineform is that you don’t need to do an online/offline is that cineform is designed to be processor efficient far beyond H.264. In fact, cineform markets themselves as an H.264 hardware accelerator without the hardware. The idea being that cineform is already a master quality codec that you can stay in through your entire project, export, and call it a day.
The truth is, yes you are underspecked, but not completely in the red. I have a friend who edits full raster 5DmkII footage converted to cineform on a 2008 2.6Ghz Core2Duo MacBook Pro on his internal hard drive without any major issues and uses the worst back up system I have ever seen. He’s a complete an total idiot for it because he cuts $10K music videos that way, but somehow, someway, someday, it works and he’s stubborn so he stays with it for now.
My advice is: Since you need to convert your files to a full raster cineform anyway (more on why you should below), edit a bit in that before you make low rez proxy files. See if it works. You might be pleasantly surprised.
If it doesn’t work, make your proxy’s, and then reconnect all of your clips to the low rez versions. That will replace it with your low rez footage and will maintain the edits in your timeline assuming that they have the same file name and timecode info which they should. (Again – TEST EVERYTHING – Your system may behave differently than mine – I’m on a Mac, you may be on PC, different settings, who knows). Then, assuming it worked, right click on the replaced file in the bin and select “New Sequence from Clip.” That will create a sequence with the settings that you need and then just copy and paste your original timeline into the new one once you’ve replaced all the clips.
Now, the advantage of cineform: My first project with cineform I was shooting on a 5D and I thought that the footage looked pretty good right out of the camera but after the conversion it actually looked BETTER than the original after just a format conversion. I’m talking multiple stops of dynamic range and latitude. I made the conversion and all of a sudden there was more shadow detail, skin tones that looked reddish looked like skin. Basically, cineform uses some chroma interpolation algorithm to convert from the 4:2:0 of your original footage, to 4:2:2. And it doesn’t take a trained eye to see it. So, be sure to convert all of your camera masters to cineform masters so that when/if you reconnect, you are reconnecting to the highest quality you can. Also, when it comes to your color correction, you will need to grade in the full raster footage and the 10bit 4:2:2 cineform will hold up much better than the H.264 files. Not to mention the advantages that the extended dynamic range will give you when you start to mess with contrast.
I hope this helps!
MattPanasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
AJA IoXT
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of William and Mary -
Unfortunately the free GoPro codecs are decoders only. I.E., you will only be able to play back already encoded cineform footage but you will not be able to encode your footage without paying for the encoder. The least expensive of which is $129 for cineform NeoScene. I do in fact use Neo (now legacy and replaced by Cineform Studio), and it is fantastic.
I would do everything i could to edit an offline in the same frame rate. Adding pulldown could mess up your online in the long run.
Why would you have to add advanced pull down to go to DV footage? Can you not just downrez to DV and maintain the frame rate? My understanding has been that the pulldown is a consequence of recording on tape in the 60hz stream. Besides, advanced pulldown is usually removed immediately by your NLE.
What are you using to edit? Any Compressor/Sorenson Sqeeze/Media Encoder, can spit out just about anything you want if you just use the frame controls. You should be able to select DV NTSC Anamorphic, set the frame rate to “Same as Source” or you could force it to 23.976 and then just select square pixels. I could be wrong but you try just using a test clip (or someone else on the cow could correct me).
Ultimately, cineform is fantastic but it won’t just magically make everything better. You need the minimum of what HD takes. If ProRes can play, you should be fine with cineform. But again, test clips. Why not download the NeoScene trial and see if that would work in you NLE without dropping frames? If you can, go cineform. If not, get creative with your conversion software and do an SD offline.
Also, the idea with cineform is that you don’t need an online/offline. It should just work all the way through to the end. It will be much better than H.264 which your computer won’t handle.
Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
AJA IoXT
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of William and Mary -
Blackmagic-Design is definitely something you could look into as well. Unfortunately I don’t know as much about them as I don’t have the same personal experience. The nice thing about them is that they do have a lot of options at very competitive prices. I had heard a few things that they required a lot of rendering depending on your format. But if you’re ever looking to do color grading in DaVinci Resolve, that is what you’ll need (from what I understand).
Pros and Cons… You need to decide what will work best for your workflow. All of these options will be cross platform, Mac or PC, and will work with either PP, FCP, or AMC. Gives you some nice options.
Moral of the story is that for less than a thousand, you can get what you need to do what you want, but you need to weigh the pros and cons of each and decide what works best for you and your business. It’s an investment for sure but hopefully you will see the return in the quality of your product and that will lead to more clients.
Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
AJA IoXT
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of WIlliam and Mary -
Hang on, none of those should be even close to 3 grand! Where are you looking? You may have some reporting to the BBB if that’s the case.
The MXO2 mini MAX at VideoGuys.com is $849.00 and the regular version is $449.00
https://www.videoguys.com/Item/Matrox+MXO2+Mini+Desktop+Kit+with+PCIe+Card/44F294E494D423F485D4.aspx
The AJA Io Express is $995.00
VideoGuys is a very reputable dealer. You will see their adds all over the Cow if you look at the side panels as well, and they have a 5% Creative Cow discount so that’s always a treat. I can also say from personal experience that they are a joy to do business with. They are a family run business and they know what they are doing.
Also, it is worth noting that both the AJA Io Express and anything in the MXO2 line are available with either a PCIe card for desktops or an ExpressCard 34 adapter for laptops so you really have a lot of flexibility in terms of your system. Both options are the same price.
If you do wind up getting a Thunderbolt equipped Mac, both of these products can go to that too. Matrox makes their own Thunderbolt adapter for the MXO2 line that runs at $200.00 stand alone, and the Sonnet Echo Thunderbolt adapter for $150.00 adapts any ExpressCard 34 to Thunderbolt.
Check those out here:
https://sonnettech.com/product/echoexpresscard34thunderbolt.html
Sorry for the confusion! I hope this cleared things up.
– Matt
Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
AJA IoXT
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of WIlliam and Mary -
Just a quick revision as I did not notice that you are running CS4…
The IoXT that I recommended only has drivers for CS5.5. The Io Express and MXO2 mini will work with Adobe CS4 and you can still find drivers for either one.
In the interest of being forward thinking at this time, I would still recommend the AJA as I have more confidence in their updates and performance.
That being said, the Matrox has some nice features with their HDMI color calibration utilities and available MAX acceleration. If you are doing a lot of H.264 conversions, it may be worth looking into but it is $400.00 extra for that version. You may run into driver issues in the future though if Matrox doesn’t up their game with support.
Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
AJA IoXT
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of WIlliam and Mary -
What you’ve described is not a “Video Card,” rather it is your Graphics Card. This is more to handle the graphics processing of your system and run your monitors. Of course in the case of Premiere Pro and many other GPU supported applications, these cards can in some cases accelerate playback. But they are not going to output your video signal in the way you are describing.
Unfortunately Premiere Pro, or any other NLE for that matter (with the exception of FCP7 – Kind of), will not output your video to an external monitor through your computer’s graphics card. FCP7 kind of could but you would be risking broadcast color/standards and frame accuracy so it was an unreliable setup.
To properly monitor your footage, you will need a proper Video Capture Card. The most inexpensive option would be the Matrox MXO2 mini but as someone who recently owned the MXO2LE w/ MAX (MAX is H.264 hardware encoding – a nice little feature but not everyone needs it for the extra cost), I can tell you that the MXO2 drivers for Premiere are just unusable quite frankly. Matrox supposedly will have new drivers very soon that are currently in Beta that are supposed to work very well. But for me, this may be the writing on the wall, i.e.; how long will people be waiting for usable CS6 drivers in 2 months?
Less than a week ago I switched to the new AJA IoXT. It is only Thunderbolt and if you have that, it is the best option from an economical standpoint in my opinion. There is a small bug that I’ve run into but it is a brand new product and it realistically doesn’t effect my work. But honestly, I suspect that the bug is my fault and there is just a setting that I’ve got wrong somewhere.
I digress…
Ultimately, the bottom line is that you need a real Video card that can ingest and output your footage. AJA is a really wonderful company and they respond to things much better than their competitors and their products always seem to just work in a way that others don’t. As Tom Daigon said on this forum a few weeks back, “AJA, AJA, AJA. They understand video.”
The IoXT is a very powerful little box. If you don’t need all that it offers, or you don’t have Thunderbolt and are trying to stay in a lower price point, look to the AJA Io Express.
Hope this helps!
MattPanasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
AJA IoXT
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of WIlliam and Mary -
I believe that the RCA jacks on the HVX200 are for output only. Best bet would be to get something like a Canapus box or a Dazzle and ingest it over firewire into your NLE. If you need it on a miniDV you can print to tape to your HVX200 over FireWire directly out of the timeline.
Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17″, 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
Matrox MXO2 LE with MAX
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of WIlliam and Mary