Is it as simple as changing the codec from Main Concept to Avid? Or what else must be done?

JJK

Sorry it was more directed to the Sony developers. I am sure thy could incoporate it in Vegas could they not?

First Vegas needs to add full support for higher bit depths than 8.

Today you can use for example BMD's excellent 10-bit codec in Vegas, but as soon as you use Vegas built-in effects and transitions you lose the extra information.

It is really clear that the future of video editing is in 10, 12 and even 16-bit video. It is trickling down slowly through the industry from Hollywood post, where the higher bit depths are appreciated for helping the image quality considerably, even though the end output may be an 8-bit DVD viewed on an 8-bit display.

Vegas uses higher bit depths internally within effects etc., but the result is then truncated (or hopefully dithered, BJ_M may know this) to 8 bits.

Even the common desktop compositing programs today support higher bit depths, and Vegas will have to support this at some point to stay in the game. It may be V6 or V7, but it'll have to happen or Vegas will be sidetracked by other hungry vendors.

"Now maybe Sony will incorpoate this code into Vegas so we can use 10-12 bit editing"

Sure right... From the linked site:

"This web page offers an End User Licensable version for the Avid DNxHD codec source code. By downloading, compiling, installing, or otherwise using this software you agree to the terms of the EULA and acknowledge that this code is not intended for use in the course of normal production activities and processes..." much more, but you get the idea

In other words Avid "could" grant a license to Sony for this CODEC, maybe Sony would want to use it, but the typical give me, give me, give me, in this forum chasing after the latest and greatest everytime any company announces anything new is getting old. Besides, you don't even know what will be included in version 6 and won't till its released.

Billy,

I have had the experience of using this codec in Avid 5 HD and its astonishing. The only reason shouldnt try to get a license to use this would be if their offering is better in Vegas 6 but seeing as they struck a deal with Cineform I seriously doubt Sony will be offering their own HD capture codec.

Coursedesign, I agree with you, vegas needs to move to the 16bit world, though, the amount of data being moved will hurt performance and limit it to high-end systems. I was hoping NAB would be showing a 16bit vegas with AE plugins.

I think that you were probably dreaming apit - that's a HUGE upgrade in quality level.

And there would have to be a good way to be able to run it at a lower level for those that are wanting to make it happen fast - I would guess that that's a lot of coding - more than would be successfully finished withing the time of the release of 5.0a to now. IMHO. - I guess that didn't sound so humble - sorry.

Dave

Today's high end systems are tomorrow's Goodwill refusals.

(The local Goodwill here refuses all computer equipment, regardless of how many thousands of dollars it cost just a few years ago.)

I built my uncompressed 10-bit workstation for just a smidgen over $2,000, using only the very highest quality components, adding only a Decklink card. It handles multiple streams of 10-bit D-5 without sweating at all. Today's top-quality 10K SATA Raptor drives sell for $150 each, hardly a budget buster, and software RAID works better than hardware for video work.

All over the place, I see early adopters chucking the old 8-bit tape formats and recording to 10-bit using inexpensive hardware.

The days of paying $150,000 for a 10-bit uncompressed video deck are behind us.

The days of paying $40,000-$80,000 for a DigiBeta 10-bit compressed deck are also fading.

The commercial future is with tapeless recording in various forms, whether Blu-Ray, hard disk or other solutions.

I'm sure a lot of people would find it nifty if Vegas could use AE plug-ins. I don't know if the architecture allows it, but it sure would be cool. In the meantime we'll have to use AE Pro (regular AE is only 8-bit) or Combustion.

Frigid,

I don't know the Vegas code, but it might not be so difficult to add higher bit depths as an option.

Remember, Vegas' internal calculations are already coded using a higher bit depth, and it already allows at least 10-bit codecs on the timeline.

hmmm...a few observations on increasing the bit depth....
1-longer render times
2-ok, so I avoid banding issues on some transitions and effects, guess that's a plus
3-more storage space needed

sounds like a push to me. having a choice is always nice.

Hey Coursedesign - I would love to see your system specs. I'm working on putting together a dual Xeon system. I'm thinking about going with one of the new PCI-x Hardware raid cards that do raid 5 (Intel has a few, they sound smokin' fast) but man are they spendy - about $500 or $600 bucks.

How is the built in software raid working for you - any advice?

thanks a bunch,

Sony and 10 bit 12 bit = xpri, available for immediate delivery.

yeah and how many thousands of dollars? Even with Avid HD being higher priced, its still less costly than XPRI.

Xpri is 8-bit only.

I was a bit surprised to see this least year, and I heard several pros saying that prevented them from forking over $90K for their next NLE.

Software RAID is actually faster than hardware RAID for large block transfers, so for video editing and compositing it's the best choice.

Database is another story.

I bought a Supermicro P4SCT+II motherboard and a Supermicro chassis with 4 SATA slots, installed a P4 3.2E with Arctic thermal paste instead of Intel's poor substitute, 2GB of super-fast Corsair CAS 2-2-2 RAM, 4x WD Raptor 10K SATA drives, a superstable nVidia card with OpenGL 1.5, and the usual other bits and pieces.

Everything Supermicro offers is conservatively and beautifully built, and they have great Xeon boards. Newegg has decent pricing on the popular models.

Supermicro's tech support always picked up within 45 seconds, try that with HP or Dell...

If you're going to work in uncompressed SD or 4:2:2 HD, get a Decklink card and follow the hardware requirements on their web site. If you do, it will all work 100% of the time. If you try to take a shortcut with desktop mobos etc., you will be spending the next few months troubleshooting before giving up, it's happened to many...

Supermicro has lots of good info.

Newegg is one of the good suppliers.

I'm not going to swear to it as gospel -- but i think you will find hardware raid that does XOr in hardware (i.e. the higher end boards) will always give better performance than a software only solution.

ALL top end raid solutions for SUN, IBM SGI, Leitch, quvis and other such systems are all hardware (with software) based ....

http://www.netcell.com/ netcell raid cards (sold by xfx) are some of the best you can buy on a budget and the performance is awesome ... you can see the specs at tigerdirect on the various cards ...

Thanks a ton Coursedesign! I found a Supermicro Dual Xeon Board that is perfect! I usually stick with Intel but Intel only has 2 sata channels and that's not gonna be enough (& I don't want to shell out another $600 bucks for a pci-x sata raid controller).

That's funny about the Arctic Silver - I do the same thing :)

1 more Question (sorry about hijacking this thread):

From what I've heard you need dual xeon to do HD as well as a SCSI or Fiberchannel storage array - obviously your experience disproves that. Are you just running a four drive raid 0? What kind of throughput are you getting on those Raptors (i mean any drop frame problems going out to tape)? Are you using the Marvel Controller for the raid?

Thanks a big fat TON for this info!

-oh, and you bet I'm lookin at that Decklink card ;)

The Sun, IBM, SGI, etc. systems are likely to be running some flavor of Unix, a more efficient OS than Windows, so the benefit of HW RAID could possibly be different.

I went with software RAID at the recommendation (requirement actually) of Decklink. They have quite a lot of practical info on this, but I couldn't find it just now on their site.

Netcell looks cool, but I'm puzzled by their diagram showing 100 megabytes/sec throughput from a single IDE drive, see Netcell diagram. Seems like a non-optimal assumption for video, since the cache will be consumed in about 5 milliseconds with uncompressed 10-bit SD. Pulling a database record would of course be a different story.

Their competitive comparison baffled me also, they are stating that motherboard RAID and add-in RAID are limited to 150 MB/s for a full array, as opposed to 600 MB/s for the Netcell.

I thought that as long as you had separate ports for each SATA drive (by definition), the bottlenecks were in the Southbridge?

Yoyodyne,

I don't work with HD on this machine, only uncompressed 10-bit SD.

For HD, Decklink currently recommends SCSI or FC. It's not about the top throughput you can get out of the drives, it's about the lowest throughput anywhere on the disk. SATA drives can drop 50% at the end of the drive, SCSI more like 20%.

You have to read Decklink's hw requirements, anything else is risky.

It is possible to edit HD with SATA RAID, but you have to be careful about codecs.

More later.

oops, my bad. Thanks again Coursedesign & BJM, very interesting. I'm wondering if this Intel Raid controller would do the trick:

Intel® RAID Controller SRCS28X

I would love to build my own Sata raid - from what little poking around I have done it seems cheaper than going with a Medea or Huge array. May just be wishfull thinking - I'm heading over to Decklink and check out there requirements...

Thanks - looking foreward to "more later"

oops again, my more bad - looks like this sucker only runs on windows server OS - not XP

they might be referring to the cheaper non hardware type XOR controllers like the low end promise cards .. but I could not find what you were talking about on their website either ..

If they say it is a requirement - I would say that is a mistake. I can back that up with a lot of experience and data ... maybe they mean that is the MIN. requirement --
I rather think so looking at their HD and apple requirements - where they clearly list only hardware solutions ...

((edit) - i could see an issue if they raid card and decklink card in some shared pci buss situations))


but I assure you that a proper set up 64 bit scsi or fc with hardware xor / controller is the 'top"

next woudl be 64bit sata hardware setup ....

I am NOT sure where some of the newer on board raid setups fall in - but those are still generally 'lower case" in most cases ...

I woudl suggest software raid only for home budget systems -- not ever for sustained throughput systems ..

I've only used a few netcell systems (on my home systems) but researched them throughly ..

they have some very players on board ...

also some nice new products - seagate is also working a lot with them ...

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20050302005311&newsLang=en

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/February2005/28/c9180.html


Broadcom's solutions are more industry known for interprise systems (also a lot more money) - they are used in BOXX systems for example .. 3ware is also well known besides adaptec and others ..

Is this what you guys are lookin' for - from Blackmagic website:

"High Definition on Windows™ Minimum system requirements

Disk Arrays
SCSI - Ultra 320 SCSI card (either PCI or onboard), with at least 8 x U320 SCSI disks, 10 000 rpm, software striped as RAID [0]"

Boy - that software stripe sounds like good news - I specked out a system real quick on new egg that seems to meet Decklinks requirements for around 3 grand - me likey!