Cineform crashing

JHendrix wrote on 6/7/2009, 2:42 PM

Cineform Crash Fest:

trying to use Neo Scene but running into issues capturing with HDlink

HDlink crash on capture on AMD

i captured 2 HDV tapes no problem -- on the third tape it crashed at 30 minites in

next try -- crashed at 5 minutes in -- entire system automatically shuts down - no warning no blue screen no error message.

system -- otherwise system is stable and not crashing

my alternative is using bootcamp vista with my other copy of Neo Scene...
not preferred because it locks down that system....but i tried it:

vista sp 1 bootcamp on 8 core mac pro with 13 gig ram

crashed on any of following (in other words-- highly unstable)

launch
relanch
specify camera
plug in usb HDD

troubleshooting steps:

reboot
test cables
test in Vegas capture (works flawlessly)

So my question is:

anyone else have these issues and find solution

is there a better way than using HDLNK to capture to cineform avi --- in 1 step --- in Vegas --- or any other way --- any alt to using HDlink ?

is HDLINK convert as buggy as capture?

Do I really need Neo in Vegas 8c or greater?? (it seems like my m2t files are playing and cutting OK so Im wondering why Im going through all this!!)

Comments

John_Cline wrote on 6/7/2009, 3:00 PM

Cineform doesn't compress faster than real-time, even on my Quad-core, so what HDLink is doing is capturing the HDV stream in real-time and another thead is simultaneously compressing to Cineform as fast as it can. It's writing to the file and then reading from a different part of the same file while compressing. It doesn't seem that this would work particularly well and it doesn't.

Cineform is useful as an intermediate format when decoding/encoding multiple times like when moving footage back and forth into After Effects. This has much less loss than multiple HDV (MPEG2) decodes/encodes. If you're just editing HDV footage in Vegas and then generating a finished file, then Cineform is less useful.

Serena wrote on 6/7/2009, 11:47 PM

Although designed to capture and convert in one operation (but two streams as John says) I always found it preferable to separate the processes. That is, capture and then convert.

David Newman wrote on 6/8/2009, 10:58 AM

RT capture and convert should work fine -- I personally use that mode, and most users do. However, FireWire implementation on some PCs do not allow for heavy use of the CPU and reliably reading firewire packets. If your PC completely crashes, that is likely a failure in your Firewire hardware. HDLink is running in user mode, and can't crash your whole PC (even if we tried), yet the device drivers for FireWire (not CineForm's) if implemented poorly certainly can as they are kernel mode components. Users who have experienced this problem in the past, have had success exchanging or adding a new PCI FireWire card. Or you can to the two pass mode, capture M2T, then batch convert the results.

David Newman
CTO, CineForm

JHendrix wrote on 6/8/2009, 12:48 PM

Im not seeing how a MacPro would have bad firewire but I understand what you are saying and suppose there is logic to it. I guess I will capture first using Vegas and have the option of encoding.

MarkWWWW wrote on 6/9/2009, 5:22 AM

Some recent Macs have been fitted with Agere/Lucent Firewire chips. These are definitely known to cause severe problems with some high-end audio interfaces (RME Fireface, for example). It might be that simultaneous capture and convert with CF also pushes them over the edge and into the area where they cause problems.

Mark

JHendrix wrote on 6/9/2009, 8:54 PM

could be but it was replicated on an AMD as well so we are bagging the "all in one" method for now