Comments

David Newman wrote on 10/21/2005, 8:52 AM
The first public showing will be at DVCamps in LA (http://www.dvcamps.com/) For any last minute attendees I believe there is a discount for Sunday only events (when Wafian product will be demonstrated.) A working pre-production unit will demo'd. This record is designed to be a rack mounted replacement to expensive uncompressed DDRs or D5/HDCAM SR decks. It will capture any single link HD-SDI format into a lightly compressed 10-bit CineForm Intermediate AVI. These AVIs are compatible with Vegas, however Vegas can't use the full 10-bit precision, decoding within Vegas will only use the most significant 8-bit data. For those wanting to use the full 10-bit, that will require Prospect HD for deep processing with AE, PPro & Color Finesse.

David Newman
CTO, CineForm
farss wrote on 10/21/2005, 2:07 PM
Are those three apps the only ones that'll handle the 10 bit Prospect files?
How about Digital Fusion?
What's the impact on image quality of Vegas simply truncating to 8 bits rather than resampling down to 8 bits, I was under the impression that the limitation within Vegas was it'd only write 8 bit data but the internal pipelines were of higher precision, if I correctly understanding what you're saying then it has implications all the way down to handling 10 bit SD.
Bob.
David Newman wrote on 10/23/2005, 6:23 PM
"Are those three apps the only ones that'll handle the 10 bit Prospect files?"

Yes, in 10-bit.

"How about Digital Fusion?"

No that will only be 8-bit for CineForm AVIs.

"What's the impact on image quality of Vegas simply truncating to 8 bits rather than resampling down to 8 bits, I was under the impression that the limitation within Vegas was it'd only write 8 bit data but the internal pipelines were of higher precision, if I correctly understanding what you're saying then it has implications all the way down to handling 10 bit SD."

Vegas internal may or may not have higher precision, I do not know, but they do only access compressed data through VfW's 8-bit interface.

David Newman
CTO, CineForm
Coursedesign wrote on 10/23/2005, 6:36 PM
"How about Digital Fusion?" No that will only be 8-bit for CineForm AVIs.

Just to confirm: are you referring to eyeon's Digital Fusion (which handles high bit video), or the same company's DFX+ (less expensive 8-bit version of the same software)?

How about Combustion (which handles just about any format also)?
fldave wrote on 10/23/2005, 7:03 PM
"Vegas internal may or may not have higher precision, I do not know, but they do only access compressed data through VfW's 8-bit interface."

VfW? Does Vegas use Microsoft's VfW? I thought the DirectX/DirectShow was the new video handler. I thought that, from a developer's perspective, that VfW was superceded.
David Newman wrote on 10/23/2005, 8:13 PM
This issue is most tools still use VfW, such as Vegas, Combustion and Digital Fusion (guessing) resulting in an 8-bit limitation when using Windows registered codecs. Some of these tools have deep pixel formats but these typically aren't compressed. CineForm provides a compressed high bit depth solution, that, one by one, we work to convince vendors to support.

David Newman
CTO, CineForm
fldave wrote on 10/23/2005, 8:55 PM
Thanks for the clarification. Does any vendor need a Directx/DirectShow or a lower-level developer <g>?

I will look more closely at Cineform products, as I develop my video solutions. I am impressed with the Cineform / m2t comparison recently referred to on this board.
David Newman wrote on 10/24/2005, 9:30 AM
>>Thanks for the clarification. Does any vendor need a Directx/DirectShow or a lower-level developer <g>?

We have 16-bit per channel channel YUV (4:2:2) decode mode through DirectShow that third party vendors can use, plus a "v210" pixel mode which is a little more common (although more painful to work in : 10-bit 4:2:2 YUV.) We will also consider vendor licensing library/DLL based implements.

>>I will look more closely at Cineform products, as I develop my video solutions. I am impressed with the Cineform / m2t comparison recently referred to on this board.

And that was using 8-bit RGB processing, things are even more pristine with 10-bit YUV processing. http://www.cineform.com/technology/quality.htm

David Newman
CTO, CineForm
Coursedesign wrote on 10/24/2005, 11:58 AM
David,

These are great comparisons!

Three questions:

1. Why do you only offer the "Standard" version of the Adobe Video Collection, with 8-bit only After Effects Basic?

2. What disk performance is needed (in MB/sec)? [The FAQ link at Prospect HD gives a Page Not Found Error.]

3. Any plans to support Decklink cards?

David Newman wrote on 10/24/2005, 2:33 PM
1. Because Adobe will not OEM the 16-bit After Effects. We would love to bundle that version, but if we did you would have to increase PHD pricing by nearly $1000.

2. The direct link to the FAQ is here : http://www.cineform.com/products/FAQ.htm -- I passed on the web error to that department. Disk requirements are only standard 7200 RPM drives. Recommended is RAID 0 striping of 2 or sometimes 3 drives, using a standard motherboard controller. Each stream whether 720p60 10bit or 1080i60 10bit is typically under 20MB/s.

3. We are considering Decklink cards. However, for now AJA cards are the way to go.

David Newman
CTO, CineForm
Coursedesign wrote on 10/24/2005, 2:49 PM
Thanks Dan,

I'm beginning to think that this is a heck of a lot more convenient to deal with than uncompressed 4:2:2 1920x1080 HD...