which fastest, most stable Vegas Pro and Cineform

huyct wrote on 10/25/2015, 1:31 AM

Greeting,

I recently shot a feature film on Sony F35 with External Recorder to 10bit DPX sequence

My workflow is to Convert every thing to Cineform RGB 444 AVI and destroy the DPX and I also plan to edit the master file which is not that heavy on my i7 4790k with Raid 0.

My question is which is the best, fastest, most stable of Vegas Pro 64bit to work with which most statble Cineform Version?

I have a NV gtx980, 32gb ram. Vegasaur 1.0 and 2.0.

So which version should i use to get stable with cineform codec?

Thanks

Comments

astar wrote on 10/25/2015, 5:21 AM

What stands out to me is your NV card, I would swap that out for AMD for stability and performance in Vegas as it stands today. VP 13 B453 is very stable I find.

You also may want to do some performance tests by converting to HDCAM SR 444. There is very little difference between FilmScan and HDCAM, HDCAM comes standard with Vegas, and is optimized in Vegas.

Vegas will edit DPX directly as an image sequence. You might want to try "Blazers ACES" workflow, or proxy edit your DPX, and render back to DPX

OldSmoke wrote on 10/25/2015, 10:08 AM

I personally prefer XAVC-Intra; it's HD, 4K, well implemented in Vegas but "only" 422 I think. On the other hand, I am not sure if Vegas can handle 444 all the way, from input to manipulation to output.

astar wrote on 10/26/2015, 4:50 AM

If the Vegas engine did not support RGB444, they would have a hard time claiming HDCAM-SR444, EXR and ACES support.

As far as I know the Vegas engine does all work in RGB with an 8-bit accuracy, in 8-bit mode. In 32-bit full levels you get RGB 444 with a 32-bit Floating Point accuracy.

"The F35 offers full bandwidth high definition 4:4:4 recording, a 14-bit A/D converter, varying gamma settings that include S-LOG gamma, HyperGamma, a customizable gamma curve, and built-in down conversion output." ~Panavison.

I would be concerned with maintaining your gamma setting with what ever you convert to.

With Vegas the Top down HD codecs would be:

.EXR & DPX - 32-16bit Floating Point Uncompressed or 10-16 bit integer uncompressed RGB.

Cineform filmscan2 444 - 450Mb/s - GPU supported in Vegas.

HDCAM-SR - RGB444 - 800-360Mb/s depends on frame rate and frame complexity.

HDCAM-SR422 - 360Mb/s

HDCAM-SR-Lite 422 - 180Mb/s

XAVC-I 422 - 114Mb/s - this is an evolution to HDCAM-SR-Lite 422 as they upped the resolution ability, changed the marketing name, and are using a higher profile of MPEG4. They might be getting better image with less bandwidth than HDCAM-SR-Lite. There is greater system utilization than using HDCAM I have found in my testing.
Clearly 4K is an obvious reason to use this over HDCAM, as EXR would be the next step up. XAVC- is suppose to support up to 800Mb/s for 4K@60P.

Cineform Medium 422 - 95Mb/s

Cineform Low 422 - 75Mb/s

XDCAM 422 - 50Mb/s CBR

XDCAM 420 - 35Mb/s VBR

AVC LGOP 420 - 20Mb/s

You can work with any codec in Vegas because of how windows works, but the optimized codecs in Vegas are listed above. Cineform has its advantages with the wavelet compression, which in my book means less blocky compression artifacts. According to Media Info, my Cineform from GoProStudio is only 10-bit, and the F35 DPX could contain up to 14-bits information. Supposedly Cineform supports up to 12-bits, but not sure where you get that version anymore. You may want those extra bits if you go to DCP which is capable of 12bits.

I was able to find some samples of 12-bit DPX from an F35, and my version of Vegas does not import them. Standard 10-bit DPX files seem to import just fine.

Not trying to shutdown what Oldsmoke is saying. This is just what I have been able to piece together on Vegas.

musicvid10 wrote on 10/26/2015, 9:25 AM

Just don't use Vegas for 8 bit delivery of a high bit source with float editing. Use a 10 bit codec and another final 8 bit delivery encoder.

Reason: Vegas appears to use a pattern dithering algorithm that masks some shadow detail. The pattern mask is not evident with libav x264. I'll post the pictures later.

OldSmoke wrote on 10/26/2015, 10:47 AM

The reason I brought it up is that there have been several discussions in this forum about getting 10bit in and out of Vegas and I have been told it isn't possible. Maybe with simple cuts and smart rendering it is? Or did I completely misunderstand that other treads? I would already be very happy to see that we can fully manipulate 10bit in Vegas.

Edit:
Found this from an earlier thread:
Subject: RE: Installing and using the Acid DNxHD codec in Vegas

Reply by: videoITguy

Date: 4/1/2015 11:53:43 AM

I was responding to the concerns of Will-3 rather than making a general statement about 8bit. Sure, like any professional I would like a 10bit workflow in VegasPro to be achievable. IT isn't. So if the person wants to shoot 10bit, stay 10bit, and output 10bit to a destination then there are good ways to do that now -VegasPro is not one of them.

On the other hand, shooting greenscreen - given the necessity for careful lighting control in a studio situation - can be nicely achieved with 8bit sources -but best if with a format of 4:2:2. That is why the recent offerings of 4:2:2 codecs in some prosumer cameras including Canon and JVC have a lot going for them at a very reasonable price.