Cineform Aspect HD for PPro 1.51 - First impressions

Alan Mills · #1 (**permalink**) 08-24-2005, 09:45 AM

Basically, it does exactly what it says on the box.

Given that I've got a matrox Rt.x100 for real time rendering when editing SD footage I was sceptical that s/w only would be able to edit HD in real time. But it does

Aspect HD is pretty much a compulsory purchase for Premeire Pro 1.51 users who want to use theirt footage in any other application i.e. After Effects or Particle Illusion. the codec that comes with vanilla 1.51 simply is not complete. i.e. try to use your HDV avi in another app and you get an error that the format is not recognised. You need to buy the full Aspect HD plugin to do this.

It's a bit of a shame that more money is needed but there you go, it is.

Installation is painless. You do have to go through an ionline registration process, much the same as with Windows XP and Premiere pro. In the box was version 3.0. At the weekend version 3.3 was released and this is a free upgrade. In fact, Cineform promise that you never have to buy it again. All upgrades are free. So after installing, I promptly went to the web site to download the latest point release and install that. I was expecting it as a patch but no, it insists the previous version is unintsalled completely before the point release goes on. You then need to re-register. This surprised me a bit but, again, it was really painless. You jujst have to wait for your unlock code in an email rather than getting it in real time is the only slight niggle here. But even then, it's not an issue because you have 15 days grace anyway.

Does it work? it sure does. I've only played for about an hour but colour corrections, fades, wipes etc are all real time.

I attempted to import footage into AE and PI3 and this worked a treat. But, boy does it slow PI3 down. It's just the work rate. With 4.5x as many pixels to process, it's a bit slower that's all.

That's as far as I got, around my kid's football practice last night. more when I have it.

Haven't attempted any exports yet.

Enjoy

Alan

Marc Peters · #2 (**permalink**) 08-24-2005, 12:38 PM

Mind if I turn this into an article Alan?

Alan Mills · #3 (**permalink**) 08-24-2005, 04:21 PM

Originally Posted by Marc Peters

Mind if I turn this into an article Alan?

Please do. However I'm not quite convinced there is really enough 'meat' in the post to warrant a full review though.

I just wanted to share that it was an easy install and works. And show off a bit of course cos I haven;t heard anyone else here say they use it and wanted to be the first

Still though, if the article is there I can add more to it as I find out. i.e. about the alleged conflicts between the Cineform plugin and the Matrox one.

Alan Mills · #4 (**permalink**) 08-24-2005, 05:59 PM

I can confirm that export times do not really change.

Example - I had a 16 second timeline. This consisted of two clips as follows

Clip 1 - Keyframed Pan, zoom and rotate applied as a Cineform effect. Keyframed olour correction.

Clip 2 - keyframed pan zoom and rotate applied along with a keyframed colour balance applied.

these two clips then have a barn door type page curle transition between them.

Editing render times on the timeline - 0 seconds.

Export times as follows:

WMV9 - 1440x1080 25p - 2 pass. About 8 minutes.
AVI - 1440x1080 Cineform HD codec. - 2 minutes
MPEG2 - PAL 6Mb VBR 2 pass PAL widescreen (for DVD) - 2 minutes.

So the s/w doesn't effect export times but then it doesn't pretend to either. the good news however during these export test is that I have not yet seen the dreaded "Failed to return a frame" error that is so far not uncommon when editing/exporting HDV from premiere Pro 1.51.

Marc Peters · #5 (**permalink**) 08-27-2005, 11:58 AM

http://www.videoforums.co.uk/reviews...2_articleid/63