Windows NLE Systems

[Sean]

We still need to hear what RedCine's minimum system requirements will be, but in the meantime I'm trying to wrap my head around working with HD codecs in a Windows NLE.

Obviously, there is a lot of competing technology, such as many different "HD" codecs, which all muddy the water considerably. I've been working in DV on Avid Xpress Pro for about a year, and I'm now very familiar with it. But I wonder how Avid Xpress compares with products like Premiere Pro 2.0 when editing and finishing at 1080p. If I can stick with Avid Xpress, I would like to. But it seems that Adobe is getting very competitive with the HD features of Premiere. Love to hear about the pros and cons of Avid Xpress or Premiere dealing with RedCine's down-sampled 1080p from where we're sitting now. Y'all know more than I do!

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Avid strengths: Hella Fast real-time.
Premiere strengths: Unusual file formats.

Avid weaknesses: Picky hardware.
Premiere weaknesses: Sitting around waiting for renders to complete.

[Cail Young]

Premiere weaknesses: Sitting around waiting for renders to complete.

Also, and I have no idea if this is still the case, but Pro 1.0 would sit there and conform all DV audio to 32-bit because that's what the timeline works at... Then if you moved the project it would forget it had done this and do it again.

[Sean]

I wonder if Premiere will make for an easier RedCine workflow than Avid Xpress. For one thing, with Premiere you can probably stay in a codec exported directly from RedCine, whereas Avid would have to "transcode" that codec to its own DNxHD codec--that might be a good or a bad thing, I'm not sure.

[Nick Shaw]

…with Premiere you can probably stay in a codec exported directly from RedCine, whereas Avid would have to "transcode" that codec to its own DNxHD codec--that might be a good or a bad thing, I'm not sure.

With Avid you can also stay in a codec exported from REDCINE, so long as you use one of the Avid supported codecs, such as DNxHD or DV. However, although Avid does not have to 'transcode' Quicktimes on import, it still has to convert them to OMF media files to work with them. This is 're-packaging' them from a Quicktime wrapper to an OMF wrapper, and has no re-compression loss. It is much quicker than re-compression, but still involves making new copies of the media on the Avid's media drive, so takes an amount of time comparable to a straight copy of the files.

[Sean]

With Avid you can also stay in a codec exported from REDCINE, so long as you use one of the Avid supported codecs, such as DNxHD or DV.

Hm, wait a moment. RedCine does not export DNxHD. You can't get a DNxHD out of RedCine (not yet). And so Avid does NOT stay in the codec exported from RedCine. RedCine can give us DVCPro or HD uncompressed, for example, which is then converted to DNxHD by Avid. Maybe the HD uncompressed converted to Avid DNxHD is "lossless"--I don't know. But there is still some change in codec between RedCine and Avid.

[Nick Shaw]

REDCINE can export to any Quicktime codec installed on your system. Avid DNxHD (along with all the other Avid codecs) is available as a Quicktime codec for Mac and PC as a free download from Avid. [LINK]

[Sean]

Ah, okay so this is something I'm not familiar with at all. Are you saying that if Avid Xpress is on my system, I already have a DNxHD codec installed on my system, and RedCine will be able to therefore tap into that codec and export an appropriate QT file using that codec?

[Gavin Greenwalt]

correct.

[Sean]

Okay thanks. Again, I didn't know that. HD is new to me. Well, there will be a lot of Avid (and FCP and Premiere) workflow threads in the months to come. But to return to my original post, given that DNxHD is supposedly a high quality HD codec, and RedCine will be able to export in this codec, is there any advantage to Premiere then? I was under the impression that Premiere was less proprietary in the codecs it allowed for. But it sounds like Avid Xpress will be just as easy to work with RedCine.