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Videoguys Real-Time Round Up 5!
Hot new Non Linear Editing Programs revolutionize digital videography
Never before have we seen such a wide choice of top-notch, powerful and feature rich video editing choices. We are entering a golden age of digital videography. A time when the power and performance of your computer are leveraged by innovative software that delivers real-time performance that just a year or two ago required proprietary hardware accelerators and the complexities that come with installing new hardware in your computer. Adobe Premiere Pro, Pinnacle Liquid Edition, Sony Pictures Vegas 4 and Avid Xpress Pro are all great products loaded with all the tools and features you need for even the most complex long format video productions. This article will point out some of the particular strengths of each product and what I like most about them. Read Videoguys Real-Time Round Up 5! |
This newest article is actually broken down into 4 parts. I felt it was very important to not only compare the cards, but to provide a background into real-time video editing and to go over those features that I feel are most important. You can skip directly to any of the sections by clicking on the links below.
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Special Note about Video Quality: Many of you may have seen posts or papers about the video quality of one companies DV CODEC vs. another. Ignore them. In my view this is pointless mud slinging. The video quality of all these cards is excellent. Anyone given the time and resources can create a lopsided test that eventually favors one particular card over the other. Do not let these concern you. The video quality you get using these cards in real world editing situations will be superb. We guarantee it - just like everything else we sell.
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What is real-time?
Real-Time NLE means that you can play your video directly from the timeline and watch it. You don't have to wait for transitions, FX, filters or other stuff to render. The output can either be VGA preview, analog (via the composit and/or S-Video jacks) or DV. VGA previews are nice, but it's the least effective real-time performance level. I feel you really need to be able to view the video full screen on a TV monitor while you edit to get the full benefits of real-time performance. Real-Time DV output is the best. This means that you can go directly from the timeline via FireWire back to your camcorder or DV VCR. Some of the new products in this year's round up have an added real-time feature – Real-Time MPEG2 export for DVD. This is very cool!! The DVD revolution is in full gear and we all want to burn and author our own DVDs. The faster we can export the video from DV to MPEG2, the sooner we can begin authoring our DVDs.
Real-Time isn't just a buzzword, it is a very important feature that will increase your productivity and make you a better editor. Here are just a few reasons why:
Real-Time Productivity
The reason you want a real-time NLE card is for productivity. If you do not have to spend any time rendering, then you can get more work done in a given amount of time. This is the obvious advantage of real-time cards. What is not so obvious is how this increased productivity can make you a better, more creative editor.
The learning curve
Anyone can edit video; it's not very hard or complicated. You just pick each scene's in and out points, put them on the timeline, add the transitions/ FX / titles you want and then play it back. Pretty simple, but there is a BIG difference between editing a video and creating a video that looks great and makes people want to watch it. To actually create great looking videos takes some skill and effort. Think of it as a craft. The more you do it, the better you will become. This is where a real-time card can really make a difference. If you stick to the real-time effects with your early projects, you will be able to tweak, and fine-tune your transitions / FX / titles without having to sit around waiting for them to render. This is a huge learning advantage. Since you don't spend any time waiting, you can spend more time experimenting. The more you experiment, the better an editor you will become!
Over the shoulder
Over the shoulder editing is a term used by professional editors to describe the situation when the producer / client is in the room. When the guy who writes the checks is looking over your shoulder while you make changes or add some new stuff, the last thing you both want to do is stare at the hourglass on the VGA screen. What is less obvious is how many times even a home videographer is in an over the shoulder situation. Once you get into this, you are going to be showing off your work all the time. Many times the people you are showing your stuff to will have a good idea or suggestion. With a real-time system you can implement these ideas instantly. You can also take advantage of asking someone which way they like a certain sequence better. This is very important if you plan on doing any wedding or event videos. You need to make sure you give your customer what he wants quickly and easily. With a real-time card, you can create and edit on the fly, so if anyone is watching, he is seeing you in action, not killing time while the computer renders.
Just messin' around
This third creativity bonus of these real-time cards is actually a combination of the first two. With a real-time card, if you or an associate or a client can come up with a clever idea for a video, you can sit down and play with the concept in real-time. Tweaking here, adjusting there, playing with settings, etc. You can immediately view the results of your 'messin' around' on the TV or VGA screen. You don't have to waste time rendering, you can fully use the time you have for your creativity. If it's just 15 minutes or half the night, it doesn't matter becasue every second was spent editing and being creative!!
Page peels, Picture-in-picture FX that fly all over the screen and animated transitions that have one layer of video folding over/into another are just a few examples of 3D FX. While having access to these FX is very cool, it is very important to have the proper tools to control them. The tool that allows you to control the speed, position and motion path of your 3D effect over time is called a keyframer. If you have ever worked with a 3D or compositing program like Boris FX, Hollywood FX or After FX then you already know what a keyframer is. While I think most digital videographers have heard of keyframing, you may not be quite sure what exactly it is or how it works.
What is keyframing?
Keyframing allows you to customize a transition or effect over time. You can go to any single frame in the transition and change some of the settings. As an example, let's say we have a Picture In Picture (PIP) effect. Video 1 flies in from the upper left hand corner of the screen then fills the entire screen. With the keyframer I could make the PIP fly in & bounce on the screen, or stop in the upper left hand corner at ¼ size, stay there for a while, then simply shrink away. By being able to manipulate how the FX will happen over time, I get complete and total control of my FX and transitions. The best keyframers allow you to add and control drop shadows, outlines and the edge softness of your FX.
Real-Time Keyframing
By now, I'm sure you would agree with me that keyframing is very cool. But with most NLE systems, the more you keyframe the longer you render and the longer it takes to edit. A complex sequence with a moving PIP that flies and spins on the screen could take an hour to render using Premiere. When you use the real-time keyframing capabilities of these cards to customize your FX you can spend your time tweaking the effect to make sure it looks perfect, not wasting hours waiting for previews to render and then having to make changes and render again.
Real-Time 3D FX with Keyframing
Now that we understand basic keyframing, lets push it a little further. I love 3D FX and transitions. To me, this is the kind of stuff that makes my viewers go “WOW!” and leaves really lasting impressions. Note: 3D FX don't belong in every type of video and you can easily go too far with these FX and have them become a distraction. Whenever you use 3D FX, try to make them “fit” in with the content and video content and the flow of the production.
OK, now that we've cleared that up, back to the subject at hand. Let's talk about keyframing a 3D transition like a page curl. Say you want the page to not only curl, but to shrink and then flutter off the screen like a sheet of paper caught in a strong breeze. With the Real-Time 3D keyframing capabilities of the RTX.100 or Pro-ONE RTDV not only is this simple and easy to do, but you get complete control over the entire effect without ever having to render it. Even more important the keyframing interface allows you to grab the 3D FX with your mouse and move it, resize it or twist it around for each keyframe point. The keyframe is then set and the 3D FX engine automatically displays the entire full motion 3D effect INSTANTLY! Real-Time keyframing of 3D FX is the most important productivity tool I have ever used for NLE. Once you get your hands on a card with Real-Time keyframing you'll never be able to go back to rendering your 3D FX.
How many times do you catch the greatest moment on video, only to find out that the white balance was off and the faces look red or even worse – green!?! Or you pan by an open window or bright light and then discover that the next 5 or 10 minutes of video is too dark to use? Don't feel bad, it happens to the best videographers. Ideally we would always be able to shoot with perfect lighting. In reality you have little or no control over the lighting on most of your shoots. What are you to do? FIX IT IN POST!!
In the past color correcting video was a tedious process that resulted in hours and hours of rendering. If you didn't like the final video quality you had to start all over and render everything again. What a pain in neck aa well as a productivity drain.
Real-Time color correction saves the day!!
Today all of our real-time solutions offer some degree of real-time color correction. You make the changes and you can see it instantly. Even more important you can fine tune and adjust it as you go. And you don't have to waste any time waiting for it to render. Be warned, not all real-time color correctors are created equal. For the best results you need to have full RGB color correction which allows you to adjust the red, green and blue levels of your video separately. Some of our cards give you a professional color correction tool called a vectorscope. This is very cool, but quite frankly beyond what I like to use.
A new feature called auto white balancing is far simpler to use and delivers outstanding results. You select a small section of the video image that you feel should be white. The software analyzes it and applies the proper correction settings to make it pure white. These settings are now applied automatically to the entire clip – all in real-time. I use this tool all the time and I LOVE IT!!
One of the tools I find that videographers on all levels like to use is the speed control. It can be as simple as adding slow motion to your kid's game winning soccer goal or as complex as variable speeds applied to motorcycle stunt drivers. I know many event videographers who use the speed control to give a dreamy quality to weddings. It is one of the easiest things to add to your video and it can have a BIG impact. In the past, each time you changed the speed of your video, you had to render. This could put a serious dent in your creativity, especially if you wanted to experiment with different speed settings.
Field based Real-Time Speed controls to the rescue!
The first real-time speed control features were frame based. This resulted in less than smooth slow motion playback and forced you into the “Rule of Thirds” - Speed settings of 33% or 66% looked much better then any other choices. Today's real-time solutions have field based real-time speed controls, which deliver far better video quality.
Gentlemen Start Your Engines!!! - Let the RT4 round up begin!!
On the real-time FX side, you get the tools you need the most; dissolves, titling, wipes and a basic color correction filter. You also get a bunch of Alpha Magic transitions, which the DV500 DVD can apply in real-time. The new 4.5 driver includes many of the 3D FX found in the Pro-One, although they are not real-time. The new interface for the RT filters & FX includes a keyframer and also has the clean new look of the Pro-ONE's. Rounding out the package is Hollywood FX 4.6 basic. While these are some really cool animated 3D transitions, they are not real-time.
The DV500DVD includes two tools that will make producing DVDs easier and better. TurboMPEG Export greatly accelerates the export of MPEG2 format video for DVD and MPEG2-CD production with the included Pinnacle Impression SE software. Depending on your system, it is up to twice as fast as in previous versions and almost real-time! DV500 DVD also allows you to edit MPEG2 video directly in the Premiere timeline, simply by importing MP2 video and/or WAV or MPA audio files. These may be mixed freely with DV AVI files.
Pinnacle has taken the DV500 hardware and ported it to their new NLE package Edition. The Edition DV500 bundle gives you all the benefits of Edition like Auto Save and background rendering PLUS the real-time features of the DV500 DVD. I feel this product is a peak into the future - when Pinnacle will leverage their Real-Time hardware expertise with Edition.
The RTX.10 is the little brother of the RTX.100 and it utilizes the same "Power of X" technology. This leverages the speed of your computer with Matrox's Flex 3D technology to deliver outstanding real-time performance. You can layer 2 layers of video and graphics together with real-time color correction and speed controls. You can apply 3D FX as filters to graphics and titles.
The RTX.10 includes Matrox outstanding Media capture and export tools. The single pass scan and capture tool is great. It detects each time you stopped and then started your camcorder while you were shooting. You just hit the record button and your video is automatically captured and broken into clips. You can then go in and trim each clip, add annotation and delete the scenes you don't want to free up disk space.
Since this is the little brother of the RTX.100, it does have some limitations. You do not get real-Time DV or MPEG2 output. You can't layer as many FX as with the RTX.100 and you don't get as wide a range of color correction tools. You do get the Auto White balance feature which I really love. The RTX.10 requires a powerful machine to deliver its full complement of real-time features. We do not recommend putting it in anything lower than a P4 2.2 Ghz machine.
We have gotten together with the Matrox and Sonic to offer you a very special DVD authoring bundle special. Right now you can get a FREE upgrade to DVDit!SE as a rebate from Matrox. We go this one better by offering you an instant upgrade to DVDit!PE for only $200 more! The biggest advantages of DVDit!PE over le are chapter points, 16:9 support and the ability to encode and author with Dolby AC3 audio. AC3 audio lets you get more content on your DVDs without sacrificing any video quality.
With the Pro-One RTDV Pinnacle has made it a complete package that is more powerful, with better quality, improved stability and most important Real-Time DV Output! . The latest drives include Pinnacle's scene detection tool which automatically breaks up a long clip into scenes and puts them in the Premiere storyboard editor. This is a nice little feature, but not as powerful or useful as single pass scan & capture. You also get the same MPEG2 Turbo Export and Editing capabilities included in the DV500 DVD.
The Pro-ONE RTDV allows you to apply multiple layers of filters and FX while still giving you Real-Time performance. As an example, I can apply a Black & White filter to a PIP image while having it change size and move all over the screen. At the same time, I can apply speed control to the base or PIP image or both while maintaining my Real-Time playback. I can add a title and apply the motion filter to it so it moves across the screen as well. Want even more – I can soften the edge on the PIP image, add a drop shadow and change the shape of it! And everything stays Real-Time!!
The Pro-ONE RTDV also includes a Real-Time image stabilizer and real-time motion tracker. The motion tracker is very cool. It is derived from the same technology found in Commotion Pro. Once the motion track has been created you can apply it to many of the RTDV's filters. When you combine the new lens flare filter with the motion tracker you can create some really great effects. The stabilizer is based on the same Commotion image tracker technology. It automatically analyzes the footage, finds the contrast points to lock in, then automatically crops and expands the image. The results can range from not useable at all to very good. With the added ability to select a specific region of the video you can improve you chances of having the results come out well.
You also get all the cool real-time Flex 3D FX that have made Matrox famous. It goes way beyond 3D page peels, and 3D moving Picture-In-Picture effects. The same Flex 3D graphics technology also gives you real-time blur, lens flares, ripples and particle effects. When combined with the Power of X you can actually have 2 layers of video with 2D/3D FX, plus color correction, slow motion and 2 layers of graphics all in real-time!! And you get an excellent keyframer to control ALL of these FX and filters.
The RTX.100 includes Matrox's outstanding Media capture and export tools. In addition to single pass scan and capture you get Real-Time MPEG2 export from the timeline and Matrox Media Export tools. These tools allow you to create files in a wide range of formats using Ligos Go-Motion plug-in. You can create streaming video clips, MPEG1 for VCD and optimized MPEG2 output with a wide range of quality settings.
The Power of X technology requires a fast machine. Don't put this puppy in anything less then a 2.2 Ghz P4. In the future Matrox will be releasing new features and FX that require even more horsepower. So put the RTX.100 in the fastest computer you can find and afford.
We have gotten together with the Matrox and Sonic to offer you a very special DVD authoring bundle special. Right now you can get a FREE upgrade to DVDit!SE as a rebate from Matrox. We go this one better by offering you an instant upgrade to DVDit!PE for only $200 more! The biggest advantages of DVDit!PE over le are chapter points, 16:9 support and the ability to encode and author with Dolby AC3 audio. AC3 audio lets you get more content on your DVDs without sacrificing any video quality.
For the past two years the DV Storm has been the benchmark for real-time performance and stability. With the release of Strom2 it got even better. The MPEG Encoder card is now included in the package. This lets you encode directly into MPEG in real-time or export your timeline to MPEG in real-time. The video quality of the real-time MPEG2 export for DVD authoring is superb. Canopus has also improved the Xplode FX. They are more real-time than before and they are starting to look much more professional.
While no other card comes close to delivering 5 streams of full motion video in real-time, the tools Canopus provides you for controlling each stream are limited. You can't apply FX as filters on a graphic or title. The keyframer is still a little too basic for such powerful performance. While Storm Edit is a nice program for basic editing, Canopus still has not delivered on their promise for a new version with more robust features, something Storm fans have been waiting over a year for. Still, the DV Storm has the most real-time power of the products featured in this round up. Canopus has proven that their CPU scalability story works. We can expect even more features and improved performance over the next year.
With the introduction of Xpress DV 3.5 Avid added two very important new features. The first - It now runs on Win XP and Mac OS X. In fact you get both versions of the software in the box!! Second is the expert color correction toolset. These are the same tools the big boys use in Hollywood with their Symphony systems - only XDV does it in real-time!!
Unlike Premiere based real-time cards you are not going to get a subset of real-time filters and FX that you can use. The entire application – every transition, effect, filter, title, audio mixing, you name it – it's all real-time. You get over 100 real-time FX and you can adjust them all without affecting your real-time performance. We were able to throw 2 PIPs, each with border, softness, cropping and motion over a full motion video in the background – each one keyframed in real-time. We were even able to add filters to all 3 video tracks and transitions before and after each PIP. Then we superimposed a title and still achieved real-time playback.
A couple of things you need to keep in mind about Xpress DV. First and foremost, it's not Adobe Premiere. It is based on Avid's 11th generation NLE technology, the same technology used to edit over 90% of network television shows. So be prepared to spend some extra time learning the Avid way of editing. Once you do, you'll be able to fully realize and take advantage of the more productive Avid workflow. The other important note is that Xpress DV is strictly a DV solution. There is no analog input or output. You can use a dual head graphics card like the Matrox G550 to output to a television for previews, but Xpress DV is strictly FireWire in and out.
If you like 3D filters and FX do not despair. You can add Boris FX Continuum to your Avid Xpress. Continuum takes Boris award winning 3D filters, FX and compositing tools and integrates them into the Avid GUI. Even cooler - you now can download 18 real-time FX for Xpress DV!!
If you currently own Adobe Premiere or Final Cut Pro you can Step Up to Xpress DV and save big bucks!! Xpress DV base is $1199 after Step Up rebate and the PowerPack is an amazingly low $1799!! You must provide proof of ownership of an eligible Step Up product before we can process your order.
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