Edius NX ADVC + Premiere Pro CS3 ?

[strikemercury]

(Sorry for the long post - I just want to be specific to get best answers.)

Hi! I am a longtime user of Canopus products, and I also heavily use the Premiere Pro featureset. I currently have a Canopus Edius NX board (plus bay and component card), with both Edius 4.6 and Premiere Pro 1.5 installed on a self-built system.

When I first built out the system, I tried to use the Premiere Pro plugins Canopus provided; my thought was that I might use Edius software for simpler projects while using Premiere Pro for the more graphic-intensive projects. Unfortunately, the Premiere Pro plugin set was EXTREMELY unstable; Premiere would crash repeatedly when using the plugin, and even when the application worked, it became almost unresponsive.

So, abandoning that idea, I decided to simply work in native Premiere editing modes, occasionally taking my work over to Edius to watch through the S-Video output on a crummy consumer display (lowest-common-denominator checking). However, I finally decided that this is simply too inefficient; and plus, since I use Premiere Pro almost exclusively for editing, I was hoping to find a hardware solution that might work better within Premiere.

I have done a lot of research over the past few days. Here is the flow thus far:

1. I have always disliked the Matrox product line (especially compared with Canopus quality), but the only card out there that really seems worth looking at would be the RT.X2.
2. I have read comparison studies, and it looks like most people are completely for Edius NX over Matrox RT.X2; some have been willing to abandon Premiere Pro altogether and learn Edius just to have the stability and quality codecs that Canopus offers.
3. I don't have a lot of money to spend on solutions, so I am needing to decide on just one piece of hardware. I am torn because I love the stability of Edius software for some things, but I really need Premiere for most of the work I do. So I start searching forums to see how others have netted out on this topic.
4. Someone on a forum mentioned ADVC mode (I have not used this before) for the Edius NX. HMM..... OK, so I flip the Edius NX from Edius mode to ADVC mode. I start Premiere Pro 1.5 using a generic OHCI native editing mode, and I turn on DV preview. WHAM!! I've got full-quality previews of the Premiere timeline coming out of the Edius NX hardware.

This completely solves my problem... almost.

OK, so here are my questions:

1. I plan to upgrade to Premiere Pro CS3. Does anyone here know if the DV previews continue to work with ADVC-mode Edius NX? (All the forums I read say "Edius NX quits working after Premiere 1.5", but they all refer specifically to the buggy, horrific plugins. Has anyone tried with the ADVC approach?)
2. If ADVC mode works in CS3, then am I a moron for thinking that this solves my problem? (i.e. Is there some terrible quality loss, or format limitations, etc. using ADVC mode?)
3. If yes to 1 and no to 2, are there any compelling reasons to not pursue this workflow?

[shueardm]

You're not a moron at all.

ADVC mode is simply an OHCI interface which can go both ways.
The NX hardware (when in ADVC mode) is working like a DV camera passthrough (but it also has analog filtering). So in this mode you are not really using a plugin at all.
The plugin referred to as broken (or deceased) after version Prem Pro 1.5 is in fact a non OHCI hardware driven output.

Premiere PRO CS3 is able to work in NX ADVC mode which if you are only doing SD/DV work is fine. If HD is what you want to preview then it can't happen.

[strikemercury]

Thanks so much for the reply.

So, you're saying that absolutely no HD output can happen, with any device, using ADVC (OHCI) as the mode, whether using Edius NX or any other hardware?

If that is the case, how does the Edius NX itself transport HDV via firewire (for example, from the NX Bay out to an HDV camera)?

[shueardm]

That's right. You can only get HD out if you have the NX card in plugin mode, which can happen (albeit clumsily) with Premiere PRO 1.5 or with EDIUS.

You can't print live to HDV tape in any NLE, you have to transcode to m2t format using the speed encoder, then use the utility (ts writer) to write to tape..

[strikemercury]

Thanks again for the insight.

A few more followup questions:

1. So the advantage of Edius NX + expansion board + Edius 4.61 is its ability to work in realtime with HDV footage via the special HQ codecs and to allow a preview out (via component and HDMI connections); but it doesn't really offer an advantage in going back out to tape other than offering a set of tools that makes the workflow quicker. In OHCI (ADVC) mode, this functionality is limited further because the OS sees the NX as a standard firewire device and no longer has access to the component/HDMI outputs. Is that accurate? Or do these outputs work via ADVC mode? Has anyone actually tried this?

2. Can Premiere CS3 use the Canopus HQ codecs for editing, without using the Edius NX for output? Or are the plugins required for Premiere CS3 to take advantage of the codecs?

3. If you were in my situation (requiring Premiere, thrilled with Canopus hardware, disdaining Matrox, not liking Edius NLE), what would you do if you were moving into HDV production?

[shueardm]

Point 1) is correct except there are no HDMI connections at all. The component hardware outputs on the card will only work for EDIUS.

2) You can use Canopus HQ files in Premiere PRO CS3 but you're editing (processing and export) will be in the codec that you chose in Premiere. ie, HDV native.

3) If you really don't like EDIUS (and I think you should give it a chance) then perhaps you should look at AJA Xena LH-e or a BlackMagic card, however these cards are for uncompressed workflows mostly.

[strikemercury]

On the HD/SD expansion card shown here:

http://www.canopus.com/products/EDIUSNX/index.php

what is the connector to the right of the components? Is that a FireWire port?

[shueardm]

Is that a FireWire port?

That's Correct.