HDSTORM - HQ Chip - Speed up software rendering of XDCAM HD to HQ?

[msvideo]

Workflow:

1) Ingest XDCAM HD from disc to hard disk/Edius Project.
2) Select all XDCAM HD clips in Edius Bin, right click and batch convert to Canopus HQ
3) After edit complete, export entire timeline to Canopus HQ

Question:

Will the new HDSTORM board speed up 2) and 3) above?

If so, how much?

[GrassValley_BH]

Definite on 3, not sure on 2 yet.

[Zorro]

Dear Brandon,

so it's likely that there will be a speed increase when you choose 'CanopusHQ' as rendering format in the project settings window?

[GrassValley_BH]

Depends. It'll use the Canopus HQ codec chip on the HDSTORM board. However, if CPUs get significantly faster, then it might be faster to do software compression.

This is very similar to the DVRex days when initially it was faster to use the hardware codec, but as CPU speeds allowed for faster than real-time DV encoding, it then became faster to use software encoding and bypass the hardware codec.

However, in the case of HDSTORM, since EDIUS still has to process the real-time effects on the timeline, offloading the HQ compression work to the hardware codec allows EDIUS to dedicate more CPU time to processing the timeline effects, so it should still be faster to use the hardware HQ codec.