Is it time to jump back in??...

[WillBellJr]

Hey Canopus family, it's been a while since I've been around here - prolly about 2+ years now.

Recently caught wind of the new HDStorm and I'm wondering is it now time to jump back in with hardware accelerated video editing!

I miss the days of the DVStorm w/Premiere v6 (The Storm's Hey-Day in my opinion!) and I'd like to recapture those days again.

I left off with Edius Pro v3, Procoder v2 and Xplode Pro v4.

I'm definitely interested in upgrading what I have - have to catch up on what wares are still available / applicable (xplode?)

I even have Imaginate v2 and Photo Album obtained from back when I helped moderate the old Canopus boards and also assisted with some Beta testing...

I see the HDStorm w/Bay is ~$1500, I also see mention of an upgrade from the DVStorm?

I guess I'm just wondering what's the current state of Canopus wares considering the current platforms available (Vista / XP, 32/64 bit etc.,) and is this a good time for me to jump back in starting fresh with a HDStorm and Edius v5?

I've been making due with my ADVC 300 and Vegas 8 Pro.

My Vista laptop (of course) has ruined the joys of using my ADVC with my laptop. Haven't used the Storm since Premiere Pro v1 (no drivers)

I made sure my quad core desktop is still running XP so again, I'd like to get another Canopus setup going that hopefully will last me another 5+ years.
(I've always said that my Storm purchase was the best hardware purchase I ever made - that board (along with the MPEG encoder) served me for years!)


Any opinions on how well things are working for you, and pointers on what I should do are appreciated!

-Will

[pjsssss]

HI Will. Good to see you again! Edius us what it is. Some great improvements but also some of the same problems. I think it is wrong to think of acceleration AFA editing with the StormHD. The upgrade is basically $300 off and you get to keep your old Storm board. It is good until the end of the year. The StormHD specs are here http://desktop.thomsongrassvalley.co...TORM/index.php

You can get it with or without the BOB. You will need a monitor with a true HDMI input to use the HDMI out ot the board. And one last thing, don't forget that there are no VIsta 64 drivers for StormHD until sometime in Q1 2009.

[WillBellJr]

Hey! Thanks for the reply - great to see you're still around!

I don't plan on going 64 bits for a while! Just was wondering if drivers were available that was working with 64 bits yet.

IMO, drivers has always been Canopus's sore point (DVStorm w/Premiere Pro, ADVC w/Vista etc.,) so I'm just trying to get a feel if the HDStom was providing that same wind at your back experience the original DVStorm gave me back in the day or are there any growing pain issues etc...

While I have an HDMI DLP TV and some HDMI DVD players and stuff, I'm definitely not at the HDMI editing stage yet so I'll for sure be getting the BOB along with it if I buy it. (Actually I believe my little 3-chip panasonic HD (sd card) camera has HDMI out so that would be one real source of input for me...)

Again, thanks for the response, and it's good to hear from you again!

I know Canopus usually wants "proof of purchase" when upgrading - I bought my Storm back in what? 2000 I believe.

Short of taking pictures of the card and my Procoder DVD w/ dongle and emailing that to them I'd have to do some serious digging go find those receipts again! LOL!

All my registrations at the site should still be intact though?! I was in there recently after the new board change etc., that should account for something...


I had heard from Eddie about?, a year ago, he added me to is Facebook list - and if I remember correctly, he was getting married around that time or so...

I see StormDave is still around, where's Mike and Tim?

Catch ya later!

-Will

[plasma_video]

Hi Will, and welcome back. Good to hear from you.

In my home editing suite, I'm still using Storm with Edius 4, and still making great video in standard def, although getting my feet wet with HDV. Edius 4 has a great multicam feature that I use extensively. Alpha channel handling is still hit or miss, but it has been a very stable system for me. I cannot remember the last time I had a crash. Nested Sequences are another great, great feature.

HD Storm is in the cards for me if I stil have any money left after the market meltdowns :-( I will need to upgrade the computer at the same time, though.

One of the nice things about the upgrade is that you get to keep your Storm card and Edius - it is still good. So, you can have a second system still intact.

Only your S/N of the Storm is required.

I still have a DV Rex running on an old system, and use it from time to time when I get bored. It's running with Rex Edit, MS Pro and Premiere 6.

Lessee, Imaginate has not changed since you were last around. That's another product I use on over 90% of my productions.

Don't know about Tim - Mike's still rockin'.

In the process of installing 8 Edius workstations here at work.

See ya!

Tom Ogburn

[pjsssss]

Your registration should be fine. They are pretty easy to work with in regards to upgrading.

Tim is still out doing his thing. Haven't talked to Mike G for quite a while. Mike D is ultra busy traveling around for GV.

[WillBellJr]

Hey Tom, what's the one thing I loved about my Storm also - it was the longest lasting component purchase I ever made!

The only killer for it was Premere Pro (if you wanted to stick with Premiere) and as you've shown, using XP and Edius it's still a viable setup!

I was able to pull out my (closeted) system, blow off the dust and pull out the cards to get my serial number off the board - I see Safe Harbor has the "Loyality Upgrade" for ~$1270 with the BOB and all - that's pretty much the same price I paid originally when I first bought the Storm so I can only smile at that.

I agree about the economic times - I wonder if I should spend $1300 on a hobby toy for myself at this point in time!!

I also have to check if my motherboard is going to support this thing (I'm not as familiar now with the new PCI Express slot boards as I was the motherboards of days past.)

I have an ASUS P5N32-E SLI Motherboard - I see it has 1 PCI Express x1 slot (the short one), 2 "regular" PCI slots and 2 blue PCI Express x16 slots.

I have to make sure my NVidia isn't taking up that one slot this board is going to need (I put this system together around a year ago), haven't been inside it since...

-Will

[DigitalDave]

Recently caught wind of the new HDStorm and I'm wondering is it now time to jump back in with hardware accelerated video editing!

But its NOT! (accelerated that is)

[WillBellJr]

Hey Dave, nice seeing you again!

Maybe I need to read the specs a bit further?

Isn't the HDStorm at least providing some kind of boost with its hardware compressors to let you work comfortably with HD content?

What? No more n-tracks of renderless transitions, titles and effects like the old days with the DVStorm?

I'm pretty sure the majority of my work will still be SD for a while anyway mostly targeting web video and DVD.

I'm just trying to get a decent capture solution back into my rigg so I can do as I used to - the AVDC 300 and Premiere Pro 2 or Vegas 8 Pro just doesn't do it for me the way the Storm used to...

-Will

PS:

Edit any mix of SD and HD resolution video content together in real-time

Work with many different native video formats, including DV, HDV, AVCHD, uncompressed, and more

New GPU-accelerated 3D transitions

Fast, flexible user interface, including unlimited video, audio, title, and graphics tracks

Real-time editing and conversion of different HD/SD aspect ratios, such as 16:9 and 4:3

Real-time editing and conversion of different frame rates, such as 60i, 50i, and 24p

Real-time editing and conversion of different resolutions, such as 1920x1080, 1440x1080, 1280x720, and 720x480

Real-time HD/SD effects, keyers, transitions, and titles

Real-time, render-free DV output directly from the timeline

Multi-camera editing of up to eight different sources simultaneously
Nested timeline sequences

High-speed SD and HDV MPEG-2 timeline export, built for dual-core CPU technology


Sounds like some acceleration to me? What am I missing? What? Smoke & Mirrors??

This is why I posted asking for feedback on this card...

[shueardm]

Hi Will,

It's all performed with the CPU/s now that they are powerfull enough to do so.
The only hardware assistance on the HDStorm card is the onboard HQ codec chip, making capture/conversion to the codec and export to the codec easier (and faster for export) on the system CPU. It also provides the hardware output to monitor, so CPU is not loaded.

A HDStorm card will perform the same as EDIUS software alone when it comes to timeline performance.

It's just the way it is nowadays because it's more future proof scaling.
The hardware boards are really only I/O devices now.

[DigitalDave]

I'm just trying to get a decent capture solution back into my rigg so I can do as I used to ...

Well that is NOT Edius. In 4.5 onwards the capture module got screwed and for many is totally useless. I capture with 3.6 on my Storm system and then swap caddies to use 4.6 on NX. I could extol lots of enduring features of Edius with HD Storm just as you have listed but given the current shortcomings, I would suggest staying on the quayside for the present time, until fixes without breakages becomes the norm.

DD

[pgovotsos]

Maybe if you want SD acceleration but don't need HD component in, you might want to look at the NX Express instead of the HDStorm. It has the hardware acceleration you're used to as well as hardware MPEG encoder and all the ins and outs (except HD component in and HDMI).

Panagiotis

[WillBellJr]

Hi Will,

It's all performed with the CPU/s now that they are powerfull enough to do so.
The only hardware assistance on the HDStorm card is the onboard HQ codec chip, making capture/conversion to the codec and export to the codec easier (and faster for export) on the system CPU. It also provides the hardware output to monitor, so CPU is not loaded.

A HDStorm card will perform the same as EDIUS software alone when it comes to timeline performance.

It's just the way it is nowadays because it's more future proof scaling.
The hardware boards are really only I/O devices now.

Hey Shueardm, nice to see you again also!

LOL, oh, that kind of acceleration - yeah, that much I know!

Pretty much the DVStorm was the same way; the faster your rigg, the more realtime tracks you could handle...

I remember all the tests we all were doing back in the day to see how many tracks we could playback and for how long before the buffer would run out LOL!

When I said acceleration I meant being able to do your editing without >requiring< everything to be rendered...

Still, the card seems to be an updated DVStorm, and that's pretty much what I was after.

-Will

[WillBellJr]

Well that is NOT Edius. In 4.5 onwards the capture module got screwed and for many is totally useless. I capture with 3.6 on my Storm ystem and then swap caddies to use 4.6 on NX. I could extol lots of enduring features of Edius with HD Storm just as you have listed but given the current shortcomings, I would suggest staying on the quayside for the present time, until fixes without breakages becomes the norm.

DD

Hi Dave, sorry to hear that.

I mostly capture with Scenalyzer anyway.

I haven't used Edius in a while (since Vista ended up on my laptops) and when I built my new machine, I didn't reinstall any Canopus wares since I was mostly using Vegas and the ADVC 300...

I have to get back into Edius again, I hope Canopus takes a pro-active stance on fixing it and in a timely fashion too.

-Will

[Jerry]

I have to get back into Edius again, I hope Canopus takes a pro-active stance on fixing it and in a timely fashion too.

-Will

Will,
I'll correct you before one of the moderators does. It is now GV not Canopus.
For all of us old timers, I think it will always be Canopus. Habits are hard to break.

[WillBellJr]

LOL, yes I stand corrected!

You're right, I after over 5 years, I still say Canopus LOL. I had to laugh at that one - totally didn't realize what I was saying considering the current situation...

-Will