Finally a pluggin for Firercoder card in EDIUS 6.5 after the long wait.

[Jerry]

We are talking about the mpeg 2 plugin for edius 6.5, not an earlier version. So, down scaling is handled by Edius and then the layouter adjustment is used to correct the aspect before export with the mpeg2 plugin. I don't doubt that the full version of TMPGE 5, which I own, will do a better job. But, if you are after a quick dual pass option....this might work for you. The fact that it will make the FCB somewhat useful again, for card owners, is a good thing.

[Ron Evans]

Originally Posted by Jerry

We are talking about the mpeg 2 plugin for edius 6.5, not an earlier version. So, down scaling is handled by Edius and then the layouter adjustment is used to correct the aspect before export with the mpeg2 plugin. I don't doubt that the full version of TMPGE 5, which I own, will do a better job. But, if you are after a quick dual pass option....this might work for you. The fact that it will make the FCB somewhat useful again, for card owners, is a good thing.

The value for me in using the FCB when I had it installed was for h264 encode and for that I can see a value in the plugin for someone who still has FCB installed.


I accept that the post is about the plugin with 6.5 using FCB. However, since the plugin is available for many version of Edius I expect that the plugin works the same way on all versions so its base functions will be common. I do not use 6.5 so can only check on 6.07 and 5.5 neither of these use the Lanczos improvement to the layouter. So are totally dependent on the plugin for scaling, which has the bars on scaling. If you are going to use Edius 6.5 to scale and have a short program one may as well use Edius to encode and then there is no need for the plugin at all for SD output for DVD. I was pointing out that simplistic use of the plugin does not give the desired output. As you have described it requires an Edius workaround to remove the black bars. Simply selecting export from a 1920x1080 project to SD DVD compliant MPEG2 files using the plugin will give black bars.


MPEG2HD encodes from Edius were always fast enough for me. It was just for longer Bluray programs I went to h264 and once I upgraded to my present computer have now moved to using the Quicksync output all the time as it is fast and compliant. The latest PC's using Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge processors are faster than FCB for all encode types which is why my FCB is in its box on the shelf.

Ron Evans

[Andreas_Gumm]

Nice to see that third party companies beats GV in making GV hardware work in inside of GV software!
I still can't believe that this was not possible for GV themself.
A shame....

Andreas

[Jerry]

MPEG2HD encodes from Edius were always fast enough for me. It was just for longer Bluray programs I went to h264 and once I upgraded to my present computer have now moved to using the Quicksync output all the time as it is fast and compliant. The latest PC's using Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge processors are faster than FCB for all encode types which is why my FCB is in its box on the shelf.


I agree with everything you said. However, not everyone has Quicksync and many are still using older machines. If they own a FCB card this will help them be able to export mpeg 2 much faster. It isn't a perfect solution, but it is a 3rd party offering. Down converting is only one aspect of the plugin.

Personally, I can't use a Z77 motherboard due to it's PCI-E limitations. I'm sure I am not the only one.
It is either my X58 or an X79 system...or the C series chipsets.

I am building a separate network encoding box that will use Quicksync with both Edius 6.52 from the timeline and TMPGE Mastering Works 5.
This gives me the most bang for the $350-$400 it is going to cost. Both of my systems can feed files to this box across the network and the encode can be set up in batch.

[Zorro]

Originally Posted by Andreas_Gumm

Nice to see that third party companies beats GV in making GV hardware work in inside of GV software!
I still can't belief that this was not possible for GV itself.
A shame....

Andreas

Since Canopus/GV has a long tradition developing very good encoding solutions I don't understand why FCB has been dropped.

[shueardm]

Originally Posted by Zorro

Since Canopus/GV has a long tradition developing very good encoding solutions I don't understand why FCB has been dropped.

The truth is they saw Quicksync at it's earliest as a way to get out of the "difficult position" of lacklustre product knowledge of Spurs Engine. The software they put out was abysmal.

[Ron Evans]

Originally Posted by shueardm

The truth is they saw Quicksync at it's earliest as a way to get out of the "difficult position" of lacklustre product knowledge of Spurs Engine. The software they put out was abysmal.

I never used the GV software with my FCB always used TMPGenc Spurs plugin for TMPGenc T4 at the time. Worked great too.

Jerry. I understand you position. I have the advantage of only using my own video files which are now all AVCHD so only use the plug in cards for my tape drive ( which I also use as a RAID 0 controller) and Spark HD . Have you looked how you might use the new Thunderbolt Gigabyte boards http://ca.gigabyte.com/products/prod...px?pid=4279#ov for your application?

Ron Evans

edit: Jerry . This is the sort of box for thunderbolt that you could use for some of your PCI cards ? http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/d...nsion_Box.html

[Schoenmaeckers]

I use a older WinFast PxVC1100 card with tmpggenc and the spursengine plugin, mpeg2 encodes are not really that faster then my I7 950 but mp4 encodes are, I think it's about twice realtime. The biggest advantage is that during transcoding it leaves sufficient resources available for the cpu for me to continue my editing. I always export a hq avi master from Edius and use tmpgencauthoring works to make my blu-ray's and tmpgencvideomastering to make mp4 files, save me a lot of time. I know leadtek developed a model that had the double amount of processors but it seems they never put it into real production as that card is nowhere available, to bad.

[Jerry]

Ron, I looked at these thunderbolt extensions earlier this year. I would like to see more real world testing. It sounds like a solution to the limitations of the chipset. But cost
is an issue for these devices at this early stage. It is still
cheaper to build a small encoding box.

I still prefer the separate network box for encoding due to multiple editors being used.. Beside that, it can double as a portable, full feature, editing/capture box as well.

[David Clarke]

Like Jerry I would not trust any of this stuff until it is tried. We have the Gigabyte board with Thunderbolt here and we are getting some new drives in from Lacie to test. They were going to send us one of the thunderbolt drives and then said they would not because it did not yet have Windows drivers. I was surprised because I thought a Thunderbolt drive would just plug in and work like a regular drive but i guess they know their own products. Just means there is more to making Thunderbolt stuff work than just having an interface.