{"id":15,"date":"2007-10-25T00:21:23","date_gmt":"2007-10-25T07:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/2007\/10\/25\/portability-hd-editing\/"},"modified":"2007-10-28T00:14:32","modified_gmt":"2007-10-28T07:14:32","slug":"portability-hd-editing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/2007\/10\/25\/portability-hd-editing\/","title":{"rendered":"Portability-HD Editing"},"content":{"rendered":"

There has been a lot of\u00c2\u00a0discussion recently on the reduser.net<\/a> and dvinfo.net<\/a> among other places, about portable HD editing systems.\u00c2\u00a0 Technically, almost any editing system is portable\u00c2\u00a0if you want to go to the trouble of\u00c2\u00a0taking it with\u00c2\u00a0you.\u00c2\u00a0 For the sake of this discussion, I am going to consider any collection of items that will comfortably fit within a regular backpack to be a legitimate\u00c2\u00a0“mobile” solution.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Technology has come a long way in the last two years, especially in the CPU processing aspect of the equation.\u00c2\u00a0 A well equipt laptop can be purchased now that has more processing power than the highest-end Windows based workstations of two years ago, thanks to the Core2 Duo.\u00c2\u00a0 I bought a Xeon workstation in 2005, and one year later, bought a 12″ notebook for LESS money, that has MORE CPU power.\u00c2\u00a0 With the upcoming release of quad core mobile CPUs, we can remove processing power from the list of limitations that\u00c2\u00a0mobility imposes.<\/p>\n

Next is RAM, and we are in a unique situation in that regard.\u00c2\u00a0 Most systems still use 32bit OSes, and are limited to 4GB of RAM.\u00c2\u00a0 This software limitation has allowed notebooks to catchup with desktops in this regard, as demand has not climbed as much past 4GB in the desktop sector, and notebooks were under no similar limit until they caught up.\u00c2\u00a0 4GB of notebook RAM can be had for under $200.\u00c2\u00a0 Obviously mobile solutions will not be limited by the maximum available RAM. (Any more than a desktop)
\n
\nThe first area where we encounter trouble is with storage, in both capacity and transfer rate.\u00c2\u00a0 While there are solutions that allow uncompressed HD speeds and\u00c2\u00a0capacities\u00c2\u00a0on a laptop (ExpressCard<\/a> to CalDigit HDPro<\/a>), that solution is not very portable.\u00c2\u00a0 The capacity issue can be solved via 1TB drives connected via firewire, or internal RAIDs or 2.5inch hard disks in large laptops, but there is currently no way to provide the required transfer rates for realtime uncompressed high-resolution editing, in a mobile solution.\u00c2\u00a0 This leads to a need for a different solution.\u00c2\u00a0 We can utilize the extra CPU now available by using a compressed\u00c2\u00a0video format to decrease the strorage requirements.\u00c2\u00a0 (As an aside, my FREE IDEA of the day is:\u00c2\u00a0A mobile array of 8x250GB 2.5 inch disks with an external\u00c2\u00a0PCIe interface for use with x1 PCIe or ExpressCards would offer 2TB at 250MB\/s.\u00c2\u00a0 It would be an interesting solution, and if\u00c2\u00a0a company decided to create it, all the technology already exists.)<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0Since there are no reasonable storage solutions for uncompressed, we must examine compression options.\u00c2\u00a0 The first standardized option is HDV<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 The advantages are low-bitrate, wide support, and firewire I\/O, which most laptops already have available.\u00c2\u00a0 The disadvantages are lower quality, 8bit 4:2:0 MPEG encoding, and a 1440 horizontal resolution limit.\u00c2\u00a0 The next option is a very recent one for Premiere Pro users, with\u00c2\u00a0DVCPro-HD,\u00c2\u00a0made possible by the release of the 3.1.0 update this week.\u00c2\u00a0 With datarates of 5-12Mb\/s, this format is will within the 30MB\/s capabilities of a single 2.5inch laptop drive.\u00c2\u00a0 The horizontal resolution is even more limited, to 1280 pixels wide, but it encodes 8bit 4:2:2 with DCT compression, and in general a higher bitrate should improve quality.\u00c2\u00a0 Since it doesn’t use MPEG compression, it should be less CPU intensive to playback and edit, leading to better performance.\u00c2\u00a0 The next step would probably be one of Cineform’s products.\u00c2\u00a0 AspectHD<\/a> is limited to 1440 at 8bit, but it still the highest quality solution yet, usually at around 9-10MB\/s, using Wavelet compression, which allows efficient low resolution playback as an added bonus.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0Blackmagic Design<\/a> released a MotionJPEG codec a while back that allows full 1920×1080 files at 8bit 4:2:2 to be used with a data rate of around 12MB\/s.\u00c2\u00a0 The advantages are that it can be used for free, with out any limitations that I am aware of, but it is designed to be used with their I\/O hardware for acquisition and preview.\u00c2\u00a0 The only disadvantage is not really a disadvantage comparedto the options below it, but image quality will not be as good as Cineform, and is limited to 8-bit.\u00c2\u00a0 Cineform’s higher-end product ProspectHD<\/a> has\u00c2\u00a0few limitations, allowing 10bit 422 at full1920x1080 to be edited at around 15MB\/s depending on settings.\u00c2\u00a0 This is easily sustainable on internal laptop disks,\u00c2\u00a0while an external firewire drive could increase performance and capacity.\u00c2\u00a0 Currently\u00c2\u00a0Cineform\u00c2\u00a0is the solution I would recommend if you need high end HD editing in a portable form factor.\u00c2\u00a0 The next question that Cinefrom prompts is, how high can I go, and currently 2K 444 RGB is possible at 30-40MB\/s, meaning an internal RAID 0 would benefit playback on a laptop.\u00c2\u00a0 There is even talk of 4K realtime\u00c2\u00a0playback\u00c2\u00a0with the release of the RedOne<\/a>, so it seems that the sky is the limit.<\/p>\n

Other solutions that I am aware of, but don’t seem ideal are: Matrox MPEG I-Frame files from AXIO<\/a> or RT.X2<\/a> at 12MB\/s with the Matrox M.key in desktop mode, which I use, but the performance is not good for creative work without the hardware acceleration.\u00c2\u00a0 In the non-Adobe world, FCP offers DVCProHD, and now recently ProRES<\/a>, a full frame 10bit 422 codec that runs about 15MB\/s at 1080p I believe.\u00c2\u00a0 I have no familiarity with Avid, but XpressPro or Media Composer with DNxHD<\/a> might be a portable HD option as well.<\/p>\n

Laptops have done a lot of catching up recently, and the\u00c2\u00a0concept of\u00c2\u00a0“desktop-replacement” is a much more legitimate now than it was two years ago.\u00c2\u00a0 The most important aspect we have\u00c2\u00a0not yet examined\u00c2\u00a0is HD I\/O for portable solutions, especially for portable acquisition, which I plan to go over next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There has been a lot of\u00c2\u00a0discussion recently on the reduser.net and dvinfo.net among other places, about portable HD editing systems.\u00c2\u00a0 Technically, almost any editing system is portable\u00c2\u00a0if you want to go to the trouble of\u00c2\u00a0taking it with\u00c2\u00a0you.\u00c2\u00a0 For the sake of this discussion, I am going to consider any collection of items that will comfortably […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[12,15,24,30,25,35,7],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}