HDV - Too good to be true? (FCPHD versus Vegas 6 versus Ulead VS9)

I've recently been comparing the performance of Ulead's HDV codec / plug-in,
now offered for free, with their VideoStudio 9 editing program to 2 other
programs I have been previously using. I am simply amazed at how fast the
Ulead software edits and renders HDV compared to Vegas 6 and Apple's Final
Cut Pro Studio HD.

From all accounts, as well as from my own experience, the rendering speed of
both FCP HD (on a high end dual processor G5) and Vegas 6 (on relatively
fast single processor 3.4 GB P4 HT) is glacially slow, typically 10 times
slower than real time. Using Cineform or Apple proxy codecs, these products
take forever to render.

Much to my utter amazement, Ulead's $79 program blows them totally out of
the water in speed, by a speed up of maybe 5X. This is no small
improvement............and saves many HOURS of rendering time for a typical
project.

To my relatively untrained eye, the resulting quality form Ulead looks
essentially the same as I see from Vegas or FCP. I have not done a lot of
testing yet, but my early findings here are just amazing.

Has anybody else done a comparison, or have any opinions about relative
performance.

Since the Apple and Vegas products cost many times as much as VideoStudio9,
and yet render at 1/5th the speed, I guess I consider this all to be "too
good to be true".......

Any other opinions?

Thanks,

Smarty

 

On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 02:23:27 -0400, in 'rec.video.desktop',
Ulead VS9)>,

What I think you're experiencing is simply the result of three
particular things:

1. Ulead Systems Video Studio 9 was specifically written to take
advantage of HyperThreaded Intel Pentium 4 processor chips. You
mentioned that the system you're using has a 3.4 GHz (you wrote "GB"
but I assume that you meant "GHz") P4 HT chip.

2. Although the VideoStudio HDV plug-in, which is a free download for
existing VideoStudio 9 users, treats the HDV MPEG-2 Transport Stream
as an MPEG-2 Program Stream for editing purposes, this process is
completely lossless and is, essentially, native HDV editing. No
intermediate codec is involved, hence no needless transcoding from one
lossy codec to another lossy codec, even one which claims to be
visually lossless. Nor is the program converting "long-GOP" MPEG-2 to
"I-frame-only" MPEG-2 for editing purposes, which itself can be a
time-consuming process.

3. Ulead is proud of their "SmartRender" technology wherein only GOPs
which were changed/altered in some way during the editing process are
re-encoded. This helps, in a big way, to a) maintain the full visual
quality of the original footage and b) speed-up the rendering process.
Of course, SmartRender provides no advantage if you're color
correcting the entire contents of the timeline, for example.

A quick question if I may...

In your VideoStudio tests, are you editing 720p HDV footage or 1080i
HDV footage? I assume the latter, but wanted to be certain. Also, can
I assume that your comparisons to Sony Vegas and Apple Final Cut Pro
all involve the same type (720p versus 1080i) of HDV footage?

 

Thanks for your reply Frank. I have visited your website often and consider
it a superb and truly authoritative / comprehensive place to get HDV
information. Yes, I did mean HT (not GB), but am surprised that
hyperthreading gains much (since the processing doesn't inherently seem
likely to benefit by parallelism) and also since Cineform / Vegas should
have presumably exploited the same HT benefits if they do exist.

Your number 2 point is especially interesting to me. I was unaware that no
proxy or intermediate was being used in the Ulead codec, and this would
indeed account for faster renders, particularly for material which is
unaltered in the edit. The amazing performance, however, seems to take place
even heavily edited material where the long GOP structure ***MUST BE***
broken such as titling and transitions and blasts right through it. The
edited frames are, no doubt, "lumpy" (to borrow the phrase somebody else
coined to describe MPEG streams which have their P and B frames altered). I
guess it is conceivable that Ulead has chosen to do I frame only edits,
effectively taking out hunks as long as one half second, at the edit points,
but they must redo the GOPs for the smooth and continuous effects they
achieve with transitions and smoothly scrolling titles. In addition, since
they do not apparently use a codec which creates a proxy or intermediate,
you would think their editing and previewing would go very very slowly. To
the contrary, their timeline seems way way faster to me than Vegas 6. It
just seems contra-intuitive that they can avoid the conversion to a proxy /
intermediate, achieve fast timeline / scrubbing / preview effects, AND
render so damn fast without trading speeds off the way the others do.

Certainly they must be making some extremely good design decisions in the
algorithms and even better choices in their code / programming since the
performance is so sweet. On an absolute basis, I will readily admit that
Ulead's product is very limited in functionality compared to the other two
products (FCP and Vegas) and does not warrant the high prices of the other
two, but it sure does make a nice, simple, competent, and ***FAST*** HDV
solution. Their Media Studio professional product is probably fast also, or
so I would imagine.

To answer your question, all of my work is with HDV from a Sony FX-1 at
1080i. And thus my comparisons are all using the same footage.


Did I mention that you can arbitrarily mix HDV and normal 720 by 480 MPEG2
as will as high res stills in the same Video Studio 9 time line and Ulead
blasts right through them? Try doing that it FCP............it doesn't know
how to handle it at all as far as I can tell. I have been using Video Studio
since it came out as well as most of Ulead's other consumer programs, and
this version is in a whole different league IMHO. The early versions were
buggy beyond belief, and Ulead's support was awful. Both have changed
dramatically.

I would really like to see if anybody else has played with HDV on VS9 to see
if I am maybe drinking the wrong KoolAid or smokin' something here.....

Smarty

 

Humm... you have peaked my interest, I'll have to take a look at
this Ulead product. I have the means to display and store HDV,
but have no source, as of yet. I'm not yet convinced the HD
material available from such as DirecTv is worth what they are
asking for it.

Luck;
Ken

 

Ken,
There are some HDV clips of reasonably small size which can be downloaded if
you would like to experiment. The VS9 software is really very competent,
particularly handling MPEG2s of both standard and high def formats. It's
worth a try, and especially worth buying if you have any HDV creation plans
in mind.

Smarty

 

HDV - Too good to be true? (FCPHD versus Vegas 6
versus Ulead VS9)>,

You're quite welcome.

I'm pleased to know that it helps people.

You meant GHz (giga Hertz, not giga bytes), I think.

Any given piece of software would have to be purposely designed and
written in a manner such that it could take advantage of multiple
execution units whether in the form of HyperThreading, dual cores,
multiple processors, etc. The trick to achieving parallelism is to
create multiple worker threads which can be executed in parallel but
without conflict in the form of logical out-of-order execution,
deadlock conditions, race conditions, etc. Some types of applications
tend to lend themselves to being written in a multi-threaded manner
more than others. Applications which can only be executed in a
top-to-bottom fashion can't really benefit from running on a system
capable of parallelism, although it some cases - using a dual
processor system as an example - one processor could be assigned to
running the application and the other processor could be assigned to
executing only operating system functions such as memory management,
supervising I/O operations, timer operations, screen updates, etc.

I understand that Vegas itself contains code to take advantage of
parallelism, but I don't know if this is also true of the Cineform
codec.

Yes, it's merely (losslessly) converting the Transport Stream into a
Program Stream. The raw data is unchanged, hence the lossless nature
of the conversion from a quality standpoint.

That's the SmartRender feature in action, or lack of action, actually,
if you know what I mean.

I don't know what to say. Maybe someone swapped the innards of your
single processor Pentium 4 system with a dual processor Xeon system
when you weren't looking. (Wouldn't *that* be nice?!)

They may also be creating open GOPs. This I don't know, but it could
be checked by running the output file through an MPEG datastream
analysis program. In the early days of MPEG, I used to have one or two
such programs, but no longer. They were commonly used to validate MPEG
datastreams for compliance to the standard.

Are you working with short clips, or doing long-form work? This
difference could have a major impact upon performance/responsiness.

It would certainly seem that way.

Based upon your report, it would seem to provide good value for money,
or to put it another way, a high price/performance ratio, which I
think makes it a good fit for the low-end consumer market to which
it's designed to appeal, where most users are complete novices when it
comes to the technical aspects of video and video editing.

In the world of Windows HDV editing products, the only other low-cost
contender that I know of is Vegas Movie Studio+DVD Platinum Edition
for $129.95.

Don't quote me on this, but I understand that MediaStudio Pro version
8 will contain some pleasant surprises.

Good, that's what I figured.

You didn't mention that, but I did know that.

All good news.

Must be the KoolAid. I know I just *loved* the stuff when I was a kid,
despite being constantly told that it would rot my teeth.

 

Thanks for your reply Frank.

I can imagine that there are indeed opportunities for parallel processing in
the rendering process, perhaps something as simple as one thread working B
and P frame generation while the other is doing audio processing of some
sort. My comment was really meant to question why Ulead gets an apparent
speed benefit of (maybe) 5X over others who also exploit multi-threaded
techniques like Vegas.

The SmartRender regions appear to be operating at (essentially) disk I/O
speed, which is to say that the renderer spits out finished output at a rate
which is way above real time. This "lack of action" is certainly key to the
overall speed, since the areas which do not need to be rerendered are output
extremely quickly. Such is not the case for Vegas or FCP. More impressive to
me is the speed the rerendered areas seem to be processed at. Even in the
transitions, titles, etc., the renderer moves very swiftly. I had to check
my settings and file output to be sure I wasn't rendering normal DV footage.
Sure enough the output file was of the proper resolution for HDV, has a
bitrate of about 25 MBits/sec, and looks fabulous.

My hunch is that the renderer is written with a combination of assembler,
very strategic use of the P4 SSE / SSE2 instruction set, an optimizing
compiler (if they did use C++ or some other higher order language
whatsoever), and hand optimized code for the tightest loops where the real
work is done. The best aspect of all of this is the very likely prospect
that HDV NLE software will support pretty robust workflow without the need
for hardware acceleration. Such was not my impression when working with the
other (Vegas and FCP) products, whose previews and rendering are far too
slow for efficient production.

I too was a KoolAid junkie, and would actually eat the powder before it even
went into the pitcher. My mom would therefore mix it up before I could get
my hands on the envelope........and she also discouraged us from drinking
the stuff. I'm sure some of the amalgam in my mouth owes it origin to all
this junk.

The price/performance of this UV9 product is really quite remarkable. I have
only done relatively short clips to make comparisons between the 3 products,
but I don't see why they shouldn't scale about linearly for longer jobs. I
will do more experimenting and see what I find, and I will certainly follow
other reports here and in other forums to see if my Dell has some magic
affinity for UV9.
I feel like the guy who (believes he) is getting 60 miles per gallon in his
Hummer H2................

Smarty

 

Etc.

Fascinating discussion. I put a blurb about the apparent attractiveness
of the Ulead program in a thread in rvp, called "Video Studio 9 Goes
HD." This is what I was looking for, from someone in the know. Thanks.

Gary Eickmeier

 

Gary,

I hope my observations are comparable to others who are trying out this new
software. I am still scratching my head wondering if my experiences are
typical.

I am eagerly looking forward to magazine reviews and other independent
commentary before I consider this conclusion to be legitimate. I subscribe
to everything I can find on HDV editing, and have not yet seen any other
reports to compare. I sure hope that somebody generates a published and
standardized test to directly compare render times, preview capabilities (do
effects and transitions require a delay to view and if so how long it
takes), etc.

Smarty

 

What is most interesting is I thought they HAD to transcode the video
into I frames in order to edit. If what you say is true, perhaps Ulead
is just smarter than all the rest. I love it!

Gary Eickmeier

 

"Smart" rendering/encoding has been around for MPEG a
long time now, there should be some who follow this NG that
have read my descriptions of the process. Some of the die
hard "anti MPEG editing" probably don't want to remember,
as they are now finding their favorite tools adopting these
processes to allow them access to HDV editing. I remember
many a rant, and even some self-righteous "technical" discourse
on how "You can't edit MPEG, and anyone who claims they
can are lying."

"Times, they keep ah change'n"

Luck;
Ken

 

HDV - Too good to be true? (FCPHD versus Vegas 6
versus Ulead VS9)>,

LOL. Isn't vindication wonderful, Ken? I'll bet a certain O.J. Simpson
felt the same way when the decision in his criminal trial was handed
down.

Of course, I'm willing to bet that not every reader of this newsgroup
is yet willing to let you off the hook so easily. Some will continue
to insist that lossy audio and video formats, especially MPEG formats,
were never intended for editing but rather instead, were designed as
delivery formats and not as acquisition formats.

By the way, Ulead has used the term SmartRender for many years--long
before HDV came on the scene--to refer to the ability of their video
editing products to not needlessly recompress frames of DV video which
were unaltered during the editing process. Even DV, which is
intraframe-encoded, suffers a very minor degradation when decoded and
then re-encoded with a DV codec.

P.S. If I hum the line from the Dylan tune that you've posted, or even
include it as quoted text in my reply, do I have to pay a royalty to
the RIAA? After all, in a former life, I used to own the LP.

Regards,

 

"O.J. Simpson"? Let me "off the hook"? I find it strange that
someone with such a reality based HDV page would take such
a position. Your page provides much to support my position,
your lamenting the "lossy" mature of MPEG aside.

Speaking of your page, there is another way to handle HDV.
www.buffalotech.com has a "High-Definition Wireless Media
Player with Progressive Scan DVD" that can play HDV files
off a data DVD, a USB device or a network source. I use
their "TeraStation" NAS, with mine.

Luck;
Ken

P.S. I guess those of us old enough to have bought the album
when it first came out, are entitled.

 

HDV - Too good to be true? (FCPHD versus Vegas 6
versus Ulead VS9)>,

I was KIDDING! Didn't you see the smiley? Really, I was kidding. I
would *never* in my wildest dreams equate a capital offense such as
murder with the minor blasphemy of suggesting that MPEG video is
editable. <-- Please note smiley.

Yes, I need to check that out, as I've been asked about it and need to
be able to provide answers.

Thanks, I needed that! <-- Please note smiley. See, I can take a
joke.

 

They have the usual PDF downloads for their products, if you find
something you want me to try with it, send me an E-mail. If you have
any urgent questions, fire away, here.

Luck;
Ken

 

HDV - Too good to be true? (FCPHD versus Vegas 6
versus Ulead VS9)>,

Thank you, sir. I will keep your kind offer in mind. It looks like
I'll be spending the rest of the day setting up an isolation booth for
a client so that she can do a decent sounding podcast in what is
otherwise a fairly noisy environment. I also need to decide whether to
use a Shure KSM32/SL mic or a Shure SM58 mic.

Regards,

 

Hi Guys,

At risk of taking this thread a bit in the direction from which it
originally came, I wanted to report a very interesting email exchange I have
had with Jan Ozer,a very competent author who has been publishing a 4 part
comparison of NLE HDV editing softwares in eventDV magazine. Jan is a
Ziff-Davis and freelance author with many books, magazine articles, and
other publications to his credit, and has a very exceptional combination of
technical insight and writing prowess.

I contacted him specifically to ask him if he had evaluated Ulead's HDV
performance, and he replied with essentially 2 interesting comments. The
first was that VS9 from Ulead is, after all, a consumer (versus pro)
product, and therefore really not fair to compare to the others for a lot of
reasons (I agree!). The second, most noteworthy, comment was a reference to
an excellent review he had written in 2003 of Ulead's more deluxe product,
MediaStudioPro (MSP), which I will reference in the link below. In this link
he clearly indicates that Ulead has a substantial speed advantage for MPEG2
rendering (by virtue of their SmartRender approach) even then, so the more
recent HDV speed difference is neither a new discovery or surprising to him.

http://www.eventdv.net/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=5139&PageNum=1


Therefore, my essential conclusion is..........that this Ulead VideoStudio 9
product at $79 really is a speed demon and will be a superb HDV solution
(IMHO) if you can live without the embellishments of the other high-priced
NLEs.


Smarty

 

I failed to mention.......I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan......since he first
started recording (especially his early stuff).

Smarty