Neo Scene pulldown not working (sometimes)

[pascalbrown]

I was about to purchase neo scene but then decided I better have a go with the trial to make sure I wasn't going to regret spending some money, but I seem to have run into a problem.

I've been using TMPGenc to remove the pulldown and it worked all well and good, but given that I need to cut down on my time to publish, I thought that using cineform neo scene to capture and do the pull down in one hit would be great. That is why I thought it was worth the money. At the moment I capture via HDVSplit then do the pull down with tmpgenc or AE, but both take precious time.

So, I set up Neo Scene and picked all the right settings, then used the convert function to remove the pulldown. I double checked the clips and it had removed the pulldown correctly, so I was quite pleased with the product. I have about 14 hours of footage of the project I'm currently working on, which is already captured (via HDVSplit), so I thought I may as well convert it all to cineform files, removing the pulldown in the process.

I did this for another hour of footage and when I checked the footage I noticed it hadn't done it correctly. It was clearly not selecting the right frames or something as I could go forward frame by frame to see when it switched from a progressive one to an interlaced one. I figured I'd done something wrong so I closed it all down, then started again after having double checked all the settings. Again, the same problem. Thinking that it may just be this clip (and the others from the same tape), I ran it through After Effects and that managed to remove the pulldown without any bother. It guessed the pulldown correctly and the result was a completely progressive sequence.

Today I shot some more footage and once again captured it via HDVSplit. I've just run it through NEOScene and the pulldown has worked perfectly. I'm at a loss as to why it works for some clips and not for others. I have so far captured all my footage via HDVSplit, with it set to split the scenes automatically. Now, I would recapture it all via neoscene but I don't have all the tapes with me. Some are back at home in England, so that isn't an option.

What I would like to know is why it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. To be perfectly honest, I don't see how that's possible. The program should either always work or always not work. I did think that HDVsplit might be causing a problem but one tape will go through neoscene without a problem and another tape I captured will go through neoscene and not work. I really want to get this sussed as I am going to be edited on a laptop very soon and figured that cineform was my ideal solution. That was before I ran into this issue. I'm more than happy to accept I'm making a mistake, but to perfectly honest there aren't many options in neoscene so I find it hard to believe that I can make it work in some instances but not in others. I think there must be something else going on.

If you have any ideas, I'm all ears! Thanks.

[Ian-T]

I don't have an answer for you on this but did you check and see if it behaves the same way when capturing instead on converting? I'm curious.

[Rumpelgeist]

Cineform is a codec first, and pulldown remover a distant second. This always was Cineform's position, they only recently started to advertise pulldown removal as a feature. They have said not once, that pulldown removal implementation in Cineform is not bulletproof, especially when done in runtime. Gee, what about non-runtime? You have a file, do the analysis for as long as needed.

The issue is exacerbated with Neo Scene feature set. You cannot tell it to remove pulldown from 24p footage only. When the switch is turned on, it converts everything to 24p, including 60i. Thus, if it cannot find the cadence, it converts the original footage as if it were native 60i. To me, this is totally unacceptable behavior.

Instead, it should analyze the original footage and if it does not look like 24p, then not convert it at all. It should present the log with files being converted and not, and should print out the detected cadences in all processed files.

But apparently this is too much for a $130 product.

[Ian-T]

Aramis, I believe within the control panel itself it has a radio button that you can click which states "HDMI, Sony V1, Canon HV20 etc.." So if the software is made specifically for that purpose (as it claims) then I would expect it to work.

[pascalbrown]

Cineform is a codec first, and pulldown remover a distant second. This always was Cineform's position, they only recently started to advertise pulldown removal as a feature. They have said not once, that pulldown removal implementation in Cineform is not bulletproof, especially when done in runtime. Gee, what about non-runtime? You have a file, do the analysis for as long as needed.

The issue is exacerbated with Neo Scene feature set. You cannot tell it to remove pulldown from 24p footage only. When the switch is turned on, it converts everything to 24p, including 60i. Thus, if it cannot find the cadence, it converts the original footage as if it were native 60i. To me, this is totally unacceptable behavior.

Instead, it should analyze the original footage and if it does not look like 24p, then not convert it at all. It should present the log with files being converted and not, and should print out the detected cadences in all processed files.

But apparently this is too much for a $130 product.

So, I don't know how neoscene detects the cadence, but is it possible that it's not analysing enough of the clip to correctly guess the cadence? It seems to me that on the clips where neoscene didn't work, it tried to blend the interlaced fields together. Then again, I'm not expert so I don't know what algorithm it uses for when it thinks it wants to convert normal 60i to 24p. It would be useful to tell it that the footage I'm feeding definitely wants to go through the pulldown process.

But this isn't a bitch at a product. I just want to get it to work properly, and find out if perhaps I'm doing something wrong, or there is something in my workflow which is making it fall at this hurdle.


Aramis, I believe within the control panel itself it has a radio button that you can click which states "HDMI, Sony V1, Canon HV20 etc.." So if the software is made specifically for that purpose (as it claims) then I would expect it to work.

I think you are thinking of HDLink which (if I recall) does support such a radio button. In NeoScene you only select convert to 24p, which when selected will convert any 60i source to 24p. Perhaps that is what is happening in this case. Perhaps it isn't detecting the cadence correctly, for one reason or another. How does it go about detecting the cadence and what would make it act differently than when After Effects guesses it. Does it analyse less of the clip?

Basically, I just really want to get NeoScene working as I'll be required to edit on the month for a 2 month trip, and I really would like to improve my workflow by using neoscene for capture and pulldown removal. I've got 6 days left of the trial so I kind of think I need to find the problem/solution by then otherwise I can't justify spending $130.

Thanks

[Rumpelgeist]

But this isn't a bitch at a product. I just want to get it to work properly, and find out if perhaps I'm doing something wrong, or there is something in my workflow which is making it fall at this hurdle.
Try longer clips.

[pascalbrown]

I've just tried a longer clip and I have to say that neo scene removed the pull down correctly. Is clip length possibly related to why some clips don't work? Does neo scene detect the cadence of each clip that you load up, and if so can it really be a case of minimum clip length? I don't really think a clip of 15 seconds is too short... it's not too short of After Effects!

My question is now whether I can trust neo scene with all of my footage. I can't spend time stepping through every clip to make sure it's worked. I just need to trust that it does work and run all of my footage through it.

I'll test some other short clips and report back. However, in my opinion, 1 failure in 100 is not acceptable. If you pay for something to work, then it should work.

[Ian-T]

I think depending on how long your clips are you'll more likely run into this problem again. If I'm not mistaken even David Newman mentions that it takes 'so many' frames before the software finally kicks in (paraphrased). Not sure if this also applies to Neo Scene. So even if you had long takes you will notice in the first couple of seconds that the pulldown was not removed. I might be explaining this wrong but i'm sure someone more knowledgeable will put us on the right track.

[Rumpelgeist]

I've just tried a longer clip and I have to say that neo scene removed the pull down correctly. Is clip length possibly related to why some clips don't work? Does neo scene detect the cadence of each clip that you load up, and if so can it really be a case of minimum clip length? I don't really think a clip of 15 seconds is too short... it's not too short of After Effects!
Decent progressive DVD players take about 0.5 a second to lock on the cadence, that is about 15 frames. To me, 15 seconds for cadence analysis is way too much.

[Madd]

Pascalbrown, why are you talking about pull down when you are in PAL land?

Just curious.

Personally I've had my HV20 for a year and haven't done any HD capture yet since I have a huge backlog of DV material to get through! So I was just researching Neo Scene and ofund your thread. Quick question if you don't mind. Can NEO Scene do scene detect when capturing?

[pascalbrown]

Pascalbrown, why are you talking about pull down when you are in PAL land?

Just curious.

Personally I've had my HV20 for a year and haven't done any HD capture yet since I have a huge backlog of DV material to get through! So I was just researching Neo Scene and ofund your thread. Quick question if you don't mind. Can NEO Scene do scene detect when capturing?

I'm talking about pulldown because I own an NTSC camera. If I had a PAL camera I wouldn't be complaining about any of this, but at half the price NTSC was the way to go at the time.

I never figured out why NEO Scene wasn't working and my trial is over, so I won't be shelling out for it anytime soon. Whilst it was a great idea, the fact that it didn't work flawlessly, first time, was reason enough for me to keep my wallet closed. It's a shame because it appears to be a great solution. Good luck.

[netzero19]

Hello.

I downloaded the demo but am having problems using the HDLink. It either freezes or crashes when I try and capture software; I either get a message saying quartz.dll is at fault or the hdlink.exe is.

I submitted a ticket a few days ago but have not heard back yet.

Using a Sony HC5. Thanks. :hv20-smilie03:

[CycleWriter]

Hello.

I downloaded the demo but am having problems using the HDLink. It either freezes or crashes when I try and capture software; I either get a message saying quartz.dll is at fault or the hdlink.exe is.

I submitted a ticket a few days ago but have not heard back yet.

Using a Sony HC5. Thanks. :hv20-smilie03:

Well, this is the HV20/30/40.com forum, so the likelihood of getting help with your Sony camera is slim, but I moved your post to a NeoScene thread just in case. FYI, we prefer members do a search before posting questions as many subjects have already been covered and redundant threads just clog the forums and make searching harder. Also, please do not double post. Your other thread has been deleted. We also have a few "other cams" subforums you might check out.

[netzero19]

Well, this is the HV20/30/40.com forum, so the likelihood of getting help with your Sony camera is slim, but I moved your post to a NeoScene thread just in case. FYI, we prefer members do a search before posting questions as many subjects have already been covered and redundant threads just clog the forums and make searching harder. Also, please do not double post. Your other thread has been deleted. We also have a few "other cams" subforums you might check out.

Sorry about that; I didn't know the forum was moderated and though that my post didn't take.

I already did search but didn't find anything specific to my issue.

[Rumpelgeist]

I downloaded the demo but am having problems using the HDLink. It either freezes or crashes when I try and capture software; I either get a message saying quartz.dll is at fault or the hdlink.exe is.

I submitted a ticket a few days ago but have not heard back yet.

Using a Sony HC5. Thanks.
Let me get this straight: you want to use Cineform with the HC5 because you prefer to work with Cineform-encoded video, not because you want to remove pulldown, correct?

[netzero19]

Let me get this straight: you want to use Cineform with the HC5 because you prefer to work with Cineform-encoded video, not because you want to remove pulldown, correct?

I'm planning on getting both Neo Scene and an HV30 in May; I'm experimenting with the software before I pull the trigger and purchase it.