Canopus (Grass Valley) Edius Pro 4.5 - Best HD Editor?

[Alsone]

I know I keep harping on about this but has anyone tried Edius Pro 4.5 yet as its reckoned to be the best HD Windows program out there. It comes with an integrated intermediate codec similar to Neo and its this that I understand makes it so good at HD editing - it renders effects in realtime whilst still on the time line meaning that rendering time is massively reduced when exporting.

About it here: http://www.canopus.com/products/EDIUSPro/index.php

There's a free trial version here: http://www.canopus.com/canopus/subsc...oads/demos.php

As I don't currently have a HD camera I can't test it for anyone. I would have normally treid it and reported back.

On the subject also, I see that Final Cut Pro is now ranked amongst the very best but of course you need a Mac to run it. In fact FCPro is so good the BBC are now adopting it as their standard editing system according to a video clip recorded by them on the FCPro web site.

[Steph69]

i used edius a while back with sd and loved it, lack of plugins made me switch to premiere (and a matrox rt.x100 card)
Iam still waiting for my quad core system so thiis was tested on a p4 3.6mhz system.

i imported m2t and had to render for smooth playback, done a basic white balance and color adjustment with a bit of sharpening then renderd + exported out to the highspeed mpg hd encoder built in took about 11mins for every render ,export (about 2mins footage)

With premiere cs3 similar corrections take over an hour to render!

i may go back to edius when the quad core get built....

P.S Sorry for the bad writing but iam typing this from my Internet Tablet thingy.....

[Sugoi]

I use Edius Pro Broadcast and it flies, I don't use the word 'render' any more as Edius does not need to render, (if you use it's awesome Canapus HQ file).

While capturing from my HV20 it converts it into it's Canopus HQ avi and while editing you think you are using Normal DV footage due to the fact that it play & edits it like soft butter, super smooth and super fast.

Most people don't know about Edius but go into a TV station and you see them using it for field work on a laptop because it works so well without a card or rendering.

I also have a mac and don't touch FCP , it's so slow and sluggish.
I was once a Premiere user, now I don't have the time to wast rendering and watching my footage on crappy draft mode to smooth out the editing process.

Edius ROCKS !!!!

Don't bag it until you experience it !

[racer-x]

You guys must be smoking the same weed...............

Covert all m2t to huge avi prior to editing........you call that efficient?????

I'll take real-time editing and smart rendering in Premiere Pro and Vegas, thank you very much. If you want real power, learn Avisynth. It's like having the power of the Force on your side..........."Use the Force Luke".

[Sugoi]

Covert all m2t to huge avi prior to editing........you call that efficient?????

It converts it on the fly while it's capturing, no time wasted.
If you like you can edit/use your m2t file on the timeline instead, it's your choice.

So you enjoy smart-rendering, that's nice, Edius doesn't render at all.
Now that's REAL real-time editing.
No draft mode, full resolution output to any SD or HD Monitor/TV all the time.

# In Realtime you can mix PAL/NTSC and mix format HD/SD editing, including DV, HDV, HD, MPEG-2, WMV, MOV and uncompressed SD video

# Complete support for Infinity JPEG 2000, DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO HD, P2, VariCam and XDCAM cameras and decks

# Realtime editing and conversion of different HD/SD aspect ratios, such as 16:9 and 4:3

# Realtime editing and conversion of different frame rates, such as 60i, 50i and 24p

# Realtime editing and conversion of different resolutions, such as 1440x1080, 1280x720 and 720x480/720x576

# Realtime HD/SD effects, keyers, transitions and titles

Do l need to go on?

Well in the end we all use what we feel comfortable with and are most productive with.

I wish you all the best

[musicjules]

that's really interesting ! ... i have to study that solution !

[Lunchbox]

I used to have a Canopus DVstorm card that comes with Edius. I found it primitive and difficult to use. It might be different now with the new version.

[Sugoi]

I used to have a Canopus DVstorm card that comes with Edius. I found it primitive and difficult to use. It might be different now with the new version.

I agree whole heartedly Taky!

The first couple of versions of Edius were as you described 'Primitive'
It came free with Procoder years ago and I installed it to see what it's like.
Well, to put it simply: "I HATED IT!"
I never touched it again until a new major release come out.

Things now have changed and are getting much better.

I am not trying to demean other nle but after using the main ones incluing apples FCP, l can say Edius is faster and much easier to use for me.

As long as the final product(video) is what we were after and we enjoyed the experience, who cares what we used.

We are all editors here and I just want people to know about a little nle that is really quite awesome with HD.

Thanks for letting me rant on here. . .

[Lunchbox]

My other concern will be

(1) using NLE with small market share, less peer support or knowledge expert you can't find info on the internet easliy.
(2) when I ditch Edius in the future, I will be left with video files with a codec I don't have.
(3) I'm already so familiar with Premiere. Don't want to pickup another software with a new learning curve.

I don't know about Edius now. It might be really cool and useful. But just like Linux, no matter how solid this OS is, I'm with Windows because I can get software, shareware, support easily. If I go with Edius, I become part of the minority group.

[Bob Sanders]

So you enjoy smart-rendering, that's nice, Edius doesn't render at all.
Now that's REAL real-time editing.

You misunderstand the concept of smart rendering. It is faster than full rendering, but that's only a bonus. The REAL idea of smart render is to get as close to the original video as possible. There is a loss in ANY conversion. Smart rendering does not convert... it takes a COPY more than anything else. Edius while fast and editing in uncompressed avi is more finite ... it still must CONVERT and there is a loss.

If you can smart render then take because it's always the better option.

[Lunchbox]

Canopus always brag and bloat about the feature of their product. Their marketing ad will say Edius support unlimited layers of video in realtime. It actually only work well with 2 or 3 layers unless you have a super computer that NASA uses. Of course everything is in realtime. it depends on how fast your computer is.

The fact is, without hardware acceleration, there is no other trick but to use the CPU to process.

[Sugoi]

My other concern will be

(1) using NLE with small market share, less peer support or knowledge expert you can't find info on the internet easliy.

True, there is less support out there than say Adobe,
but their forum site is excellent and your questions are answered very quickly.

(2) when I ditch Edius in the future, I will be left with video files with a codec I don't have.

Haaa???
This doesn't make much sense.
Why would you ditch them if you were happy using them in the first place?

If you are that scared, you do not need to use their codec to capture/edit or export with.
You can use the standard DV avi or .mov or native .m2t , XDCAM , m2v, mpg files etc...it's your choice...

(3) I'm already so familiar with Premiere. Don't want to pickup another software with a new learning curve.

This I understand fully and agree with, unless you want to try something new, obviously stick to what you know well.
Personal choice here.

I don't know about Edius now. It might be really cool and useful. But just like Linux, no matter how solid this OS is, I'm with Windows because I can get software, shareware, support easily. If I go with Edius, I become part of the minority group.

Personal choice again.
(I do miss the great plug-ins for Premiere though, such as 'Magic Bullet' etc...)

Well I also use a Mac (minority group), runs like a dream.

Minority groups are just not followed by the masses.
Doesn't make them any less important, most times they are the way to go.
Beta vs VHS, Beta was in the minority, still, while dumb consumers went for VHS, TV stations around the world used and still use Beta.

TV stations (already using Grass Vally products) are now using Edius for their real-time editing capabilities.

The fact is, without hardware acceleration, there is no other trick but to use the CPU to process.

True, works great with my PC.

Anyone serious about video editing will not be using a Pentium 3 for example.
Use a good fast CPU (such as a Core 2 Duo) and watch it fly.

[Sugoi]

You misunderstand the concept of smart rendering. It is faster than full rendering, but that's only a bonus. The REAL idea of smart render is to get as close to the original video as possible. There is a loss in ANY conversion. Smart rendering does not convert... it takes a COPY more than anything else. Edius while fast and editing in uncompressed avi is more finite ... it still must CONVERT and there is a loss.

If you can smart render then take because it's always the better option.

Thank you Bob.

I did not know that, we learn new things everyday.

:)

[jaegersing]

You misunderstand the concept of smart rendering. It is faster than full rendering, but that's only a bonus. The REAL idea of smart render is to get as close to the original video as possible. There is a loss in ANY conversion. Smart rendering does not convert... it takes a COPY more than anything else. Edius while fast and editing in uncompressed avi is more finite ... it still must CONVERT and there is a loss.

If you can smart render then take because it's always the better option.

Hi Bob. The smart rendering is great for mainly cuts-only editing. But if you have to apply a colour correction either for duh, correction or to get a particular look to the video, the whole clip will need rendering and there will be precious little stuff left on the timeline that does not need rendering.

Actually, I find I am willing to use filters more in Edius, simply because there is little or no performance hit. Why do I need filters? For example, when I shoot in difficult lighting I often expose for the highlights and get quite a dull looking image as a result. But this can look glorious when a colour curve is applied in post. I'd rather do this than have blown out highlights but no post correction.

I agree that for cuts-only editing, smart rendering keeps the original files intact and does not incur any quality loss. But if the original footage actually needs some correction, using intermediary file formats such as Canopus HQ (with Edius) or Cineform (with Vegas) will give better results in the end, because the 4:2:2 colourspace is more robust compared with HDV's 4:2:0.

I also use Vegas, have done for years, but find that it has some serious problems with HDV progressive footage and is not really stable. For DV I tend to prefer Vegas over Edius because I like the user interface better.

But I would never champion one NLE against all others. Different people have different needs and different preferences, so whatever works for you is fine.

BTW, this is my first post, no offence intended.

Richard Hunter

[Bob Sanders]

Hi Bob. The smart rendering is great for mainly cuts-only editing. But if you have to apply a colour correction either for duh, correction or to get a particular look to the video, the whole clip will need rendering and there will be precious little stuff left on the timeline that does not need rendering.


BTW, this is my first post, no offence intended.

Richard Hunter

No offense taken... and this is absolutely true. If you need to do a track color correction or something similar then smart render goes out the window and you're looking at a full render job (that's why I say "....IF you can smart render....") Under this condition Edius would be the faster bet. But this all depends on whether you're using the Edius capture method... ie uncompressed avi. If you're using mpeg, M2T... etc and editing off the i frames then a render HAS to take place under any circumstances. The gop MUST be adjusted and re-written (or in otherwords rendered)

[jaegersing]

Hi Bob. With Edius, If I am just doing quick edits I tend to capture as HDV format, if I am applying a lot of filters I will usually capture as Canopus HQ codec. This is not uncompressed, but yes the files sizes are pretty big.

In both cases, Edius needs to re-render the footage after the editing process is over, however during editing it is still able to play the HDV files much more smoothly than Vegas can. This works fine for me because I never normally need to output as HDV format, so no matter what I will be rendering eventually. If you wanted to write HDV back to tape then the smart rendering can be very valuable. For any other format, rendering is necessary and Edius is much faster than Vegas at this too. I really would like Sony to revamp Vegas soon, to manage HD files better than it does at the moment.

Richard

[kruzer]

This may not be an appropriate comment, but anyone has looked into
CineForm’s Visually Perfect Codec?
If it's true what they say, man, this is some QUALITY we're talking about.
The compression is sooo good that even records 'film grain' (from film).

Get the straight dope from this page:
http://www.cineform.com/technology/quality.htm

I wonder if this can be used with Canopus' or maybe it's not even needed?
I thought it's an interesting program and compression.
Someone here once mentioned to get this program and stop fooling around with the others. It does everything.
Hmmm

[jaegersing]

Hi kruzer. I think Cineform will work with Canopus, but Edius already comes with Canopus Lossless and HQ codecs which are supposed to do a similar job. It probably makes more sense to buy Cineform if you are not using Edius.

Richard

[kruzer]

I bought Canopus Neo and I love the editing part!

Still have a lot to learn and while we're on this subject, does anyone know how to flip an inverted video beside taking into Vdub? I film upside down and need to flip and mirror in Neo itself. Not able to find anything regarding to this function.

Also, are there filters available to download for this editor?
IE: if I need some FX and so on.

[ermitikos]

why would you color correct in the NLE?
There's the After Effects. Thats why its called After, in the first place!

[Alsone]

You misunderstand the concept of smart rendering. It is faster than full rendering, but that's only a bonus. The REAL idea of smart render is to get as close to the original video as possible. There is a loss in ANY conversion. Smart rendering does not convert... it takes a COPY more than anything else. Edius while fast and editing in uncompressed avi is more finite ... it still must CONVERT and there is a loss.

If you can smart render then take because it's always the better option.

Bob I'm not currently an Edius user, but as I started this whole debate, I feel obliged to intervene.

The Edius codec is considered lossless. Its an intermediate codec that converts the HDV file on the fly as the video is imported so there are no delays.

This is what Canopus say in their FAQ:

11. Is there any loss in quality with the HQ codec?
Since the specification of the Canopus HQ codec incorporates the same resolution and luma sampling, with increased chroma sampling as compared to HDV, the image quality is sustained when converting native MPEG-2 TS data to Canopus HQ.

Canopus themselves also claim that its the best quality HD editing codec in any NLE:

Built with Canopus Scalable Technology, this completely new codec offers the highest image quality and performance available today in any HD editing platform.

http://www.canopus.com/canopus/techn...opuscodecs.php

This is there white paper which includes pictures of the orginal vs the encoded capture in close up :http://www.canopus.com/contentfiles/...paper70b72.pdf

I'm presuming that trading standards or the US equivalent wouldn't allow these claims if they weren't true.

This reviewer has used Cineform Aspect HD, Prospect HD, and converted to Canopus HQ on quality grounds! : http://www.hdvunderwater.com/edius.html


Whereas I'm not pushing anyone towards Edius at the end of the day, I brought the subject up because amongst those people who try it, the reports I hear are that it renders HD video in only a fraction of the time of any of the other commonly used NLE's and that combined with the ability to mix virtually any format / frame speed / size of video on the same time line is something I personally find an interesting prospect and I was interested to know what others thought.

[kruzer]

I think video rendering is much faster than anything else I've tried in the past.
Not taken any measurements but it appears to do so

Am relatively new this editor and can't make any technical comments, but I like the look and feel of this NLE. The finished footage is spectacular.

Vegas was not working for me at all.
Tried it three times last year.
NEO does

[jackson may]

edius sounds good, im going to download the trial, see if it helps me try to edit hdv on my hopelessly slow pc lol im used to using ppcs3 but it seems to lag with my pc setup.

i tried vegas, didnt like it, i mainly edit sports film like bodyboarding and skating and it didnt satisfy those needs but i heard good things about edius and i saw it has the time remapping/ timewarp effect so i think ill give it a go.

[Lead]

I've created an account to download a trial version of this software, but I'm unsure which one to use my bandwidth on.

Thomson Grass Valley EDIUS Neo NLE Software Demo: This free trial version permits users to test all features of EDIUS Neo NLE software for 30-days.

Or,

Thomson Grass Valley EDIUS NLE Software Demo: Free 30-day trial of the acclaimed nonlinear editing software. This trial version permits users to test Thomson Grass Valley EDIUS NLE software version 4 (v4.61). Due to licensing restrictions, TitleMotion Pro is not included with this trial.

I'm running XP64 if it's important.

Thanks.

[Sugoi]

Thomson Grass Valley EDIUS Neo NLE Software Demo:
This free trial version permits users to test all features of EDIUS Neo NLE software for 30-days.

This is the lite/cut down version of Edius
Works on XP & Vista

Thomson Grass Valley EDIUS NLE Software Demo:
Free 30-day trial of the acclaimed nonlinear editing software.
This trial version permits users to test Thomson Grass Valley EDIUS NLE software version 4 (v4.61).
Due to licensing restrictions, TitleMotion Pro is not included with this trial.

This is the full version of Edius, which currently only works on XP SP2

As you have XP, go for the full version.

Sugoi