Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT

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Level 1

134 points

Good news! - Mac Version Cinemacraft Encoder Xtreme (Compressor Plugin)

Hi,

Good news!

I talked to Ray at Omni-Cinema Craft a few weeks ago and he told me they are pretty far along with testing their CCE-MP Compressor Plug-in. He asked me not to say anything until they are ready for a formal announcement. He said the code is the same as their Cinema Craft Xtream, which I think is their high end Hardware encoder. He said on a 8 core Mac Pro each pass is about 9x faster than RT! He said that they are tentatively planning on a price in the $500 to $800 range. I just received the following in an email from Omni (it sounds like Brian is giving a demo, probably at NAB):

Thanks for your interest in CCE-MP.
You can now tell your friends and we invite you to go ahead a post to wherever you like. Thanks for your patience. Product will be shipping in the first part of May 2008, and price will be available shortly. You can now tell your friends and we invite you to go ahead a post wherever you'd like.

This session will herald in a new era of MPEG-2 encoding for optical media inside Final Cut Studio with the debut of Cinema Craft's MP Compressor Plugin. Based on the highly successful QuickTime Components architecture, the Plugin fits right into the standard Compressor workflow alongside the built in presets. Until now, the encoder engine inside CinemaCraft Encoder MP was used only for Cinema Craft Xtream, the "on-line" high end system that set the bench mark with high quality, Hollywood DVD titles. With the debut of Cinema Craft MP, Hollywood quality MPEG-2 encoding is now available for the Mac. Brian will go in depth with the Cinema Craft MP Compressor Plugin by walking through all the major components and settings. He'll also demonstrate real-world workflows for both television and feature film optical delivery that originate with Standard and High Definition content.

They also have this on their Web Site:
[www.omni-cinemacraft.com]
CINEMA CRAFT Encoder MP

CINEMA CRAFT Encoder MP is a plug-in developed for Compressor 3, the audio/video encoding application that is included with Apple's Final Cut Studio 2.

Until now, this encoder engine inside CinemaCraft Encoder MP was used only for the Cinema Craft Xtream, the "on-line" high end system that set the bench mark quality Standard for Hollywood DVD titles. This DVD standard for Hollywood quality MPEG-2 is now available for the Mac. CinemaCraft Encoder MP allows Final Cut Studio 2 users to encode their content to world class high-quality MPEG-2 files for DVD authoring without changing their workflow.

Call OMNI at (949)760-6664 to Find Out More About the New CINEMA CRAFT Encoder MP

Best Wishes,

Mitch

Dual 1.8 G5 - 2.5 gigs of RAM - 2 external SATA Drives, Mac OS X (10.4.2), Final Cut Studio 1 (FCP 5.0.4)

Posted on Apr 14, 2008 11:54 AM

70 replies

Jun 11, 2008 7:08 AM in response to Drew13

I have had a chance to play more and CCE MP does have the power to overcome things thrown at it. For example, increasing the passes and/or changing the Bitrate Constancy cleaned up the macro blocking at avg. 3.5 which I referred to in another post.

As with other CCE products it is great to have more control and good to see the changes you make actually do something,

-Jake

Jun 18, 2008 2:15 PM in response to David S.

David,

Not that I really care to get into the merits or non-merits of this or any article that I've written for the Final Cut community, but I think it's safe to say that the article on the Cinema Craft Encoder MP was not "marketing with some instruction thrown in." With this article, I tried to really elucidate the inner workings on any MPEG-2 encoder by way of the CCEMP for Compressor--which in my opinion is a superior encoding engine versus what is currently available on the Mac platform. Furthermore, my opinion pales in comparison to the likes of Sony, Paramount, Warner Bros. etc. etc. that all employ the Cinema Craft XTream system for the majority of their SD DVD releases.

The fact is that the software engine inside CCEMP is the same as the Xtream system (what you get with the "on-line" box is the hardware ingest directly from tape, the encoding is all performed by the engine).

Now add to that Apple's full support both here:
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/solutions/delivery.html
and here:
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/tour/
(they discuss it during the Compressor presentation)

And I think it's fairly safe to say that for professionals looking to engage professional level encoding within a Final Cut Studio workflow, CCEMP is a product that needs to be seriously considered.

And in closing, I have no problem heeding my own advice....

www.jeffersondavisdocumentary.com

This is a project that I produced, directed and edited. It took 5 years to complete and I performed all of the encoding for the 3 disc collectors set using CCEMP--when, as a professional compressionist, all of the current software and hardware encoders were readily available for me to use.

There's really not much else I can say than that.

BG

David S.

Level 7

20,630 points

Jun 18, 2008 5:13 PM in response to Brian Gary

*Not that I really care to get into the merits or non-merits of this or any article that I've written for the Final Cut community, but I think it's safe to say that the article on the Cinema Craft Encoder MP was not "marketing with some instruction thrown in."*

Brian:

If you'll read my posts here, you'll see that I've been fairly positive about this release.

However, your post here is the first to me specifically.

I've tried through so many channels to contact you without a response. My take on your article at Ken's site did was to tell people about CC and it's capabilities. But it did not provide any true comparisons among the Mac encoders using identical footage. That's how I read it, and reported it without any negative connotation.

And my comments, while not negative, did not extend to any other review you've written for ken's site or others. In fact, I look forward to reading what you write because of you provide interesting, and important information.

Be that as it may, I've have asked since NAB2008 to secure some independent third party comparison of the encoders through here, LAFCPUG.org principals and other channels without any success.

I've had no response from you directly. That's fine, but it leaves some of us without a meaningful comparison.

Best to you in providing information about this wonderful release and success in the future.

But communication among all of us hasn't been optimal, despite six passes of VBR.

🙂

Let someone test CC objectively, and extensively, and I'm in.

I urge this comparison because CC isn't inexpensive, and the comparison, at least in my view, is necessary to truly and independently evaluate the product.

take care

david

Jun 18, 2008 6:15 PM in response to Brian Gary

The fact is that the software engine inside CCEMP is the same as the Xtream system (what you get with the "on-line" box is the hardware ingest directly from tape, the encoding is all performed by the engine).

Ummm sure but I'm hearing a lot of people now saying CCE MP is the same as Xtream! but that is very far from true. Sony, Paramount, Warner Bros. etc. etc. wont be leaving CCX anytime soon for CCE MP, not (just) because of the hardware but because it has more features in the software like SRE, Rich editing and calculator for manual cadence correction, Bitrate Allocation and from the pic it also seems like it has segment picture adjustment like CCE SP and support for chapter markers amongst other things. The hardware also allows decoding on both external monitor and VGA monitor, Encoding and decoding simultaneously, Multi-mode playback and so on.

http://omni-cinemacraft.com/images/cinemacraftxtreamscreenshotlg.gif
http://omni-cinemacraft.com/products_cinemacraftxtream.shtml

I've found CCE MP ok so far. Colour shifts like with Compressor but it is great to have the ability to adjust a lot more things to try to optimize and get the best out of the encoder. I've not been blown away by it so far by any means. That said it is one of the best mac options right now for sure!

I too would be interested if you have done any same material multi-encoder tests and how you go about testing things. What are you finding CCE MP does better than other encoders etc.

-Jake

Drew13

Level 6

12,387 points

Jun 18, 2008 9:28 PM in response to Jake Russell

Jake Russell wrote:

support for chapter markers amongst other things.

This aspect is supposed to be handled in the next release/update. Of course compared to the rest not a huge barn burner, but perhaps more things will come on line...

I've found CCE MP ok so far. Colour shifts like with Compressor but it is great to have the ability to adjust a lot more things to try to optimize and get the best out of the encoder. I've not been blown away by it so far by any means. That said it is one of the best mac options right now for sure!

I need to run more tests to see what the settings can do and how they affect what I am seeing because I have not yet been blown away either. Since you mentioned you were able to start changing things up to clean the 3.5 video there might be other things lurking in there in terms of how the various tweaks come together, particulalry to remove some softness I am seeing.

I like the speed (though for HD to SD it seems better to drop to SD size then run through CC, so a bit of a loss of time) and multiple multi pass is nice.

Still trying to work out where the number of multi passes starts hitting the point of diminishing returns - I just want keep in on 99, well just because 😉

Jul 27, 2008 9:42 PM in response to Drew13

I am looking for others who are using the CCE-MP plugin. I am having trouble getting consistent results. Field order, slow encode times, it wont accept certain files, 3X crash service down message.
My email is juddrackham@mac.com
Thank you

Jul 31, 2008 2:12 PM in response to Judd Rackham

Hey Judd

I purchased CCE-MP about a month ago for me. I know i had a problem trying to encode a 60 min piece with CCE-MP and it said it would take some ridiculous amount of time like 12 hours. I contacted support@omni-cinemacraft and their guy told me to that my Apple Compressor software was corrupt. They gave me instructions on how to fix it and when i tried again, a VBR3 took about 53 minutes. I just finished an HD project for a customer and the quality of the encode was awesome. Tell me more about your project. Maybe i can help.

Johnathan

David S.

Level 7

20,630 points

Jul 31, 2008 3:39 PM in response to jonathan.vu

*I just finished an HD project for a customer and the quality of the encode was awesome.*

A couple of questions. Could you point to a link that indicates that CCE will encode to HD? Was it h.264 or HD mpeg2 and what did you author with to what output?

Second, what does "awesome" mean? It is the most overused word to describe everything under the sun.

Compare quality objectively rather than by an overused buzzword.

That will help us all.

Aug 18, 2008 9:13 PM in response to David S.

I'm sorry I couldn't have responded sooner but I've been out of town on a shoot. I'd just like to clarify a couple things about my HD/SD project. My client shot with a SONY HDW-F900 camera (really nice HD source content). I captured in FCP using the Kona LHe and edited the project with Apple Pro Res HQ 1920x1080 24p codec. So, I maintained HD throughout. I exported from FCP as a self contained QuickTime movie and brought that into Compressor using Cinema Craft Encoder MP to down covert and encode my file to MPEG-2 Standand Definition for DVD Studio Pro. I simply used a three pass VBR with an average bit rate of 6200. I authored in Studio Pro and created a DVD. I played back the DVD for my client in a Playstation 3 doing an upconvert and their response in their own words was "awesome". They thought it looked close to the original HD source. They were very impressed. By the way, it's a "fantastic" encoder.

David S.

Level 7

20,630 points

Aug 19, 2008 8:43 AM in response to jonathan.vu

Thanks Jonathan, that helps.

I just didn't think that it supported HD encoding to HD.

BTW, Toshiba just released a pretty good upconverting SD HDMI set top.

Good news! - Mac Version Cinemacraft Encoder Xtreme (Compressor Plugin)