For those of you who remember the early years of the digital revolution, the Pinnacle CinéWave PCI board began its life as a Targa board.

Back in the '90s I reviewed the Targa saying, “Targa 2000, from Truevision (formerly RasterOps) is a QuickTime-compatible NuBus board (list price of $5,495) that allows users to digitize, compress, decompress, and play back digital video on Macintosh and Power Macintosh computers. It delivers full-screen, NTSC 60-field video recording and playback, plus two channels of 16-bit audio with sampling rates up to 48kHz.” Targa's ability to support full-screen video was a real advance over previous products that supported only quarter-screen (or smaller) video.

Using Premiere 4.0.1 and QuickTime 2.1 for my review, I also described Targa's unique hardware architecture by saying “The Targa 2000 features Truevision's DVR Architecture where all digital video processing is organized around a large on-board RAM that can be accessed by all video processing components. With DVR … digital video is stored and manipulated in an on-board memory space of up to 64MB.”

The DVR architecture allowed the Targa to provide on-board acceleration for several Adobe Premiere transitions. I explained that testing indicated that “an unaccelerated two-second cross dissolve using Adobe Premiere takes 121 seconds. When accelerated by the Targa 2000 hardware, the same transition is rendered in only 17 seconds.”

The next step in Targa's development was realtime effects. This feature came in the next Targa. I wrote, “The $10,995 Targa 2000 RTX … features a pair of motion-JPEG codecs. Using a Targa 2000 RTX, video effects such as wipes, pushes, fades, dissolves, and alpha composites are performed in realtime at full quality. Once effects are chosen by the editor, they can be instantly output to tape at the full.”

Leaping to the present, I now have the latest incarnation of the Targa, now called CinéWave, installed in the latest Mac — a dual G5. Pinnacle's description of the CinéWave's hardware sounds familiar. Pinnacle notes that the 64-bit PCI board's Ciné Engine features a HUB-3 video-processing engine that supports realtime processing of 8-bit and 16-bit video. The Ciné Engine also features 128MB of on-board SDRAM that handles multiple source streams. The Ciné Engine can process uncompressed 8-bit video (Targa Ciné YUV) and 16-bit video (Targa Ciné YUV 16). Targa YUV 16 employs 16 bits to preserve 10-bit accuracy.

CinéWave Classic 4.6 (MSRP of $2,700) supports these transitions: cross dissolve, cross iris, diamond iris, rectangle iris, point iris, oval iris, star iris, push slide, vertical wipe, center wipe, clock wipe, edge wipe, and inset wipe. The following filters are supported: brightness and contrast, color balance, sepia, tint, desaturate, proc amp, gamma correction, and the two-way color corrector.

Classic does not include Final Cut Pro, Commotion Pro, or Knoll Light Factory. It does include CinéAcquire, a plug-in for Commotion Pro and After Effects that supports frame grab and batch capture with RS-422 deck control. There's also CinéOffline, which lets you edit with the Ciné software codec on a computer without a Ciné Engine. Finally, Classic includes a Keyspan USB Twin Serial Port and a Pipeline Digital RS-422 Device Control Cable.

It is important to understand the nature of Ciné Engine effects. First, as with most hardware-based effects generators, transitions are simple wipes, slides, and pushes. Second, Apple's RT Extreme engine has already surpassed most hardware effects generators. In fact, RT Extreme can preview the same transitions and filters — with up to seven layers — as can be generated by a Ciné Engine. However, CinéWave RT Pro's realtime effects and transitions can always be mastered to tape without rendering — something not always possible with RT Extreme.

Third, as you read CinéWave marketing materials you will find many references to realtime effects. For example, “The Targa Ciné Engine furnishes more than 40 realtime SD and HD uncompressed effects.” Thus, you could be forgiven for hoping the Ciné Engine might be able to generate simple HD transitions. Alas, there are only two HD realtime effects. One is the keyframeable Ciné Proc Amp filter (setup, level, saturation, and phase) that is realtime with 1080i material, but only with a dual G5.

I found it simplest to think of CinéWave as a product offering three solutions: SD and HD input/output, realtime SD editing, and non-realtime HD editing. If you define a Sequence as other than Ciné YUV or Ciné YUV 16, you gain access to two RT Extreme options: Apple realtime SD and Apple realtime DVCPRO HD.

By purchasing the CinéWave RT Pro software option (MSRP of $995), the following effects are added: Motion Effects (crop, scale, center, anchor points, opacity, still-image graphics with alpha, titles, 3D titles, composites, color mattes, shapes, gradients, custom gradients, highlights), Filters (three-way color corrector, desaturate highlights, desaturate lows, and RGB balance), and Keys (luma, chroma, and CinéWave chroma with spill suppression).

Pinnacle says that by using CinéWave 4.6 RT Pro, you can composite up to five realtime tracks (three video and two graphics with alpha channel). Multiple keyframeable filters can be applied to each track of uncompressed footage. I found with a Targa YUV Sequence, I could work in realtime with three layers, but with a Targa YUV 16 Sequence, only with two layers. I also found that a Targa YUV Sequence allowed a video layer to be placed over a dissolve between video streams.

The Pro option supports mixed-format realtime Timelines. Formats include Photo-JPEG, DV, DV50, DV100, LiveType and RGBA animations, plus uncompressed SD 8-, 10-, or 16-bit clips. Interestingly, when not using one of the two Ciné YUV uncompressed codecs, the number of realtime video streams supported is reduced by one because of the extra overhead needed to decompress the video.

With the RT Pro option, the Ciné Engine can simultaneously output uncompressed SD and HD content under the control of a realtime, keyframeable HD pan-and-scan filter. (This is the other realtime HD filter.) The filter is not designed for slow pans and cannot be combined with the Ciné Proc Amp filter.

A CinéWave system provides several audio/video acquisition paths: FireWire and one or two CinéWave breakout boxes. Five different BOBs are available for use with CinéWave:

Pro SD Analog: Composite, component, S-Video, and reference; two-channel unbalanced -10dB (RCA) and balanced +4dB (XLR) audio. MSRP of $1,295.

Pro SD Digital: SDI (SMPTE 259M) at 10 bits with four-channel embedded audio at 20-bit/48kHz. One BNC for input and one BNC for output. MSRP of $1,295.

Pro SD Digital Plus: SDI (SMPTE 259M) at 10 bits. One BNC for input and two BNCs for output — plus one BNC for reference input and one BNC for reference output. Two XLR female connectors for input and two male XLR male connectors for AES/EBU 20-bit/48kHz audio. Each connector carries two channels, for a total of four audio channels. Monitor video and two-channel audio output are provided by RCA jacks. MSRP of $1,995.

Pro Digital and Analog: Composite, component, and reference input; two-channel unbalanced -10dB (RCA) and four-channel balanced +4dB (XLR) audio. Serial digital interface (SMPTE 259M) resolution at 10 bits with four-channel embedded audio at 20-bit/48kHz using one BNC for input and one BNC for output. Two XLR female connectors for input and two male XLR male connectors for AES/EBU 20-bit/48kHz audio. Each connector carries two channels, for a total of four digital audio channels. One RCA input and one RCA output jack support S/PDIF audio. A TDIF connector supports the transfer of multiple channels of digital audio via the TEAC Digital Interface Format protocol. By means of adapter cables, S-Video can be input and output. MSRP of $4,995.

Pro HD Digital: SDI at 10 bits with four-channel embedded audio at 20-bit/48kHz. One BNC for input and one BNC for output. SMPTE 292M, SMPTE 274M (1080), and SMPTE 296M (720p) standards are supported. This BOB can be connected only to Tether 2. You can add this BOB for an MSRP of $9,995.

Pinnacle supplied a Pro HD Digital and a Pro SD Digital Plus BOB. If I were configuring a system, I would have chosen a Pro SD Analog instead of the Pro SD Digital Plus BOB. Each breakout box connects to the CinéWave via a Tether cable.

Two different types of BOBs can be connected to a Targa Ciné Engine for simultaneous use. However, only one HD BOB can be connected. Moreover, when an HD BOB is used, an SD BOB must be connected to Digital Tether Connector 1.

Each BOB performs all the I/O conversions. Thus, only SD or HD digital component data are input and output from the CinéWave Engine. This allows the Pinnacle PCI board to be unexpectedly small. During input, whatever type of audio and video has been selected is input and stored to disk using the selected codec. Your codec options include Photo-JPEG, DV25, DV50, DV100, Ciné YUV, and if you're working with SD video, Ciné YUV 16.

Those working with HD have multiple capture options. If you are working with DVCPRO HD, you have two input paths: via FireWire connected to a Panasonic AJ-HD1200A deck or via HD SDI from any Panasonic DVCPRO HD deck. FireWire can transfer 720p23.98, 720p29.97, 720p59.94, plus 1080i.

HD SDI can transfer 720p59.94 and 720p60 from Panasonic gear. This capability is especially valuable for those who have a DVCPRO HD deck that is not equipped with FireWire. Sony HDCAM can be captured at 1080p23.98, 1080p24, 1080p29.97, and 1080i29.97. Interestingly HDCAM 1080i can be transcoded during capture to DVCPRO HD 1080i. Doing so will let you edit 1080i from HDCAM in realtime — although your video will have been transcoded to another compressed format.

CinéWave HD supports true 24fps film editing. CinéWave HD also supports variable-frame-rate video from a Panasonic Varicam with support for all frame rates, including overcrank and undercrank. (You will have captured at either 720p59.94 or 720p60.)

Hardware installation was very easy. I plugged the PCI-X-compatible, 66MHz PCI board into slot 4. To put the Apple Xserve RAID on the other PCI bus, I plugged it into PCI slot 2. (For more on the Xserve RAID, see my article “Protect and Xserve” in the June issue of Video Systems.) After I used the CinéWave CD-ROM to install the software, I went to the Pinnacle website, downloaded version 4.6, and installed it.

When you attempt to set up Audio/Video Capture Settings in FCP, you'll find a few surprises. First, many settings cannot be duplicated or edited unless the appropriate video source is connected. Second, the NTSC settings all read “NTSC YUV,” which suggested to me that analog component was the source. Not so. In order to make a source selection, you must open System Preferences. Now open the CinéWave Panel to make the video input selection: composite, S-Video, analog component, or SDI. You will also need to use the Sound Panel to select the audio input: unbalanced, balanced, or digital.

Now back in Final Cut Pro HD, you'll find that almost everything functions as you would expect. One thing not supported is the display of either SD or HD video within the Log and Capture window. You will need to monitor the video, either SD or HD, being input on an NTSC or an HD SDI monitor.

CinéWave offers several functions that I didn't work with: hardware support for mastering 24-bit audio, Steinberg's Nuendo audio tool, Commotion Pro's RAM preview, realtime reverse telecine from 29.97fps or 30fps video for both HD and SD formats, and CinéOffline SD.

I had only a few problems using CinéWave RT Pro 4.6. Like others, when I went to the CinéWave Panel to register with Pinnacle to obtain access to the CinéWave RT Pro option, I had difficulties. Second, I had several Final Cut Pro crashes as well as several system crashes upon exiting from FCP. Otherwise, everything worked as advertised.

With Apple setting very aggressive pricing for editing products, a potential buyer of a hardware solution has to look at the question of product value. Clearly, most folks will need the RT Pro option, so the minimum cost for an SD solution is $4,990. Adding HD SDI input and output causes the cost of a CinéWave to increase to $14,985. That is a significant increase and suggests that you should carefully compare your HD (and SD) editing requirements against the product features of the various FCP-based editing products.