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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

CineForm Offers NEO 4K-Mac for Red Support (BETA)

Hans von Sonntag said:
Hi Cineforms,

while testing your stuff on a real life project (at least partly) we found that in
Premier Pro CS3 (also testing for the Mac) the Cineform files show a red bar above the timeline. Codec and size where set accordingly to the Cineform files' specs.

What did we do wrongly? Or is Cineform not optimized fpr Premier Pro yet? In FCP it
does work nicely.

Regards,

Hans
Click to expand...

We are optimized for Premiere Pro of the PC, but not for Premiere Pro on the Mac. While our codec generally works in everything that welcome AVIs or MOVs, we do focus on the most commonly used NLEs (Premiere Pro PC and FCP Mac.)
 
bootcamp

bootcamp

hi david, what about performance running trough bootcamp?

regards
 
I've posted the next BETA release of Neo 4K. It now includes Reel # and Timecode per earlier thread discussions. Neo 4K for Red is essentially production ready pending any final comments. For those of you who have a Trial that is about to expire, we'll post a purchase link on Friday so you don't lose any down time.

Download link for the latest Neo 4K: http://www.cineform.com/products/Downloads/DownloadNEO4K-MacTrialStart.htm

Also, for those with other lower-res cameras, we've posted the first version of Neo HD for Mac that includes file conversion utilities for HDV, P2, AVCHD, and ProRes. File conversion also uses ReMaster, which is what you also use for R3D conversion.

More details about Neo HD/4K are on our product page: http://www.cineform.com/products/NeoHD-Mac.htm

Enjoy!
 
Exe?

Exe?

Hi David, I just downloaded the newest version of Neo4o from the cineform website and unzipped the file (Stuffit couldnt so just used Archive Utility). And was very surprised when the file I got from it was .exe

The filename of the zip is NEO4Kv343b183-081008.zip

Am I missing something or is this a mistake.

Thanks again - Chris
 
Macros said:
Hi David, I just downloaded the newest version of Neo4o from the cineform website and unzipped the file (Stuffit couldnt so just used Archive Utility). And was very surprised when the file I got from it was .exe

The filename of the zip is NEO4Kv343b183-081008.zip

Am I missing something or is this a mistake.

Thanks again - Chris
Click to expand...

Same problem here. .exe file.


Hans
 
Macros said:
Hi David, I just downloaded the newest version of Neo4o from the cineform website and unzipped the file (Stuffit couldnt so just used Archive Utility). And was very surprised when the file I got from it was .exe
Click to expand...
Sorry guys, one of my internal links was not properly updated. Please try the link in post #86 again. It now give the proper Mac download.
 
Hi Cineforms,

yesterday we tried Cineform for a freshly shot project und came across some problems that might be solved easily with some more knowledge.

1. Reels and TC are now embedded and readable by Premier Pro and FCP - this is great!

2. My evaluation licence ran out before I could test the workflow with working Reels and TC - ist there any chance to prolongate the licence?

3. I don't get Cineform playing RT in Premier Pro and FCP. In QT it works as supposed not so in FCP and Premier Pro 3.0 on my Mac. In FCP life is easy. Just drop the clip and check the popping up dialog. In Premier Pro all has to be done hand made. Here are my findings:

- In Highest Quality 1080p stutters immensely, in Draft Quality the first 7 seconds are playing RT then for a sudden it stutters again - looks like the preloaded RAM gets emptied and not loaded again.

- if I put a ProRes file in Premier Pro ist plays RT when ProRes codec is selected.

- if I put a ProRes file in Premier Pro, selctect Cineform and render the timeline all stutters as discribed above.

- if I put a Cineform file in Premiere Pro, select ProRes and render the timeline it plays nicely RT.

What is happening here? Although this seems not to be a timeline settings related problem, are there any Cineform presets for the Mac available as they are on the PC?

The specs: MacPro8, Nvidia 5600fx, FC Raid, approx. 200MB sustained, QT 7.5.0, OSX 10.5.4

Any help is greatly appreciated,

Hans
 
New questions:

1. We encoded with ReMaster using these settings: 1080p/444, Camera RedSpace, Match Encoder, Log curve 90, Black 40.

We imported this file into SG and had a look at the histo. White reached 1023 with no loss while the black level was not a 40 but at 0. Again no loss.

But why Black at 0 when in the settings encoder was set Black to 40?


2. ReMaster: We tried every possible setting concerning gamma curves, be it Camera RGB, Redspace, Rec709, what ever. We always got the same output. It is fairly white balanced and seems not to lose any information. So far very nice. But not chnaging a thing while changing settings is kind of strange.


Did I miss something?

Regards,

Hans
 
Last post for today...

I really like the high fidelity your codec delivers, the fast render for proxies with reel and tc and the possibility to carry .look in the metadata.

I don't know why Cineform does not deliver RT in my machine but if we get this sorted out I'm in.

Kind Regards,

Hans
 
The Mac build that is out today will offer significant performance improvements, particularly on your 8-core Mac. See my Blog write up on the recent changes : http://cineform.blogspot.com/2008/11/even-more-decode-speed.html. A Mac is still slower than a PC, as we don't have to deal we QuickTime, we find on the Mac that using our Decoder SDK directly we double decode speed (this is why companies like Iridas can use our codec equally well on both platforms -- not using QT.) We have been fustrated that ProRES seems faster when we believe to have better technology. Then Craig, our Mac guy, decovered ProRES seems to bypass much of QuickTime and its full QT implementation crawls. This likely why ProRES works in Color but QuickTime codecs don't. So it is not an equal playing field, just the way Apple likes it. With the CineForm codec you have a fast core, higher quality, more bit-depth and 4:4:4, all good reasons to use it over ProRES. The new build will likely have the performance you are looking for.

Regarding : "why Black at 0 when in the settings encoder was set Black to 40?"

It works the opposite way. We find the black level for a Red decode is around 55 with +/-10 of noise (in linear space), so the 40 is extracting most of a DC offset without clipping the noise floor, to produce output black nearer zero, improving the base contrast without reducing dynamic range.

Regarding : "We tried every possible setting concerning gamma curves, be it Camera RGB, Redspace, Rec709, what ever. We always got the same output."

You should see slightly differing color saturations for the different color matrices between Camera RGB, Redspacec and Rec709. The encoding curve is much more subtle if you set a decode curve to R-Space, all you doing it can the balance of shadow precision vs midtones and hightlights. If you set "Match Encoder" you should see the differing curves as a shift in grey point.
 
Hans, regarding CineForm files in PPro on Mac, we don't (yet) have an importer for PPro on Mac. That is the reason for the poorer playback. While we do great things with PPro on Windows, on Mac we have focused on FCP. I don't yet have a schedule for you for PPro on Mac.
 
Hans von Sonntag said:
Hi Cineforms,

yesterday we tried Cineform for a freshly shot project und came across some problems that might be solved easily with some more knowledge.


3. I don't get Cineform playing RT in Premier Pro and FCP. In QT it works as supposed not so in FCP and Premier Pro 3.0 on my Mac. In FCP life is easy. Just drop the clip and check the popping up dialog. In Premier Pro all has to be done hand made. Here are my findings:

- In Highest Quality 1080p stutters immensely, in Draft Quality the first 7 seconds are playing RT then for a sudden it stutters again - looks like the preloaded RAM gets emptied and not loaded again.

What is happening here? Although this seems not to be a timeline settings related problem, are there any Cineform presets for the Mac available as they are on the PC?

The specs: MacPro8, Nvidia 5600fx, FC Raid, approx. 200MB sustained, QT 7.5.0, OSX 10.5.4

Any help is greatly appreciated,

Hans
Click to expand...

Your later post indicated you are using 444. The newer release should help with the FCP playback. QT does a better job overlapping the decode and playback of the video. FCP does no overlapping, and when displaying on an external monitor, we can measure an additional delay between the calls to the codec.

One thing we have noticed, that may be important with your configuration, is that since FCP does not do any overlap in the decode/display, it also does not read ahead. We have found it is very sensitive to the seek time, as well as the sustained throughput from the disk. Our 4-core machine with a 2 disk RAID 0 shows less seek delay than a FC disk system, and 1080p playback is better. The stuttering in the playback is most likely because FCP has reached a point where it needed to seek in the file for a new frame.
 
David Taylor said:
Hans, regarding CineForm files in PPro on Mac, we don't (yet) have an importer for PPro on Mac. That is the reason for the poorer playback. While we do great things with PPro on Windows, on Mac we have focused on FCP. I don't yet have a schedule for you for PPro on Mac.
Click to expand...

Ok, understand that. No dealbraker actually. But I predict Premier Pro on the Mac a great future if FCP won't get updated massively on NAB.

Hans
 
CraigDavidson said:
Our 4-core machine with a 2 disk RAID 0 shows less seek delay than a FC disk system, and 1080p playback is better. The stuttering in the playback is most likely because FCP has reached a point where it needed to seek in the file for a new frame.
Click to expand...

If I understand you correctly, playing Cineform files RT in FCP won't work with an industry standard FC Raid which does works nicely with DPX or uncompressed QT?

Am I wrong (hopefully)?

Hans
 
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