Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
  • 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)

CraigDavidson said:
I can increase the interval between starting of the conversion. We have no problem on our old, slow first generation Mac Pro. You just need a slower machine.:wink:
Click to expand...

Can that be user selectable?
 
The license has been checked once the first frame is produced from the conversion. The main program can just wait until a frame is done before starting a new clip.
 
Craig,

Now I was asked to go back and force on CineForm and 444 uncompressed 10 bit.
Is there any preferred ways to do that?

I tried FCP media manager but it requires easy setup preset for CineForm, then I tried to use the custom selection but it crashes by choosing CineForm as the compressor.

Also, I was thinking I could convert in QT player but that crashes, too.

FPC QT convert works (and from Uncompressed 444 to Cineform 444 look identical! amazing!).

Would ReMaster be able to convert things other than R3D later?
 
Craig,

For uncompressed 10-bit 444 to CineForm 444, I'm using Apple Compressor and getting satisfactory result. It crashes when I choose the whole list of clips in a folder, but as long as keep the simultaneous numbers low (like 10 clips at a time) then it's doing fine. So, for now, I'm going with this. What's amazing is 190MB/sec Uncompressed 10-bit 444 look the same in CineForm 444 which is 19MB/sec.

Also, in case of Apple Compressor, CineForm license scheme don't seem to have problem although Compressor is processing multiple files at the same time.
 
Kaku Ito said:
Craig,

For uncompressed 10-bit 444 to CineForm 444, I'm using Apple Compressor and getting satisfactory result. It crashes when I choose the whole list of clips in a folder, but as long as keep the simultaneous numbers low (like 10 clips at a time) then it's doing fine. So, for now, I'm going with this. What's amazing is 190MB/sec Uncompressed 10-bit 444 look the same in CineForm 444 which is 19MB/sec.

Also, in case of Apple Compressor, CineForm license scheme don't seem to have problem although Compressor is processing multiple files at the same time.
Click to expand...
Apple Compressor uses the compression codec through the QuickTime interface.
 
Kaku Ito said:
Craig,

Would ReMaster be able to convert things other than R3D later?
Click to expand...

Yes. Right now I have a version that can generate uncompressed 10 bit YUV. Since uncompressed is a standard QuickTime codec, it should be able to read the uncompressed and generate CineForm 444.
 
Great, Craig, looking forward to it.

Also, can you check with some frame rate inconsistency depending of how Cineform is rendered? I'm providing Cineform files on Mac with ReMaster and from Compressor sometimes, then Windows compositing guys are telling me some show up as 29.97 and others 29.976 (I though that was matter of just description rather than actual frame rate) then one of the other crashes their After Effects. Maybe I will send the files to you to look at.

Best,

Kaku
 
Kaku,

QuickTime represents the frame rate as a combination of the movie time scale and the sample duration. QuickTime playback performance is sensitive to how these values are chosen. According to the Apple documents, there are two choices for 29.97: time scale = 2997 and duration of 100 or time scale of 30000 and duration of 1001. They suggest using 2997/100, which we do, although the 30000/1001 is the "true" value. 2997/100 = 29.97, 30000/1001 = 29.97003. Where do they get 29.976?

A couple of short clips would be helpful.
 
Craig,

My bad! 23.976 and 23.97, maybe even 23.98.
 
To show up as 23.97 is the weird one.
 
I guess Cineform/RED combination call it 23.97 and Apple apps wants to call it 23.98.
Compositing guys are having problems with 23.98 files converted with Apple (Compressor or Mediamanager in FCP) to Cineform.

By the way, will Cineform to DPX conversion available soon?
 
Craig,

I checked and the CineForm clips exported from ReMaster are showing 23.97 frame not 23.976, then CineForm clips exported from Compressor are showing 23.976 frame, thus show up as 23.98 in QT property window.

So, are they actually different?

When I read the R3D into ReMaster, it does say 23.98 in the description, so I'd guess that R3D 23.98 is 23.976, then does ReMaster converts the frame rate to 23.97?

We'd liked to stick to 23.976 if possible.
 
It should be the same. ReMaster was truncating the time signature to 23.97 for RED source only. I changed it to use the full 23.976. The structure is in place for DPX. I need to verify consistency in the color mapping between the various formats (422, 444, RAW, YUV uncompressed and the RGB for DPX).
 
Craig,

Thanks, good to know they carry 23.976 internally.

When CineForm codec is selected in Compressor or converting from FCP, is it always 444?
 
It can be either 422 (10 bit) or 444, depending on the options selected in the dialog. In FCP when you set up the sequence, you need to click on the "advanced" button, and there should be a check box for 444. Compressor would be similar.
 
Hi Guys

I've been far from follow the thread and Cineform Achievement for a while..

I would like to ask you: How is the Playback speed situation now on Mac?

Does (in the last build) Neo 4K can Playback CF 2k 444 with active metadata on in Realtime on a Mac Pro?

I rember that i have red about a 50% speed improvement , but I've just tried on my Mac Pro 4 Cores 2.66 but if i apply the Metadata the payback drop at 12fps...Also the encoding speed @ 444 2K is 2.5 fps...

Is this the best achievement so far or i have some trouble in my system? (or not fast enough?)

PS:In Window handle the playback of 2k material in real time in my mac pro under bootcamp...

Thanks

G
 
The major improvement in playback is with high bit rate 444 source material. The improvement to the decoder was made to the threading so it can better take advantage of the available CPUs. The performance is more noticeable with 8 cores.
The difference you see between the playback rates under bootcamp and under Mac OS is QuickTime. There are two issues. 1) QuickTime adds a level of general-purpose routines that simplify the interface between the decoder and the display device. This adds work. 2) QuickTime will attempt to decode all frames, and if it cannot, will drop back to half rate. On our dual 2x 2.66 Mac Pro only half the CPU is being used to play a movie with Active Metadata through Quicktime. Playback is sensitive to disk speed, with seek time as important as transfer rate. Note that although QuickTime is only playing 12fps, it is reading all the frames, and performing a partial decode on the ones that are not displayed.
QuickTime does perform some overlapped read and decode functions, FCP does not. During playback of a clip under FCP we have measured a time lag of 30 milliseconds between requests for decode of sequential frames.
A slightly faster CPU would get you over the bump for playback of QuickTime.
We have not measured the encode time on the Mac directly, but when transcoding through ReMaster, you must also consider the time required to decode the material. When encoding from FCP, the program is requesting a very high precision floating point pixel format, which is time-consuming for any decoder to produce. This gives the impression that the encoder is slow. Preliminary estimates by us, and from feedback from customers indicate that the CineForm encoder is at least 10% faster than ProRes.
 
CineForm 444 encode timing. 2K 444 FilmScan1 with metadata including the Red metadata. Mac Pro Dual 2x2.66 MHz, 2GB Ram.

Convert the pixel format and encode: 68-71 milliseconds/frame.
72 milliseconds = 13.8 fps.

The encoder in ReMaster launches 2 threads for encode, but only uses one since the decoder cannot provide frames fast enough.
 
Thanks Craig,

So basically as far as today no way to have 2K 444 with active metadata playback in realtime in OSX ?I mean even with 8 core mac pro?

Also the 17fps you wrote in the last post : You meant under windows or in OSX and remaster?

Thanks

G
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top