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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 Officially Supports Red One

Sorry for the delay in my responses today, very busy helping a partner getting reading for IBC.

Firstly there is a new version:
http://www.miscdata.com/red/R2CFv149.zip. Unzip the contents into: C:\Program Files\CineForm\Tools. To use this you must have NEO 4K or Prospect 4K installed on your Windows OS (trial version also work.)

Many minor internal updates, added new switch
-ROx - R3D SDK OLPF compession (0 = off, 3 = maximum)
-RNx - R3D SDK DeNoise filer (0 = off, 6 = maximum)


Alex:
In this new version I have exposed the R3D SDK's Optical Low Pass Filter Compensation and Denoise, the Detail is already defaulting to High. These are the only additional SDK controls that impact noise and preceived sharpness. The denoise is subtle, maybe it is more obvious with noisy source.

All sample below are 1024x768 1:1 pixel extract form a 4K frame, shown using JPEG 100% quality 1x1x1 sampling.

Here is the output from the SDK to DPX stock (Denoise and OLPF comp off.)
http://www.miscdata.com/blogimgs/R3DStock-DPX.jpg

Same DPX output with (Denoise at max -RN6.)
http://www.miscdata.com/blogimgs/R3DDeNoise6-DPX.jpg

The size of the JPEG is more telling than the image change, JPEG drop form 349kB to 299kB, the cleaner image being easier to compress.

Here is the OLPF set to maximum and exported as DPX. I don't like these results, while it does look a little sharper the highlights get halos (not recommended.)
http://www.miscdata.com/blogimgs/R3DOLPF3-DPX.jpg

As you are looking to sharpen full resolution decodes, you can use CineForm RAW (-r option, I also left the -RN6 switch on.) As SDK doesn't have RAW these a back samples to CFA bayer before CineForm compression. Size reduction is significant, the DPX files were 36,866kB, and the CineForm RAW only 1,943kB (Filmscan 2), yet the quality is basically the same. With CineForm RAW you get to choose the demoasic filter during post, so sharpen can be controlled (without adding additional filters) at any time. The controls are with Premiere, set per project, custom set per clip, or global set with the SetActiveMetadata tool.
SetActiveMetadata.png
.

These are two frame exported frames frame the same CineForm RAW encode using demosaic filters CineForm Advanced Detail 1 (default)
http://www.miscdata.com/blogimgs/CineFormDetail1.jpg

and CineForm Advanced Detail 3
http://www.miscdata.com/blogimgs/CineFormDetail3.jpg

This last image extracts more details/sharpness than using OLPF compenstaion, without causing the halos. If you want a extra but of sharpness to your CineForm RAW by default, you can specify the demosaic to use in the script. +DEMO=0x4 is for Detail 1, +DEMO=0x5 is for Detail 2 (not shown), and +DEMO=0x6 is for Detail 3.

Of course none of this prevents you adding more sharpness in post, probably where it should be added.
 
Many thanks David, exactly the controls we have needed. We are there. thank you

alex
 
Great new additions David, thanks!

So I got the .mov file issue sort of fixed. I realized that the virtual machine I was working on did not infact have QT installed on it. I installed quicktime and the .mov was created as expected. The issue now is that I get an error when opening the .mov file:

The movie could not be opened.
This is not a movie file.

The filesize is correct (compared to an .avi of the same file), but the file won't open in anything on the Mac side, or the Windows side.
 
Christopher,

So far so good. Just transferred 5 days worth of footage from a feature (about 1 TB) to ExpressFiles. It took about 12 hours going across two FW400 connections, on a dual core, dual processor machine. In other words, not a fast machine... probably considered average by most standards.

-Thor
 
I successfully converted an hour of Build 16 4k footage to Cineform 4:4:4 HD avi files last weekend, with almost no effort, now that the new script even has a gui.
 
New betas for CineForm PC products available, these all include the Red Conversion (R2CF tool) and simple batch scripting for convert all your R3D to fast and easy to use CineForm AVIs.

NEO and Prospect versions 3.4.2.181:
NEO HD http://www.miscdata.com/cineform/NHDb181.zip
NEO 4K http://www.miscdata.com/cineform/N4Kb181.zip
Prospect HD http://www.miscdata.com/cineform/PHDb181.zip
Prospect 4K http://www.miscdata.com/cineform/P4Kb181.zip

These will likely be the official release versions early next week.
 
David,

I'd like to see better handling of 24p (23.976) across the board. This would include user selectable pulldown (in it's various flavors)... if not directly playable from the timeline, then as rendering (exporting) options. I'd like to use various framerates within the same timeline, and have all the proper pulldowns applied upon export.

I would like to have better support of "Interpretting" 24p footage as 29.97. You can do it now, but it messes up the graphic representation of the footage on the timeline. For example, when you interpret the footage and then try to put markers in it, the markers get placed relative to the original timing of the clip, not the relative timing of the interpretted clip.

Also, if Cineform could write a plug-in that syncs audio that was recorded to an external device, that would completely rock!

And of course, support for Vista 64 would be nice, too.

I realize that these requests might be more Adobe requests than Cineform requests... but it can hurt to put the discussion out there.

-Thor
 
Thanks Thor,

Yes there are mostly issues with Premiere, not with media within.

Regarding pulldown, I gather are talking about adding pulldown to 23.976 sources, as we have the extaction of pulldown pretty much covered. Via AJA Xena we do add pulldown for an option for play-out. Yet I can see benefits for 24p source in 60i timeline auto-adding pulldown rather than Premiere's frame blend approach. Exporting 24p as 60i is something we can do (we had to do that for HDV exports, we just have added it elsewhere yet.) So some of that we can address if Adobe doesn't in CS4.
 
So some of that we can address if Adobe doesn't in CS4.
Click to expand...

thats the thing I like about cineform is that it is more than a codec company
it's a Premiere tweaker as well
 
David perhaps this does not relate to a Red workflow specifically but it does form part of it.

I would like to see all the tools like CF2DPX & DPX2CF and so on move to the HD Link GUI and work the way the rest of the conversions do. Also perhaps some people not familiar with a CF workflow find it confusing to have settings spread across many panels. For eg the SetActiveMetadata panel has one set of settings and the scripts for Accelerated and Fast quality playback are seperate to that.

Perhaps merge this all into one UI that replaces HD Link but I know this is a big undertaking...
 
I second that request....

cineform with the use of scripts scattered about seems a little unpolished....we all know the guts of it work great

If you want to market it to Mac guys you have to make it shiny....
(dosn't even have to work...just give it a cool UI.....)
 
Okay... I just thought of one very specific tweak that would be very helpful.

Sometimes, an .R3D file won't convert properly to CF. When this happens, the batch hangs. You have to manually cancel that file before the R2CF converter will move to the next file.

This becomes a real problem when you're expecting all your express files to be waiting for you in the morning, and you wake up to find that after a few files, it hung. Suddenly you're a day behind in your editing schedule.

It would be great if A) the R2CF converter would "time-out" and automatically move to the next file in the batch, and B) if it would generate a text file at the end of the batch to tell us which .R3D files were problematic.

Then, the batch still processes, and we can quickly check the problem .R3D files in Redcine or Redalert to see if they were important files.

Thoughts or comments are welcome on this one.

-Thor
 
Thor Wixom said:
Okay... I just thought of one very specific tweak that would be very helpful.

Sometimes, an .R3D file won't convert properly to CF. When this happens, the batch hangs. You have to manually cancel that file before the R2CF converter will move to the next file.

This becomes a real problem when you're expecting all your express files to be waiting for you in the morning, and you wake up to find that after a few files, it hung. Suddenly you're a day behind in your editing schedule.

It would be great if A) the R2CF converter would "time-out" and automatically move to the next file in the batch, and B) if it would generate a text file at the end of the batch to tell us which .R3D files were problematic.

Then, the batch still processes, and we can quickly check the problem .R3D files in Redcine or Redalert to see if they were important files.

Thoughts or comments are welcome on this one.

-Thor
Click to expand...


Yes this would actually really help. I second it.
 
You all asked so nicely.

New verison now has a WatchDog timer.
http://www.miscdata.com/red/R2CFv152.zip. Unzip the contents into: C:\Program Files\CineForm\Tools. To use this you must have NEO 4K or Prospect 4K installed on your Windows OS (trial versions also work.)

This will auto-detect any batch conversion deadlocks for whatever reason, then kill the impacted processes, automatically retry the same conversion, and if that fails, produce a errors.txt file in the output path listing the troubled R3D file(s) before continue with the batch. Nothing will stop the batch short of a power failure (for that you can initiate the batch scripts in your Startup.) Some of these upgrades are internal to the R2CF tool, others are in the scripts, so update them all.

The error log file (which you will only like see with a corrupted R3D) will look like this (inside errors.txt):
failed to convert (9/15/2008 10:23:05 AM): M:\video\Red\A001_C001_071118_001.R3D
failed to convert (9/15/2008 11:05:22 AM): M:\video\Red\A003_C007_071105_001.R3D

I've been thrashing my PC with many conversions all morning without a single error report.
 
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