Cineform Neo questions

[marshmallowburger]

So I'm a bit confused about this Cineform Neo product.

From reading the site, it claims that Neo's intermediate file format is lightly compressed and visually superior to any other format. But if you're just taking footage which is HDV compressed from the HV20 into Cineform, the source is already compressed with an inferior codec so it's not like Cineform's codec is going to give you any visual bonus, right?

So I figured maybe the advantage would be from using the Blackmagic Intensity card to capture from the camera's HDMI out...but it's just spitting out the same compressed footage. Doesn't seem like you get anything from using HDMI capture via firewire dump.

But....the HV20 does record at 1920 horizontal resolution, right? However from what I've read the HDV format can only support 1440....so perhaps the advantage comes from capturing HDMI output to get the full 1920 frame which is otherwise resampled to 1440 when pulling from firewire for whatever reason? Or is the camera just upscaling to 1920 horizontal res when displaying via HDMI?

[unconsenting]

Nobody seems to be answering, so I will give it a try:

The use of any of the Cineform products is typically in the editing process. HDV, as you may know, is compressed into groups of frames. If you are editing the original m2t files, every time you split the file in this group of frames, your editor must re-render the file in order to keep all of the color info, etc in the clips. I've been told to think of this codec as nothing more than a great storage codec. Cineform is intraframe and therefore, each frame has its own information. This means that during your editing, including visual FX, the quality going in is roughly the same coming out.

As far as the HDMI connection, I have never used it, but I believe the intensity card is having problems capturing from this camera. Check there site on this.

Thomas

[Dixter]

If you hook the HV20 camera up to either the Blackmagic card or a TV or projector then you are bypassing the compression that the camera uses to lay the footage down to tape. So the HDMI port is footage that is not compressed and such you will not see compression artifacts.

One of the biggest benefit for using cineform is that its lossless across generations of compression when capturing from the firewire port from the tape. so for example, you can caputure the footage from tape, it gets converted to AVI from M2t and you put the AVI into your editor and then back out in a number of formats ( your choice) and the footage retains the original quality...

Cineform also just happens to support the Blackmagic card if you go that route. And it can also upconvert the HV20 8 bit to 10 bit...

So with the Blackmagic card, cineform, you can get as close to 2K 10bit footage for a cheap camera.

[marshmallowburger]

However, with Blackmagic you don't want to go to tape right? You want to record live from HDMI to your PC? Otherwise if you're just using Blackmagic to capture the output from the HDMI port when playing from tape you're still dealing with compressed footage, no?

[bluegrass]

"One of the biggest benefit for using cineform is that its lossless across generations of compression when capturing from the firewire port from the tape." I think I need to go to the cineform's website to see if they explain exactly what cineform can do and where in the chain of video processing it does it's thing.

1. I still don't get it. Are you saying the cineform takes a HDV(which is video that has been compresssed) and can magically transfer the file back into an uncompressed format which you say is typically an AVI file? That really is fm. I didn't know that was possible.

2. So are m2t files considered HDV?

3. Are all m2t files created equal, byte for byte, when captured from the same source but via different apps? Another confusing fact is my Pinnacle Studio 10.7 names it's HD captured files with an m2v extension instead of mt2. I guess these m2v files that Pinnacle creates might be proprietary to Pinnacle Studio. Incidentally, most folks that have Pinnacle have a love-hate relationshipe with their products. When they finally get to where they work correctly, it's a great editor and very easy to put a good product out.

4. Is an HD clip that is written to a tape from the camera considered an m2t file while it's on the tape or only after a capture app writes it to disk?

[marshmallowburger]

I think what they're saying is with HDV, every time you cut you're going to have to re-compress the footage because it doesn't store every frame. You could be cutting on some kind of interpolated frame and thus the footage has to be re-rendered/re-compressed which can incur some generational loss?

Seems like Cineform's codec stores every frame individually, so you get no loss when editing. You'll get one generational loss going to HDV from their codec, but from the looks of it it's minimal if noticeable at all.

But the idea I guess is to edit using their format--then every time you want to cut, you cut on their intermediate file. In the end, you output to whatever your destination compression is...and thus no generational loss from editing. Just the final compression artifacts from your final output (DVD, H.264, whatever)

And then going from HDMI to straight Cineform gives you the best visual quality since their (huge) compression format is pretty close to lossless, as is the data coming out of the HDMI port.

But--that's just my guess! :)

[unconsenting]

Yeah. That's right. I just got the Cineform NEO HDV 15 day fully functional demo and it can capture each clip I recorded separately, like HDVSplit. Since I record only it 24p, there is an option in the preferences that can remove the 3:2 pulldown without flags, on the fly! It usually takes a couple of frames to find the cadence, but just have that in mind when recording.

It also has a function to capture as an MOV instead of AVI, or you can convert them later. This program is definitely worth $250.

Thomas

[Mal]

Yeah. That's right. I just got the Cineform NEO HDV 15 day fully functional demo and it can capture each clip I recorded separately, like HDVSplit.


Sounds neat!
Might try the demo also...

[Mal]

Okay, this really seems to be the ONE-STEP solution currently for HV20 owners: NEO HDV
http://www.cineform.com/products/NeoHD.htm

Seems to capture just fine (AMD XP64 with XP Pro); can capture to m2t only, m2t + MOV or AVI, or MOV or AVI only.
Has auto pulldown removal.

And can automatically resize during capture to 1280x720 (something I like, as I find that's big enough).

I like this right now, as it is very simple. Unfortunately I am not clever enough to successfully use the "Farnsworth capture process" mentioned in the other sticky.

If anyone wants to see what the HV20 footage looks like at 23.970fps, NEO HDV seems to be the way to go; even if it's just for the trial download which works for 15 days. Cost as mentioned is $250.00.

They seem to be very close to have a Mac version too.

Thanks for this find.

[Ranger99]

Cost as mentioned is $250.00.

Actually, B&H Photo has the old version - Connect HD - for $189. There's a free upgrade to NEO HDV until August and cineform's site. I think that's the best option right now.

[miglo]

Actually, B&H Photo has the old version - Connect HD - for $189. There's a free upgrade to NEO HDV until August and cineform's site. I think that's the best option right now.

Still too damn expensive just for the ability to download proper 24p clips. Something Canon *should* have included as a util for us.

[marshmallowburger]

You sure you don't need the $650 version? It says on the site that only the more expensive one can do 1920x1080 footage. I guess the HDV format only saves 1440x1080 though? So the 1920x1080 would only be useful for capturing from HDMI?

[CBarce]

You sure you don't need the $650 version? It says on the site that only the more expensive one can do 1920x1080 footage. I guess the HDV format only saves 1440x1080 though? So the 1920x1080 would only be useful for capturing from HDMI?

1920 x 1080 is pixels on chip used. HDV as recorded to tape goes to 1440 x 1080, with non-square aspect ratio... So capturing from tape with Neo HDV is fine. I just got Connect HD as indicated above, and will be upgrading to the Neo, though it appears to me, Connect is virtually the same, in GUI...

[SSzudzik]

NEO is the way I will go in the future, but right now it does not work on Windows Vista and it's not worth it to me to downgrade back to XP just for one application.

Right now, the Farnsworth method is working well for me with the workflow application that I wrote around the process (links to that in the Farnsworth thread). I don't do too much with 24p yet, so it's sufficient for my purposes.

Once NEO gets Vista support though, I'm all over it!

--Steve

[sajid]

1. I still don't get it. Are you saying the cineform takes a HDV(which is video that has been compresssed) and can magically transfer the file back into an uncompressed format which you say is typically an AVI file? That really is fm. I didn't know that was possible.


No. It wont magically transfer the file back into uncompressed (i.e, shed its HDV compression artifacts). Rather, It means that the HDV file just wont get much worse if you keep editing it, because it will be converted into a format that is more resistant to edits.



2. So are m2t files considered HDV?


Indeed. They are the original MPeg2 Transport streams. I.e, original HDV files. Most products, like IMovieHD, convert HDV into an Intermediate file format (AIC for IMovieHD) in order to make Editing better. You can consider Cineform such an intermediate codec.



3. Are all m2t files created equal, byte for byte, when captured from the same source but via different apps?

Presumably so, though a different app may include slightly different information in the header, so a byte-for-byte equality may not be technically accurate. In any event, the image data itsself should be byte-for-byte the same.



4. Is an HD clip that is written to a tape from the camera considered an m2t file while it's on the tape or only after a capture app writes it to disk?


Usually, as I mentioned, apps like IMovieHD will capture and convert to an intermediate codec to make editing easier. Even then, however, the original files captured are m2t. In order to capture m2t directly, without conversion into intermediate codecs, you need software like HDVSplit. Most software wont edit m2t natively eiether, so you need software like MPEG Stream Clip (with the quick-time compnent) to do that.