I believe you will find that many people here are using the CineForm codec. It was shipped as part of Vegas 6, 7, & Pro 8 but unfortunately not with Vegas Pro 9.0 :( You can buy it for $99 USD (NeoScene) and it's a great way to work with 3rd part application in HD because it can stand up to lots of re-rendering. It is the only way to work with multi-camera HD footage and get decent frame rates. It also has the additional advantage of removing pull-down from HDV cameras like the Z1 and give you true 24p footage. I use it a lot for going back and forth between Vegas and After Effects and believe it's an essential tool if you're working in HD.
The only con is that it takes up more disc space that highly compressed codecs but that's a small price to pay for speed of editing.
Did either Sony or Cineform ever explain why Cineform was dropped from Vegas 9?
I'd like to echo the previous question: if I have Vegas 8 Pro installed along with 9, can I use Cineform in 9?
If you buy it, you'll be able to use it in all versions of Vegas, including both 32-bit and 64-bit.
The only slight downside that I see to using Cineform is a slight change in how color is mapped. When I encode the same clip to Cineform and PicVideo and then put the two rendered clips on tracks above the original, I see that the Cineform colors are slightly less vivid - I simply correct a bit before the final render (or, if going onto the web, I add a good bit of contrast). Search this forum for details on Cineform color handling.
Oh, yes, and with 60p files, you may need a pair of disks in a RAID 0 array in order to preview the clips smoothly, for the data rate of single disks may not be sufficient for smooth playback of the huge files.
Nevertheless, Cineform is my intermediate of choice for smooth editing of .MP4/AVCHD files, and for providing the TL with clips that all have the same codec (Vegas likes that). And I always output to Cineform 60p, for I always have the option later for degrading it for DVD (MPEG2 720 interlaced) or the web (24p) or BD (interlaced) or - hopefully soon - BD with progressive.
"Did either Sony or Cineform ever explain why Cineform was dropped from Vegas 9?"
Sony quit paying Cineform to license the codec. Cineform continued to allow Sony to use the v2.8 Cineform codec for a while but eventually just had to pull the plug.
I just spent the $99 for NeoScene but eventually upgraded to NeoHD to be able to use "First Light" and also have the ability to capture directly to the Cineform codec from my Blackmagic Intensity Pro card.
Also, the Cineform codec included with Vegas was limited to HDV resolution of 1440x1080 and could only be used for encoding from within Vegas itself. NeoScene and NeoHD support full 1920x1080 and can be used in any video program installed on your machine, like Virtual Dub or After Effects.
At least Cineform is available in Vegas if you have NeoHD (I have no idea if it'll show up with NeoScene), all I know is that I have a "CineForm x64 Codec v6.4.1" under the .AVI custom settings' Video Format drop down list.
From what I can see, it is not limited to 1440x1080.
I have Vegas Pro 9.0e 64-bit, running on a 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate.
"It was shipped as part of Vegas 6, 7, & Pro 8 but unfortunately not with Vegas Pro 9.0 :( "
Never being one to try to hide my ignorance... It was?! I have Vegas 6, 7 & Pro 8, and have never seen references to Cineform in the render settings. There's Quicktime, Real Media, several flavors of Main Concept, etc.
How does one access the Cineform codec when rendering?
"Cineform converts 5.1 audio to stereo. This may be a downside for some people or projects. "
Yes... you can get around this however.... albeit a bit of a pain.
Convert to cineform and import
Ungroup and delete the audio track
Import the original M2TS files
Ungroup and delete the video track
Group the remaining 5.1 sound track and cineform video track
yes - I bought it back when I only had HDV cams. I was using a 32-bit version of Vegas, and had to render out complex projects in pieces, then put the pieces together to get the entire project to output with yet another render. If you use a really lossy codec, like HDV, the multiple-generation rendering looks sorry.
I also wanted to use Cineform for output from Virtual Dub.
NeoScene certainly is worth the $99 U.S. that I paid.
That's great because I'm making my first hour-long HD project that has to be done in sections anyway. This annual project was easy enough in SD because I would just render all the sections to lossless .avi but now I'm having problems.
I keep getting undetermined errors (with an intel 2.5 ghz quadcore and 8 GB memory) when trying to render to the HDV template (Audio: 48,000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo, PCM Uncompressed.
Video: 29.97 fps, 1440x1080, Upper field first.
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.333, using CineForm HDV codec. OpenDML compatible.)
I shoot with the Canon XHA1 so I'm guessing this is the best template to use.
I have done the memory trick thing (app can handle > 2GB) but I'm still only showing up to 2.5 being used and 30% CPU usage.
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Randy
"Sony quit paying Cineform to license the codec. Cineform continued to allow Sony to use the v2.8 Cineform codec for a while but eventually just had to pull the plug."
I was more interested in the "why". Was it just a cost-saving issue for Sony, or did Sony believe they were offering a substitute that was as good or better than Cineform?