Cineform and Vegas: two cats in a bag?

vtxrocketeer wrote on 12/19/2011, 2:04 PM

This is NOT a criticism of either cat. I just wonder if they get along anymore.

I'm a long time user of Vegas and Cineform (NeoScene) as my preferred intermediate codec for multi-generational edits. Starting at Vegas 10, 32 or 64 bit, compatibility with Cineform avi's presented increasingly prickly but not intractable issues.

In Vegas 11 ( Build 425) my Cineform-based projects got real twitchy, but still I managed to edit end render. I turned off GPU support and that helped much (likely because I have an older GPU).

Now I installed Build 510/511 and Vegas suddenly can't/won't render to a Cineform intermediate ("codec not found" or words to that effect). Ever. Uninstall, reinstall Cineform to ensure the latest codec version. Same. I switch to Lagarith -- no problem; butter smooth renders. Back to Cineform, won't render. Vegas sometimes crashes, but mostly just gracefully tells me that it can't locate a correct codec. Huh?

I'm sure this will invite posts of folks with no problems -- that's OK by me. My point is to draw attention to the TREND: anecdotal forum reports here and elsewhere seem to validate my suspicion and present woes that Vegas and the Cineform codec are like two cats in a bag.

I spent some time today taking a hard look at Lagarith and UT, among other lossless avi codecs. But I have MOUNTAINS of Cineform files that I will need to access in the future and, dangit, I paid for a license for working software. (Also, I have finite amounts of storage; Cineform is real nice in this regard.)

What say others, especially as to Build 510/511 and Cineform?

-Steve

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Serena wrote on 12/21/2011, 11:42 PM

"We do have a known issue listed which matches this issue in our database - to be resolved in a future update of the application."

I reported this note from Sony earlier in the thread, but people don't always read back beyond the last post.

vtxrocketeer wrote on 12/22/2011, 8:13 AM

Serena, I wasn't sure if you were addressing me, but I didn't fail to read your earlier remark. In fact, I read it so carefully that I paid attention the use of the article "a" in "a known issue." Which one? The one I described? General incompatibility between CF and Vegas? I couldn't find the quoted passage in SCS's knowledge base.

I don't mean to pick nits, but the complaints against CF and Vegas compatibility on this forum and others appear to cover a range of symptoms. I was just posting about one that is specific to this combination, and not, for instance, about black frames that plagues the use of other avi codecs.

John_Cline wrote on 12/22/2011, 8:49 AM

"The Vegas/Cineform problem seems to be related, each company being comfortable that their own product is flawless and that the responsibility for fixing integration problems lies with the partner."

If I were a betting man, I would wager that Cineform is infinitely closer to flawless than Vegas. I have seen the occasional black frame in the past using codecs other than Cineform.

That said, I have have not seen a single black frame using Vegas v11-64 (511) and Cineform Neo.

Serena wrote on 12/22/2011, 6:37 PM

VTX: I was sure you had read that so I was just reminding others. The note from Sony was a reply to my long-standing ticket on clips going black, although I've also had the occasional black frame, and indeed the "cure" (generally very temporary) is to close and reopen the project. Sony are saying, at long last, that they recognise that the problem exists, is a Vegas problem, is related to memory handling, and they will try to fix it some time in the future. I think the "knowledge base" referred to is a "to-do" list on the developers' notepad.

John: absolutely! Cineform have much at stake in their professional users and I wonder how tiny is the proportion of those using Vegas? I suggest that Cineform are concerned by the problem only because they are interested in all their customers, not because Vegas is important to them.

PeterDuke wrote on 12/22/2011, 7:52 PM

So far as the thread title is concerned, I interpreted it to mean that the two products were the cats, not their respective owners. I am sure that the owners are doing their best to make their pets coexist.

VanLazarus wrote on 12/29/2011, 8:47 PM

I just recently encountered the dreaded 'No compatible video codec was found." when trying to render to Cineform in Vegas 11 Build 425 and 511. I had just reinstalled my OS and upgraded to Neoscene 5.6.1.

I read everyone elses problem on this thread and then decided to reinstall the version I had of Neoscene previously... version 5.3.0.

Voila... I can render to Cineform again in Vegas.

Here is a public link to the version of Neoscene that works for me. Hopefully it helps others solve their problem.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/651378/NeoScene-5.3.0.298-Setup.exe

vtxrocketeer wrote on 12/29/2011, 10:55 PM

VanLazarus, that worked for me, too! Thanks. I'm delighted. (So, maybe, a kitten and a cat are in the bag now?)

Try as I might, I couldn't find where to download previous versions of NeoScene from Cineform's site, so your making available the earlier version is the ticket.

I'm just a little paranoid about installing an old version, but I'm not about to argue with success. Perhaps an updated Vegas build from SCS will allow use of the newest version of the CF codec.

taji wrote on 12/20/2012, 2:01 PM

Is anyone else still having this problem in Vegas 11 or 12? Or is there any news on this?

When I try to render to AVI/Cineform I'm getting the same error: "No compatible video codec was found". Vegas reads and plays back the Cineform codec fine, it just won' t render.

I own Vegas 10.0e and I just upgraded to the Vegas 12.0 demo hoping to resolve this issue but I'm still getting the same message in both versions.

I've installed and uninstalled Cineform GoPro studio multiple times and whether it's installed or not doesn't matter, Vegas reports the same error message.

I can't believe that Sony would leave a bug like this in place over 3 major releases. I'm worried it may be my machine.

Has anyone found a work around?

vtxrocketeer wrote on 12/20/2012, 2:10 PM

Whoa! Now this is an old thread.

Has anyone found a work around?

Other than the one that worked above?

I haven't touched my install of Cineform NeoScene since last year. With version 5.3.0, it works well now, but I'm pretty fed up with the klunky registration and chronic in-fighting with Vegas. Were it not for the excellent space savings relative to lossless avi codecs (free ones!), I would have ditched CF some time ago.

Maybe others will chime in with more positive experiences.

diverG wrote on 12/20/2012, 2:19 PM

@ taji.

Now that you have installed & uninstalled Cineform GoPro don't trial GrassValley Edius.It will not run. Uninstalling GoPro takes out key dlls.
Reinstalling GoPro restores the dlls and allows Edius to run.
GrassValley & GoPro are aware of the problen.

taji wrote on 12/20/2012, 6:05 PM

@diverG: Uh, thanks for the feedback. As much as I'm frustrated with Vegas, I have no plans of trying Edius.

@vtxrocketeer: I'm not using NeoScene. I'm using the free Cineform GoPro codecs for Windows here:

http://gopro.com/3d-cineform-studio-software-download/

They work fine in MPEGStreamClip for rendering, but not in Vegas (I checked online and the GoPro codecs should decode and encode). I'd hate to have to buy a $300.00 software package in order to downgrade to a version that works with Vegas. Is that what everyone else is doing? I'm somewhat surprised that no one else has hit this issue since GoPro came out last year. The playback in Vegas with the Cineform encoded files is really smooth. I just would like to render in Vegas as well.

As a test, I just installed Vegas 10.0e x64 on a clean install of of Windows 7 X64. No other video codecs have been installed. I get the same error.

diverG wrote on 12/21/2012, 2:56 PM

GoPro Studio Cineform works in VP12 & 11 but not in my experience with Edius. Edius (Canapus) have released their avi codecs and they work fine in the latest VP12 update. There was a thread about this some months back. Compared to cineforn edius avis are large but storage s relatively cheap.