Cineform Neo Scene or Neo HD?

Laurence wrote on 1/6/2009, 7:10 AM
I currently have the recently orphaned Neo HDV and am looking to take advantage of either the Neo Scene or Neo HD upgrade paths.

Here are the advantages of Neo HD over Neo Scene:

> support for Active Metadata

This leads me to three questions:

1/ What are some of the uses of the DirectShow encoder access?

2/ What new features are likely to be in the new Neo HD v4 that might be worthwhile to a Vegas user such as myself?

3/ Will Neo Scene not work with a Sony EX1 or EX3?

So far the most compelling reason to choose Neo HD over Neo Scene would be the avi to mov rewrapping (which I currently have under Neo HDV).

Comments

David Newman wrote on 1/6/2009, 6:00 PM
1. We have people building their own HDMI/ HDSDI capture solutions, NEO HD allows for this, Neo Scene does not. Neo Scene only has VfW and a DirectShow decoder, whereas NEO HD add a registered CineForm DirectShow encoder.

2. Way cool stuff. :) A lot of Active Metadata features.

3. Neo Scene is only for consumer HDV and AVCHD. XDCAM EX1/3 is more a pro level product, requiring NEO HD.
Laurence wrote on 1/8/2009, 6:56 AM
Active Metadata stuff is probably cool but I have no idea of what it is let alone how I might use it.

What I would really like to see is for the HD Link utility (or whatever replaces it) to be able to output useful delivery formats like Flash, Youtube uploadable H.264, DVD ready mpeg2 and Blu-ray ready mpeg2, mpeg4 and audio AC3. Currently this is a pain because so many conversion utilities don't recognize the Cineform codec avis.
David Newman wrote on 1/8/2009, 2:21 PM
If those tool don't reconize CineForm they are broken given that we work in all common media layers (Dshow, VfW and QT.) Send tech. support notes to any company not loading CineForm AVIs, we will happily help them if they have any questions. Maybe you should check again, as we used to have issue with some tools using the DShow AVI Synth reader, but that now works also.

As for Active Metadata, this allows for color and look modelling as a decoder function, much faster than adding correctors in an NLE, and much cooler results. You used to have this for RAW cameras only, SI, Red ,etc, but we are taking it to all cameras and beyond Premiere Pro and Mac.

David
jabloomf1230 wrote on 1/8/2009, 5:38 PM
MPEG Streamclip is freeware and it will convert to and from CFHD from a wide variety of video formats:

http://www.squared5.com/

Since Cineform comes with both VFW & DirectShow decoders, I'm surprised that any 3rd party conversion utilities wouldn't be able to handle a Cineform AVI as input.
Laurence wrote on 1/8/2009, 5:43 PM
Well right off the bat, three that won't handle Cineform are On2 Flix, the DivX convertor and Apple Quicktime Pro, at least not in my experience they won't.

Will the Directshow encoder work with Bluff titler? I would probably go with Neo HD for Bluff Titler compitability alone if it does.

Also, will Neo HD do invisible alpha layers? That's something I really would pay for.
David Newman wrote on 1/8/2009, 11:00 PM
Apple QuickTime Pro works here, but I know Dixv Convertor is broken, have you filed are bug report with them? If not, please do as the Dixv guys are local to us, they can call for help easily.

BlufferTitler has potential but is has bugs in its DShow export (doesn't work well with other DShow encoders either), but it biggest error is only support alpha channels on uncompressed exports, CineForm has a 4:4:4:4 compressed encoder, yet BlufferTitler currently doesn't even try to use it. Another support call for you. If you get them to add a compressed alpha channel export option, I sell you the NEO 4K at NEO HD price -- you need NEO 4K for 4:4:4:4 stuff.

David
David Newman wrote on 1/15/2009, 5:10 PM
Bluff Titler and CineForm have now released dates so they work much better together.

You can now enocder with transparency directly into a CineForm 4:4:4:4 AVI, pretty cool (titles compress so well that a 4:4:4:4 encode will be 10-15 times smaller than the uncompressed equivalent.)

Need the latest Bluff Titler and build 191 of NEO 4K
http://02bb6aa.netsolhost.com/downloads/NEO4kv348b191-090115.zip

David Newman
CTO, CineForm

David
Laurence wrote on 1/15/2009, 7:26 PM
Too cool, but Neo 4K is still a little (a lot) too expensive for me.

David Newman wrote on 1/15/2009, 8:23 PM
You lost you opportunity to get NEO 4K for the price of NEO HD, instead I contacted them to get this fixed -- they where incredibly responsive. The offer is still open is you get persude any of the others that don't support CineForm to ammend their ways. If you can get any of them to fix their tool or simply contact me requesting info on how to fix the issue, you can have NEO 4K for a tiny $250 upgrade (vs $750 for a regular NEO HDV to NEO 4K upgrade.) If you persude two companies with a failing tool to do the same, you will get NEO 4K for free. The offer is open to everyone.

David Newman
CTO, CineForm
http://twitter.com/David_Newman