Cineform restrictions

ddm wrote on 7/22/2015, 2:35 PM
I just have the GoPro software installed on my system that gives me access to the cineform codec, which I thought might be a viable candidate for creating a master of my most recent project. I ultimately needed a ProRes master for the client so I did some tests with cineform out of Vegas and imported into Final Cut no problem, all gamma levels looked very good. Ok, set, done, fini. Once I rendered the complete project (65 minutes) I found that now nothing on the mac would open the rendered cineform file. It kept seeing it as a movie file but only of 5 minutes in length. Exactly 5 minutes and would not open in FCP or Premiere or Compressor. Weird, my sample cineform files still worked like a charm but of course they were short avi's, all under 5 minutes in length. So that was a bust, had to go the DNxHD route, not a big deal, but now, I was building a bluray and decided to use the cineform avi render and found it has a huge crosshair across the whole image. A watermark of sorts. Sure enough, the original cineform avi is fine, and the DNxHD file that I generated in Veags from that same cineform file is fine in DVD Architect, but the original cineform avi in DVD Architect is watermarked. I can only assume that the "free" codec that comes with the gopro studio software does have some restrictions. Which is their prerogative, of course, and I don't really have a problem with that, just did not know that. Anyone have the same issue?

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 7/22/2015, 3:34 PM
Cineform will encode as AVI or MOV.
The MOV doesn't work on your Mac?
Are you keeping the files under 4GB?
videoITguy wrote on 7/22/2015, 4:18 PM
ddm: Aside from the use within GoPro equipment - Cineform codec has been designed to use as a digital intermediate in the production workflow.

Note that Cineform has never ever been acceptable as a videostream input for DVDAPro - that is an SCS control issue and that result is what you expect to get.
If you use Cineform as a DI inside VegasPro for comp and nesting work - then output the correct form of digital video stream by SCS template - you will be fine in DVDAPro.

Cineform is a codec that can be held in either .avi or .mov containers , in fact even freely rewrapped between the two. As far as .mov handling on a PC - the environment is restricted to a 32 bit mode - hence would have some serious drawbacks to more robust handling in MAC native 64bit environs. AFAIK - you can transfer .mov PC to a MAC but may involve some gotchas like limited file size -
again AFAIK - Cineform is best handled on the PC in an .avi container and maybe rewrapped to .mov for transfers if that is necessary.
ddm wrote on 7/22/2015, 4:35 PM
I used avi, larger than 4 gb (35 gb). As I said, I had tried short tests and they went into any and all mac programs without issue, of course, they were smaller than 4 gb. Should that matter? The XAVC and MOV files that I routinely use between mac and pc don't seem to have a 4 gb restriction, but that might be it, I guess, but the crosshair watermark in DVDArchitect seems odd, never seen that before, and Architect is usually very particular about what sort of files it allows you to use. DVDA could clearly use the whole file as I had chapters throughout and could preview them all.
musicvid10 wrote on 7/22/2015, 6:46 PM
On Mac with FAT32 drives everything is limited to 4 GB.
On NTFS with 64 bit file headers you can go bigger.

Really, I consider DNxHD to be a less troublesome cross-platform format, and it's smaller.



ddm wrote on 7/22/2015, 8:40 PM
No fat32 drives, I usually do everything across a network with a shared drive on my PC.

I ended up going DNxHD but I was just testing several different formats into Final Cut from Vegas, to check out if there was any gamma shifting going on and Cineform was one of my choices and it went into final cut fine, as did XAVC-I. These were short files, no problem. Big file... no go. That 5 minutes exactly thing got me suspicious, and then the watermark in DVDA had me thinking some kind of limitation in Cineform (the free version). Like some sort of copy protection.
musicvid10 wrote on 7/23/2015, 7:13 AM
Hint: Try exporting DNxHD 10 bit 444 as your intermediate from a float project.
Superior dithering, less banding than exporting 8 bit from Vegas.
We covered this here:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/showmessage.asp?forumid=4&messageid=887211
ddm wrote on 7/23/2015, 2:35 PM
>>> Try exporting DNxHD 10 bit 444 as your intermediate

Seems like a good idea. I did a render from vegas to hdcam sr lite and that looked better than dnx 175 8 bit (as it should, I suppose), almost exactly the same file size (85gb). Not as slow as dnx either. The hdcam sr lite did not go into final cut but it did open in Adobe Media Encoder and I successfully rendered out to ProRes from there, which is my best master, to date.

Also, just an FYI to anyone else interested, AVI uncompressed and AVI Sony YUV from vegas both were viable in Final Cut and Media Encoder but both had dramatic gamma shifts when converting to ProRes. Unusable.
musicvid10 wrote on 10/26/2015, 8:52 PM

Encoded in Mainconcept (8 bit) from generated media in a float project:



Encoded to 10 bit Sony YUV for final 8 bit encode in x264.



astar wrote on 10/27/2015, 5:38 AM
I replicated this test, and it seems like the artifacts in the 8-bit MC image is from GPU being enabled. The Artifacts are less in CPU only mode.

The Cineform low quality test, rendering in 32-bit VL, showed the same gradient as the project display with no blocks or banding. There was some very fine line banding that was very hard to make out, but that could be my TN display.

Sony AVC.mp4 in GPU Auto, from an 8-bit project, showed much less banding and no artifacts/blockyness compared to MC AVC with GPU. Sony AVC in 32-bit VL mode simply refined the lines over the 8-bit mode. But it was pretty hard to tell the difference in the 2 files.

Timeline GPU was enabled for all my tests.