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Previously I posted “Avid Media Composer: Offline-Online Basic Instructions”, at http://blog.davidesp.com/archives/315.  But that approach seemed a little quirky, what with renaming Avid subfolders etc.   By accident, while searching on Avid MC AMA-linking to Cineform-encoded video, I stumbled upon a forum discussion http://community.avid.com/forums/t/94905.aspx not only covering this but also how to go about (instead) using MXF ingest initially to small files (DNxHD 36) for cutting and subsequent re-ingest/replacement (DNxHD 128) for grading and final product etc.  The advice given in the forum was that the AMA approach was faster but more fragile than the MXF approach.  I guess the best of both worlds would be a workflow initially using AMA (eg for rush-edits) but then migrating to MXF for the full professional treatment.

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Discovered:

• Best quality level to use for grading is FilmScan1.
  • The next one down, High, is only for final product, as intermediate totranscode from.
  • The next level up, FilmScan2, is “overkill”.
• Tech Blog (many subjects)
  • http://techblog.cineform.com/?page_id=1288
• HDLink
  • I should make more use of this in my workflow.  It does batch-conversion etc. and people like its deinterlacing quality.
  • http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/cineform-software-showcase/97451-how-does-hd-link-de-interlace-50i-25p.html
    • Q: How does HDLink perform its de-interlacing?
    • A: It doesn’t drop fields, it uses both to extract the best vertical resolution.
      • No elaboration given.  Could it be some kind of smart selection between interpolation (single-field) for dynamic scenes and blending (of each field-pair) for static scenes.  It would be interesting to compare against my standard motion-compensated approach (using AviSynth>TDeint) and indeed the new one explained on the Sony Vegas forum by Nick Hope http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=768368&Replies=12.
• Firstlight
  • Does more than I imagined!
    • Has translation/projection adjustments (e.g. frame, zoom, pan)
    • It has “looks” (via LUT’s) e.g. “Bleach Bypass”.  Can scroll through them (e.g. via up/down arrow keys)
    • Can be keyframed hence dynamically changing (e.g. a pan to follow a moving object or adjust level/hue as sun sinks).
    • Can copy & paste attributes between different clips (select-all>Paste to make all clips have the same style)
    • Can “branch” projects to provide a dropdown-selectable menu of alternative grades/looks.
    • Great suggestions for incorporation in workflow:
      • While one person is editing, another can be grading.
      • Tip: store FirstLight projectsin DropBox folders, then everyonbe sees same instant-updates (e.g. extra alternative styles).
  • http://community.avid.com/forums/t/98416.aspx
    • Possible there exists a problem when used with Avid Media Composer 5.5.2 (at least).
    • Conjecture: (if) First Light … is OpenGL accelerated when dealing with Cineform media (then) when it is handed to to other applications, the playback and processing of the LUT (metadata) is all CPU, thus causing a performance discrepency.
• Vimeo: Cineform Examples & Tutorials & Groups:
  • http://vimeo.com/canetoad/videos
    • David Newman’s Videos
  • http://vimeo.com/groups/cineform
    • Created and moderated by Jake Segraves od Cineform.
      • http://vimeo.com/13021420 = “CineForm Tutorial for San Diego’s 48 Hour Film Project”
      • http://vimeo.com/11886542 = “Introduction to FirstLight — Part 1″
      • http://vimeo.com/11887177 = “Introduction to FirstLight — Part 2″
      • http://vimeo.com/10024749 = “CineForm FirstLight color correction through Dropbox”
  • http://vimeo.com/channels/cineform
  • http://vimeo.com/27220198
    • Cineform Workflow in Post Production - Part 1

Prevoius post http://blog.davidesp.com/archives/214 said (quoted):

• High quality is for finished material (e.g. to be output to DVD/BluRay) …
• …but if further grading is a possibility then use Filmscan 1.  Filmscan 2 is overkill.
• For extensive post, filmscan and 4:4:4 is probably a benefit. But note that 4:4:4:4 requires lots of power and raid arrays.

New, from http://techblog.cineform.com/?cat=100&paged=2

• For most workhorse acquisition, post, and rendering uses we recommend either High or Film Scan.
  • By the way, the background on the naming of “Film Scan” is that this mode was designed to accurately reproduce the characteristic of film grain during film scanning.
• Certain applications don’t exploit the temporal nature of the CineForm algorithm, and resulting YUV file sizes are approximately 25% larger than (otherwise).  This doesn’t impact visual quality, only compressed file size.  These applications include Sony Vegas and Apple Final Cut Pro.
• Also for consideration: When selecting a higher quality setting (FS1 versus High for instance) the recorded files are larger (and) more CPU (is used) for real-time playback.

It is possible to export to [QuickTime>Neo] and then eve to AMA-link to it:

• • http://techblog.cineform.com/?p=3137
    • Steps:
    1. File->Export
    2. Select “Send to QT Movie” in the Export Setting dropdown at the
       bottom of the export window.
    3. Select an output location and input output file name.
    4. Click “Options” to the right of the Export Setting dropdown
       1. In the “Options” window:
       2. Export As: “QuickTime Movie”
       3. Width x Height: match your source or input desired scale size
       4. Select “601/709″ if you have NOT selected “Enable 4:4:4 encoding”. If
          you have, select “RGB”
       5. Display Aspect Ratio: “Native Dimensions” if you are not scaling,
          desired output if you are.
    5. Click “Format Options…”
       1. Sound: Checked, uncompressed, 48kHz, 16-bit, Stereo
    6. Click “Settings”
       1. Compression Type: CineForm HD/4K/3D
       2. Frame Rate: Current
       3. Depth: Millions of Colors+
       4. Quality (Set at user discretion, recommended “High” or “Best”)
    7. Quality Options: “Enable 4:4:4 encoding” and “Interlaced video
       source” are options to use at your discretion
    8. Click “OK” as you navigate back to the original “Export” window, and click “OK” again to start your export.
    9. Upon completion, go back to your project bin, right-click and select “Link to AMA File(s)…” and
       navigate to your new file.
    • For 3D projects, you will want to do one of these renders for each eye, then mux the outputs back together for a 3D master, as described here: http://techblog.cineform.com/?p=3071

However one person found that while the basic codec worked OK with Avid MC, the FirstLight LUT-altering aspect did not:

•  http://community.avid.com/forums/t/98416.aspx

Compression formats for Digital Intermediates when using Sony Vegas:

• http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=770173
  • Cineform for highest quality (smart-renderable)
    • Cineform (is great for transfer) between After Effects and Vegas.
  • MXF for almost the same quality at a fraction of the size.
    • MXF previews beautifully off small bus-powered USB 2 drives.
  • Quicktime .mov with png compression for anything with a transparent alpha layer.
  • Quicktime .mov with Avid DNxHD codec for Handbrake encoding intermediary and for working with the FCP world.

Details (again from the above link) about use of MXF:

• The big thing with MXF is to make sure that you use it interlaced even (if) you are using progressive footage.  …set it using one of the interlaced templates but set the deinterlace method to none.
  • The reason this is important is that Vegas will only smart-render .mxf footage flagged as interlaced. If you set the MXF render properties to progressive, it won’t smart-render. If you set the properties to interlaced and select either blend fields or interpolate, it will screw up resizes and renders to other formats.
• MXF with a smart-render is very cool. The format looks wonderful and no damage is done as you smart-render sections into a final piece.
  • MXF without a smart-render isn’t really good enough. MXF will not hold up to successive rerenders like Cineform or a lossless codec.

Neo HD and Neo 4K are now one and the same product: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=761965 - read down the post, it gets mentioned.

Summary:

• Cineform copes nicely with non-standard formats but DNxHD does not.

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Summary of my conclusions from my own limited experiments based around Sony Vegas (9.0e 64-bit):

• For HD 1080-50i, in its corresponding mode, DNxHD works as well as or better than Cineform.
• However for non-standard formats (like Vimeo SD-Wide 853×480), DNxHD does not work well while Cineform does.
  • Confirmed by separate experiment, reported separately.
• For my experiments (Sony Vegas 9.0e-64) the following DNxHD settings made no difference:
  • LevelSpace: RGB/709
  • Quality: 50% (default) or 100%

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http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/cineform-software-showcase/133853-importing-cineform-into-virtualdub-601-709-rgb-issues.html Importing Cineform into Virtualdub, 601, 709, RGB issues

Which modes of Cineform are appropriate under which circumstances:

• Paraphrased from [http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=742985&Replies=3, as of 2010-12-23]
  • NeoScene and NeoHD uses can select 4:2:2 in any quality.
  • High quality is for finished material (e.g. to be output to DVD/BluRay) but if further grading is a possibility then use Filmscan 1
    • Filmscan 2 is overkill.
  • Neo4K and Neo3D users also get 4:4:4 and 4:4:4:4 support.
    • Requesting these modes with (other variants of the software?) will result in a watermark.
    • For extensive post, filmscan and 4:4:4 is probably a benefit.
    • 4:4:4:4 requires lots of power and raid arrays.
  • The uncompressed mode should generally be avoided - it is only intended for camera acquisition to save battery power.

Cineform is a codec for digital intermediates.  When used in appropriate ways, it offers visually lossless compression/decompression.  Some quality reduction does occur but only to a degree that is not important to (or even noticeable by) most people’s eyes, even after several rounds of compression/recompression.  In contrast, delivery formats such as DV, DVD, XDCAM-EX are suitable only for a single round of compression/decompression, and even then are lossy (lose quality) to a degree that many people can notice, especially when playback is paused at a single frame.