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Cineform and Neoscene – Final Final :-)
I’m totally blown away, in a positive direction, with the performance of the Cineform DI versus Sony YUV. File size footprint is 23% of tSony YUV with nearly equal rendering times. Playback performance is noticeably better as well with SONY YUV Stuttering at times with Cineform smooth as silk on preview auto. It’s really a pity Sony quit including this codec in their release. Looks like an obvious cost savings on the license. Then again maybe they want you to use a cheaper/free license with motion-jpeg. This was the only other Codec I could render to at 1920X1080 24p. It was nearly a third the size of Cineform and took about 10% less time to render.
Anyone have any insights or experiences to share using MJPEG as a DI? Comparisons to Cineform appreciated.
Using Cineform to transcode mts to avi was a big benefit in the workflow with preview auto showing some stuttering wotking with *.mts with Cineform smooth as silk.
Although Sony still re-renders unedited cineform I’m much less concerned when I see the file size shrink by a factor of 8x. Clearly there’s some re-rendering/packaging going on here!
Last but least by a long-shot is Vegas-10 supports rendering full HD whereas 8.x only supported 1440×1080 with a pizel aspect ration of 1.33.
I’m a happier shelling out $130.00 to enable my 4tbs of archive to be used in Vegas 10
Cheers
FYI… Response from Cineform
Sony actually stopped including the codec a couple versions ago. The problem you’re having with version 10 not seeing the codec does require Neo Scene version 5.2.
so to answer your questions in order:
should codec be missing? yes, it doesn’t install in Vegas 10 and Vegas 10 requires version 5.2 of Neo Scene (prior versions are incompatible).
Why no discount for prior codec users? Sony doesn’t include the codec any more and hasn’t for a couple of versions. We don’t offer a discount on our already low priced Neo Scene product because you never actually owned a previous CineForm product. The codec was licensed through Sony and as I mentioned, they don’t include it with Vegas any more… and haven’t for a while.
For your question of the intermediates needing to be recompressed, this is most likely because they were not encoded using I-frames. When you convert your mts files into CineForm files, you need to select the I-frames option in the Neo Scene prefs window.
~Just because you can doesn’t mean you should~
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7 Replies
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[Bill Mash] “Anyone have any insights or experiences to share using MJPEG as a DI? Comparisons to Cineform appreciated.”
MJPEG has been a broadcast standard for many years. I see no reason not to use it as a digital intermediary, you just need to buy the codec if you want to render to it (Vegas only includes a decoder, not an encoder)
[Bill Mash] “I’m a happier shelling out $130.00 to enable my 4tbs of archive to be used in Vegas 10”
You would have been even happier if you purchased it from one of our Creative COW sponsors, Videoguys.com for $99 and use the Creative COW coupon COW5OFF and only paid $94 USD!
[Bill Mash] “Why no discount for prior codec users?”
Actually, had you purchased NeoScene 1.0 you would have gotten a discount on 5.2 like I did. As Cineform pointed out, you never owned a copy because you were using the one licensed by Sony.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Thanks for saving my $5 🙂
~Just because you can doesn’t mean you should~
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Vegas can actually render MJPEG (two different kinds) in a Quicktime wrapper.
There may be broadcast MJPEG standards, and it’s also common for some digital robotics video, but there was not real AVI standard for MJPEG. Back in the day, you could find a bunch of different flavors, with different small details that made it a pain to use.
CE companies actually came to understand this. And given that Apple actually had standardized MJPEG under Quicktime, many adoped this for their digital still camera video. Which is why so many DSC models produce .mov files rather than .avis or some other format.
I agree with John… I wouldn’t choose MJPEG as an intermediary format. And it’s pretty slow to render… maybe a problem with Vegas and Quicktime in general. I much prefer Cineform, but if I needed something free, I might use Avid’s DNxHD. Also also, also supported in Vegas under Quicktime, but designed specifically as an intermediate CODEC.
At some point Dirac/Dirac Pro might be worth looking at; these are from the BBC, and still kind of in experimenter’s form at present, but they’re Wavelet based, like Cineform. If you shoot in DCT (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MJPEG, DV, etc) you’re likely to get less loss, all things being equal, going to a non-DCT format for your intermediate CODEC. Editing DCT to DCT (and perhaps final rendering to another DCT CODEC) can tend to reinforce the DCT block boundaries (these work by breaking video up into “blocks”, originally 16×16, these days somewhat flexible… if you overcompress, you’ll actually see the block boundaries in your video).
-Dave
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I’m thinking to move from old Cinefrom HD to new Neoscene 5.x. I know I can’t upgrade so I have to buy it.
What do you mean about that ccow coupon?
Who is entitled to have it?
How? -
[fabio mereghetti] “I’m thinking to move from old Cinefrom HD to new Neoscene 5.x. I know I can’t upgrade so I have to buy it.”
I would check with CineForm. I believe I did the same thing. I had Connect HD and I upgraded to NeoScene.
[fabio mereghetti] “What do you mean about that ccow coupon?
Who is entitled to have it?
How?”It is meant for Creative COW members (that’s YOU) and if you watch the advertisements from VideoGuys.com that are on the sides of the forum, you’ll see one that has the COW5NOW coupon that gives you 5% off on any purchase at Videoguys.com. Since Videoguys sells NeoScene for $99 USD, that make the price $95. Videoguys is a great place to buy gear and they are a COW sponsor so do try to patronize them. I think you just type to coupon it an checkout time.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Thanks.
And do you know if Neoscene files will be compatible with Avisynth and Virtualdub and Sony Media manager (and Vegas 9, of course)?
Thanks again.
Edit: and does it ALWAYS deinterlace 50i sources?
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Yes it’s compatible with those other programs and it doesn’t deinterlace unless you tell it to (as far as I know).
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
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