CineForm goes open source

[Claude Lyneis]

Those of us that don’t qualify as a mad scientist, at least in the universe of codecs and compression, what is a mezzanine format and what can it do for us?

[Andrew Kimery]

Do you think any NLEs will adopt it/optimize for it though? If performance is still better with ProRes or DNx then CineForm probably isn’t going to go anywhere fast unfortunately.

-Andrew

[Shane Ross]

It’s Free! yaaay! It’s a great cross-platform codec! Yaaay!

Buuuuuut the networks won’t adopt it…they’ll keep asking for ProRes for another decade. And Avid will still work with DNxHR…Apple with ProRes. Adobe will keep insisting it works fine natively…although I’m sure you can use Cineform with this, but will Adobe do what Andrew suggests? Optimize for this codec like Avid and Apple do?

Shane
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[Andrew Kimery]

[Shane Ross] “but will Adobe do what Andrew suggests?”

Or BM with Resolve. Some cameras and recorders also have ProRes and/or DNx have recording options which helps smooth out workflows. I think CineForm is going to be a great thing that few people will end up using.

[David Lawrence]

This is fantastic news. Besides being a great cross-platform codec with outstanding image quality, CineForm has a unique “Active Metadata” architecture that enables some very efficient and flexible workflows that can’t be done with other codecs. It’s great for working with stereoscopic footage. Now that it’s open source, I hope we’ll start seeing more CineForm development and usage.

https://cineform.com/pdfs/ActiveMetadata_Architecture.pdf

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[Michael Gissing]

Resolve has Cineform in the render options. I tried to use it once to experiement on an older version and it crshed. I do believe it is working now. I would be happy to have an open source mastering codec for my work but if I then have to further transcode it may as well be DNx for me.

I’m also wondering if Resolve will soon have ProRes rendering on Win machines. They have introduced it into Fusion 9 and it’s proper ProRes that Apple endorses not FFMpeg versions that are identical but not official.

I’m interested from a camera format point of view, especially if there was a 12 bit option.

[Walter Soyka]

[Claude Lyneis] “Those of us that don’t qualify as a mad scientist, at least in the universe of codecs and compression, what is a mezzanine format and what can it do for us?”

Mezzanine means middle. A mezzanine format may also be called an intermediate format.

The idea is that no matter what your original inputs where, or what your final deliverables will be, you can use a mezzanine format in the middle of your workflow. Ideally, you want something that works really well with your system and does not incur a lot of loss. For Apple, QuickTime/ProRes is the mezzanine format. For Avid, it’s MXF/DNxHR.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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