Cineform ?'s
 

A real newbie questions here, I have been hearing a lot about Cineform and I have no clue what it does and am sure this is the place to find out.

I use Premier Pro, Encore and sometimes Vegas 7.0 for editing my Canon XH-A1 footage what would Cineform add for me, and what version should I get if I need it.

Denny,

How about I point you to a couple other threads that have started with similar questions?

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=110506
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=108749

Please give those a try first and let us know if you have any other questions.

Thanks will do some more reading, the workflow really has me confused.

Denny, to short-circuit your workflow Q's, it's pretty straightforward. The goal in a Cineform workflow is to get the source material out of the camera format and into a format optimized for a multi-generation workflow. No camera format (other than CineForm) is up to this task.

So, Step 1: Convert (often using HDLink) from your camera format into Cineform Intermediate. HDLink is part of all CineForm products.

Step 2a: If using Premiere Pro then you want our Aspect or Prospect family because those products (which include HD Link) has our real-time engine that displaces the video engine inside Premiere Pro. Think of it like a hardware accelerator card that works in software. Import the Cineform clips onto your timeline and away you go. Many layers of RT video processing using the CineForm presets.

Step 2b: For non-Premiere Pro editing, you want our Neo product which includes HD Link plus our codec for compatibility with most all applications.

You'll need to decide on that spatial resolution (HDV, HD, 2K, 4K) for your project, preferred bit depth (8 , 10, 12), whether you want HD-SDI support or not, and a few other things. We have a product table posted on our website that helps you with these things.

NeoHDV
 

Will NeoHDV accomplish capturing HDV?
What are the advantages of Aspect vs NeoHDV?


Yes I'm a newbie to video as well.

Thanks

Yes, that's what it's designed for.
Aspect HD is identical to Neo HDV EXCEPT that it has our real-time engine for PPro. If you're using PPro you want Aspect HD. If you're not using PPro then you want Neo HDV.

Thanks so much for the info, that helped a lot.

Now one more question for now, seems that everything claims to be online, is this uploading the footage and then downloading it back, if so seems like it would be really slow.

My PC is pretty fast, its a Pentium D dual core 2.8 Ghz with 4 gigs of ram and I have 3 internal and 5 external drives. Would this system be adequate for this program?

Denny, I'm sorry, I have no idea what you're trying to say. "Online" means that you're editing your master footage, which is what the CineForm files become when you convert them from HDV. Conversion from HDV into Cineform files is done in real time from tape, and on a fast machine it occurs faster than real time when converting from files. You never need to go back to HDV unless you want to archive on tape, although in today's world you ought to consider archiving the CineForm files on hard drives. (I think others have different archive strategies - there's not just one). But the point is, anytime you go back to HDV you are compromising your visual fidelity compared to the CineForm files.

Your Pentium D 2.8GHz will be a great machine. It seems you've got a lot of disks. We'd recommend that you organize them as a two (or more) drive RAID 0.

My next recommendation is that you download the Trial version of AHD or Neo HDV (depending on your NLE) and play with it a bit.

Thanks for clearing that up, I was taking online in a different way, thats why I was so confused, thinking I was uploading it to CineForm.

Many of my drives are in Raid 0, I have seperate ones for Weddings, High School Seniors, Children, Families etc. I have a Infrant NES 2TB network storage that I back everything up too. I am learning that video takes up more room than the photography, even with the large MP cameras I use.

Thanks again for helping me get some of this, I will download a trial version and most likely purchase one.