Cineform, Vegas and which to purchase.
 

I've read the stickies up top but I'm still a bit unclear. I work at a business where the final output is to web in a 512x288 (ws) flash box. We shoot and capture in 1080i and the apparent rendering time for cineform is what is appealing.

I've noticed that Vegas 8 natively outputs to a cineform hd codec 2.8 if I choose that one. For my latest project I did output using that codec and it was much quicker than using uncompressed. Especially when I import the file into Sorenson the speed was significantly better when rendering the flash files.

Am I understanding that if I *buy* Neo, that if I capture using that program I'll pretty much have real time renders in vegas? For what I am doing, is NEO the right Cineform product to choose?

I do not have an answer, but I want to make certain that I understand the question. Are asking:

Can I use Vegas to render from Cineform to Cineform in real time?

If no one answers, I can try a test render, but not tonight....

I'm asking, what is the point of buying Cineform if Vegas outputs natively in that Codec? I'm guessing here but, I assume I could CAPTURE using NEO and then edit in Vegas and it would allow real time renderings?

Since no one has replied to this I assume this is a stupid question. But I'm still not sure if it is worth it for me to buy it. I'm wanting time savers is all.

David Newman will no doubt correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, Sony has licensed an older iteration of the CineForm codec. Indeed, 2.8 is positively ancient bearing in mind the progress the codec has made. I also believe that the Vegas version of the codec is limited to the 'medium' quality level. In the proper CineForm product, that is the second-worst quality level.

Now admittedly, 2.8 is still a good codec, but the quality improvements and further options in the latest product are a step beyond.

Whether that will actually translate into a superior end-product bearing in mind you're targetting SD Flash is debatable. In terms of speed differences, I'd recommend trialing the latest NEO HD or NEO HDV (if you don't need 1920 pixel width) and seeing what the extra cash gives you.

Also, there is a difference in how HDLink captures and encodes as Cineform, and how Sony vegas captures and encodes as Cineform.

If you currently own Vegas, you will notice that some of the renders allow you to specify a second pass for the render operation. In both cases, the rendered video will match a specific specification (mpeg-2 or mpeg-4, for example), but the resulting file is different.

There are things that have escaped me, that HDLink does better when it encodes, even ignoring things such as converting to progressive and similar. The real question, I suppose, is will you notice the difference. I felt that I would, so I purchased both. Having captured with both, I strongly prefer the extra versatility offered by HDLink, which is not even a comment on how the file is encoded.