HDCAM and Cineform
 

Hi, I'm not as yet a Cineform customer. I've just shot a film in HDCAM and am looking at my editing options. Would I be able to convert HDCAM into a cineform format, and if so what version would I need? I'm presuming I wouldn't need a high speed RAID array, but quite alot of disk space. Any help and advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks, Matt

You will need to ingest HDCAM via HDSDI, we recommend an AJA Xena LHe card for that. Prospect HD is the CineForm product you would use with Adobe CS3 (CS4 soon.) Prospect HD onlined its first film for theatrical release 4-5 years ago, so it is a mature product. The data rates for 1080p 10-bit 4:2:2 data from HDCAM averages under 20MB/s, so you don't need a RAID at all. However a RAID will help for performing transitions or more video layers in real-time and with RAID-5/6 can also help protect our data against a disk crash. Many modern PCs have a sufficient SATA RAID controller on the motherboard, so the RAID will not be expensive. Four 1TB 7200RPM SATA drives, will cost you under $400 these days, and will store 60+ hours off finishing quality CineForm AVI files.

Hi David, thanks for your reply. A couple more questions if you don't mind. I have a friend who has a HDCAM deck hooked up to his Mac via a AJA iO HD box. Would I be able to use this to capture the HDCAM footage via HDSDI to a Cineform codec on his Mac? Presumably for this he would only need an importer version of cineform (as opposed to the full payed for version?) Could I then copy these files onto my PC and use my full version of cineform to edit with them (I will be buying the CS4 version of Prospect HD once it's available).

I have no idea when it comes to Macs and their compatibility with PCs, so if you think there would be any problems using files captured on a Mac and transferring them to a PC for editing in Cineform - it'd be great to hear about it.

Thanks,
Matt

AJA IO box with not work. It requires the compression occur in the box. You need an AJA Xena HD, LH, LHe, 2Ke or Blackmagic Decklink card in your PC, and capture directly there.

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. From those cards you mentioned - I wasn't able to find a AJA Xena HD - I'm assuming the AJA Xena HS is much the same? Seems to be the cheapest option that will do what I want?

Will the soon to be releaser importer version of Prospect for CS4 enable me to capture using this card directly to cineform?

Thanks,
Matt

Sorry Xena HS, is what I ment to type.

You can use HDlink now do that capture, if you don't have CS3. The CS4 importer (which means file reader/decoder) will be ready in under 2 weeks. The full Prospect HD/4K for CS4 iwill be behind that.

Matthew, another option is to have a facility like FotoKem (Burbank) do your ingest. They would send your footage back to you on a USB/FW drive. I've heard from others that have used their services that their prices are very reasonable. FotoKem has had a CineForm workflow running for a couple years.

So David, I assume your answer shoots down the "end of January" date for the importer and even longer for "full" CS4 support?

That about right, we are wrapping up the importer now, so it will just miss the end of January but not by much.