A Mac/Cineform question
 

I gave about 3 hours of footage to someone editing on a Mac in FCP, which were rendered into 720-30p HDV using the Cineform v4.7.0 in Vegas Pro 8. The Mac guy can't see the video (but can hear the sound) in FCP. I'm assuming he'd need to install some version of Cineform to be able to work with the files. Can anyone tell me what he'd need and where to download it from? I know little about installing codecs in Macs, so any help is appreciated. I don't want to have to rerender the files in something less excellent than Cineform.

Thanks!

Dylan, your colleague should install CineForm's Neo HD Mac. That should do everything you need. Also, in our last release we included a rewrapping feature to take CineForm AVIs (generated on Windows) and rewrap them to CineForm MOV files on Mac. This is performed using the ReMaster utility on Mac. Rewrapping doesn't disturb the underlying compression - it only replaces the wrapper.

It is true that FCP will read CineForm files, but its reader is only 8 bits, so the 10-bit CineForm files are truncated to 8 bits. If you rewrap to MOV files FCP properly interprets the MOV files as 10 bit files.

Doesn't that mean that Dylan's colleague needs to buy CineForm's Neo HD Mac for $499 before he can work with these files?

Nigel/Dylan, he can use our Neo Player Mac at no charge to play and even edit CineForm footage on Mac. As its name implies it's just a decoder, so Neo Player has no ability to perform any pre-processing, Active Metadata, or rendering operations.

We will be releasing a new version of Neo Player in the next few days or a week so keep you eyes out for this. Grab the current version of Neo Player here: Neo Player Downloads

Perfect! Thanks!