NeoScene Mac - Option to convert to ProRes not accessible
 

As there was a new version of NeoScene released last week I though that I would try it again. I downloaded the demo version today but I cannot access the option to choose between CineForm & ProRes as Output Format. As soon as I click on the drop-down menu it greys out & only CF 422 is ticked as in the attached screen shot

I do have FCS installed & ProRes is available to other applications like MPEG Streamclip

Nigel, it sounds like your Trial of Neo Scene might be expired. Contact support at cineform dot com and they can get you a new Trial ticket.

David, that was it. Thank you. I had tested a previous trial version some weeks ago.

I don't know if this is a known bug/feature/whatever with this version but it is very much slower converting an H.264 .MOV file from a Canon 5D Mk II into either ProRes or CineForm. In the older version that I tried I was impressed that it converted to ProRes quite a bit quicker than Compressor. However it now takes twice as long as Compressor to convert the same file.

Is that speed difference for both CineForm and ProRes? The reading of the H.264 file is handled by QuickTime, so that should not have changed.

It's with both CODECs. On reflection I think that I may not be doing exactly the same as I did when I was testing it a few weeks ago. Then I was converting multiple files & this test was just a single file. To confirm I just tried converting 12 files at once & now it is quicker than just a single file (24fps vs. 15fps) although still a lot slower than Compressor or MPEG Streamclip.

When you convert to ProRes, NeoScene uses the QuickTime H.264 decoder to read the files, and then uses QuickTime compressor to encode the files. NeoScene does encode to ProResHQ.

If you convert to CineForm, the encoding is done directly, and the full range of the data can be preserved.

Encoding multiple clips is the secret, and you may want to adjust the number of clips running at once.