CineForm and Sony XDCAM HD

[Joe Carney]

Will Cineform be supporting the new XDCAM HD?

[David Newman]

We have had discussions with Sony on XDCAM HD, and consider this project very feasible. I can't say more.

[Joe Carney]

Thanks, I'm hoping for announcements at NAB. Until then I'll just chill.

[Matthew Pugerude]

Any one know if Cineform is going to have a plugin for Premiere Pro that would work with the new Sony XDCam with the full 35mb encoding? I do not want to use the HDV through the Firewire.

[Alister Chapman]

I too would like the ability to use CF with F350 clips. But you need to consider that with XDCAM you would not normally "capture" from the camera to the PC, instead you would use the FAM (file access mode) feature to simply copy the files/clips you want from the camera or deck to the PC, no capturing required. So this would mean that you would need to transcode the clips using a simple conversion application. So what you need is a conversion programme that supports MXF files to transcode the footage to CFHD avi's. I use canopus pro coder, but I don't know whether this supports MXF's, it will certainly produce nice CFHD avi's from other formats. Maybe Cineform will add sony XDCAM HD MXF's to the conversion options of Aspect, connectHD and Prospect, that would then enable you to mix HDV and XDCAM in the same projects.

If you have the HDV option card for the XDCAM HD decks and you shoot at 25Mb then you can playback and produce a HDV compatible stream over the firewire, then you should be able to capture using Connect HD. But I'm really more interested in the 35Mb data rate.

How about it Cineform???

Guess we won't hear anything till after NAB.

[Richard Leadbetter]

I'm not au fait with this file format, but if you can playback your clips in Media Player via DirectShow, there's nothing to stop you creating an AviSynth script to read in the file, then save it off as a CFHD AVI in VirtualDub (assuming sound is limited to stereo - surround could be a challenge).

There seems to be some discussion on getting MXF files running in Media Player right here. The bottom line is that if DirectShow can get a handle on the files (ie there is a decoder filter), so can AviSynth via its DirectShowSource() command. If you can upload a two-second clip somewhere, I'll be happy to check it out.

[David Newman]

We are looking into adding MXF conversion support to HDLink, which would enable XDCAM HD to be simple converted to CineForm Intermediate AVI. How many of you are ready for this?

[Matthew Pugerude]

We are looking into using XDCAM HD but would like it to fit a little easier in the post set up that we have now with out reconfiguring the whole thing. Still looking into post options so I can not really talk in depth about it yet. We would like to use Adobe products and have been looking at the AJA card that goes with it. But if we could just use HD link and put the money towards something else for production great! Still need to look into the deck and how that needs to hook up to the NLE. Thanks for your repley David

Any more details you can give us about Cineform and the XDCAM HD would be great.

[Alister Chapman]

I will be taking delivery of my F350 on June 10th. So I for one would love to have the option of converting XDCAM MXF's to CFHD so I can keep all my HD footage in the one superior format. I know AVID are going to be releasing an update for Xpress Pro, but I just keep comming back to premiere pro because of all the plug-ins.

[Matthew Pugerude]

Hey Alister I bet you are about to loose it when you get that Camera. I am hardcore Premiere guy to I just like the workflow. and PC's are much easier to maintain then a Mac. David how is the HDlink and XMF file format going?

[David Newman]

Got MXF working for the Panasonic HVX200 in the latest versions of our software -- so we are closer on XDCAM HD.

[Alister Chapman]

That's good news David. I have my F350, nice camera. All I need now is a way to edit the MXF files.

[Alister Chapman]

Still trying to work out a way of getting CF files from my Mpeg MXF's. I can use the Snell and Wilcox or MOG solutions to strip out the MPEG video and aes audio but none of my file conversion programmes recognise the aes audio. It would be so nice to be able to stick with cineform as it is a good balance between file size, quality and processor requirement. It's starting to look like I may have to go down the Avid route.

[David Newman]

If you already have a MOG license to the MXF Demux than conversion to CineForm is pretty straight forward. Those MOG components work great and are DirectShow based, and so is the CineForm encoding components, so they can all be easily hooked up. This is how HDLink is likely to do it, when we find the time and/or high demand for XDCAM-HD support. Because of the additional licensing it is likely to be in Prospect HD only.

[Obin Olson]

CineForm's HDLink( part if Aspect and Prospect) is very nice, 100% easy to use and it seems to work on all the mxf files that Panasonic p2 cameras can throw at it.

-from a realworld user