Will Cineform Be Supported?

[Chad Haufschild]

Aaron, if I had the money or the potential income to justify the $5000, I'd order the Cinedeck tomorrow. $2500 I could swing and even justify to my wife!

I'm shooting with the JVC HD250, 4:2:2 10bit is the best that thing can push out. What are you shooting that has dual HD SDI? You must have some serious toys, my friend. Serious toys indeed...

[Aaron Newsome]

Originally Posted by Chad Haufschild

Aaron, if I had the money or the potential income to justify the $5000, I'd order the Cinedeck tomorrow. $2500 I could swing and even justify to my wife!

I'm shooting with the JVC HD250, 4:2:2 10bit is the best that thing can push out. What are you shooting that has dual HD SDI? You must have some serious toys, my friend. Serious toys indeed...

I don't "WANT" to spend this kind of money for a recorder. In my opinion, some company should be able to make a quality recorder for around $1,000. I mean, look at a Firestore. Those things go for around $1,000. A high bitrate recorder with a decent codec should not be *that* hard to make for a reasonable price.

My camera is a Viper. I've been happily doing 4:2:2 8bit with my Flash XDR for months now. Lot's of good projects shot and a short film shot on the XDR. All with unbelievable quality, especially the short that used Zeiss digiprimes on the Viper. But it's a shame not to do 4:4:4 10bit log with the Viper. That's the highest quality.

The HD250 is a super nice rig though. I shot a lot of stuff on my HD100 and loved that camera. It's not as high end as a 250 but the sensor and optical block are very similar and it can also do 4:2:2 8bit out of the component. Unfortunately the CD boxes have no analog input though.

I'm really pulling for Mark Job (also on this forum), to complete his design for a quality portable recorder, but I think Mark is learning first hand just how tricky this small feat actually is.

Let's face it, we can all do this with a Mac Pro, RAID and an AJA card but I've never been too interested in doing that. Tethered sucks. Portable is the way.

[John Mitchell]

The firestore? Really? I own a Firestore and it's a piece of junk compared to the Nano - poor build quality, breakable plastic and it's DV/HDV only. Add to that a dodgy firewire cable connection and a battery that lasts about 10 minutes in the field, with no way of turning off the annoying battery warning beep even when connected to power. The power connector is extremely iffy as well. Plus you're limited to the size of the hard drive installed. And when they first came out they were a lot more than $1000...

Quality field gear is going to cost more. R&D is not as easily recouped as with mass market items.

[Mark Job]

Hi Mike:

You wrote:

"Hang on a bit longer, I think we'll get support for the CineForm CODEC in the near term. I don't have an exact date, but it's a work in progress."

....Can this support also be added to the Flash XDR Mike ? Also, can we implement my Cineform conversion routine proposal onto the Nano Flash and Flash XDR as well ? (Everybody scroll back and read the first page near the bottom where I propose a built in Cineform conversion routine and how that *might* function in a Nano and XDR via a firmware upgrade)

[Mark Job]

Originally Posted by Aaron Newsome

I'm really pulling for Mark Job (also on this forum), to complete his design for a quality portable recorder, but I think Mark is learning first hand just how tricky this small feat actually is.

...Thank you Aaron for the encouraging words ! :-) Oh man ! It's so expensive to design and implement your own FPGA system. I'm poring in the cash, but I'm nearly broke and I want to complete the functional prototype as soon as possible. I'm getting a real crash course in designing a SSDR from the ground up and how difficult it actually is to pull off. The reason I embarked on this project was because i simply could not buy a recorder which did what I needed to be done, and I didn't want to get into expensive purchases of what was then unrealistically high priced large capacity CF card media. When I had the early tip off about the approaching SDXC card format, and it's extremely large capacity and high speed data rate capabilities that I realized a practical SD card media recorder was at least theoretically possible. After all, so many cameras now have an SD video recorder built into them ! Why not design a practical little comprehensive device which is so small and light you can velcro it to a side of a camera, and have its own edge to edge high def monitor and full VTR functions in the post bay as well ?

[Rafael Amador]

Mark,
The NANO can record only MPEG-2, because thats his kind of processor.
I don't know much about these matters, but I guess can not be re-programmed to output other kind of stuff.
Mark, if you want catch the 10b Unc recording, your way is "Sheer". Is not the same to record 1.2Gbps than 370 Mbps.
Cheers,
rafael

[Aaron Newsome]

Originally Posted by John Mitchell

The firestore? Really? I own a Firestore and it's a piece of junk compared to the Nano - poor build quality, breakable plastic and it's DV/HDV only. Add to that a dodgy firewire cable connection and a battery that lasts about 10 minutes in the field, with no way of turning off the annoying battery warning beep even when connected to power. The power connector is extremely iffy as well. Plus you're limited to the size of the hard drive installed. And when they first came out they were a lot more than $1000...

Quality field gear is going to cost more. R&D is not as easily recouped as with mass market items.

Hi John, I'm not using the Firestore as a shining example of an outstanding product. I'm speaking in terms of manufacturing and design complexity as a justification that we should have higher quality recorders available at cheaper prices.

You can't tell me that a nanoFlash or even an S.two is all that much more difficult to design and manufacture than a Firestore. I'm betting no, it's not more difficult but yet the economies of scale put the nano and S.two at five and fifty times the cost of the Firestore.

It's hard to grasp and accept the effect of economies of scale. This is precisely why a really good prosumer camera (a very complex device), sells for about the same price as a good mattebox (not a very complex device).

[Mike Schell]

Originally Posted by Aaron Newsome

You can't tell me that a nanoFlash or even an S.two is all that much more difficult to design and manufacture than a Firestore. I'm betting no, it's not more difficult but yet the economies of scale put the nano and S.two at five and fifty times the cost of the Firestore.

Hi Aaron-
No disrespect intended, but the nanoFlash is considerable more difficult to design and manufacture as compared to the Firestore. The Firestore basically copies the compressed data, generated from the camera, onto a hard-drive (or Compact Flash card). The nanoFlash, on the other hand, has a hardware CODEC engine, which compresses the raw HD-SDI video before writing to our Compact Flash cards. The nanoFlash, can therefore, support a very wide range of bit-rates, while the Firestore is limited to the output from the camera.

The S.Two does not have a hardware CODEC, as it records in uncompressed mode. So, in theory, it's a simplier device, but you have have to deal with very high data-rates, which opens up a whole new area of issues and problems.

The nanoFlash does cost more than the Firestore, but you do get considerable more functionality and features as well as substanially better picture quality. All that comes at the price of increased engineering and manufacturing costs.

Best-

[Aaron Newsome]

Originally Posted by Mark Job

Hi Mike:

You wrote:

"Hang on a bit longer, I think we'll get support for the CineForm CODEC in the near term. I don't have an exact date, but it's a work in progress."

....Can this support also be added to the Flash XDR Mike ? Also, can we implement my Cineform conversion routine proposal onto the Nano Flash and Flash XDR as well ? (Everybody scroll back and read the first page near the bottom where I propose a built in Cineform conversion routine and how that *might* function in a Nano and XDR via a firmware upgrade)

Hi Mark. Not to discourage, but I wouldn't get my hopes up too high about CineForm support being added directly to the CD devices. These boxes are likely to remain MPEG2 recorders for the foreseeable future. CD can comment if I'm wrong.

What is likely to happen though, is that Cineform support for native nano/XDR footage will be implemented. This means you'll be able to record with the nano/XDR and then convert the footage to Cineform for use in post. It doesn't mean the nano/XDR will be turned into Cineform recorders.

[Mark Job]

Hi Aaron:
No, I think you misunderstood my earlier post on the matter. I'm not saying that CD should add *direct recording* in Cineform to their device, what I'm proposing is they simply load a software XDCAM HD codec to Cineform software converter into memory in their boxes (Nano & XDR) and implement a simple conversion executable from the push of a button in their menu routine. It can't be *that* difficult to implement. I theorize it could be done. CD must inform us if I am incorrect in my proposal.

[Mike Schell]

Originally Posted by Aaron Newsome

Hi Mark. Not to discourage, but I wouldn't get my hopes up too high about CineForm support being added directly to the CD devices. These boxes are likely to remain MPEG2 recorders for the foreseeable future. CD can comment if I'm wrong.

What is likely to happen though, is that Cineform support for native nano/XDR footage will be implemented. This means you'll be able to record with the nano/XDR and then convert the footage to Cineform for use in post. It doesn't mean the nano/XDR will be turned into Cineform recorders.

Hi Aaron-
You are 100% correct. We do not plan to add support for the Cineform CODEC inside the nanoFlash - we don't have sufficient logic available. But, we are working with Cineform to make the transcode of our files as smooth as possible.

Best-

[Mark Job]

Hi Mike:
Nope, that's *NOT* what I'm suggesting. Just get a simple executable software conversion routine to convert XDCAM HD CODEC to CINEFORM and load the executable routine into device memory with a software switch actuated from a button press on the Nano or XDR. (Scroll back and re-read my original proposal on the other page)

[Mike Schell]

Originally Posted by Mark Job

Hi Mike:
Nope, that's *NOT* what I'm suggesting. Just get a simple executable software conversion routine to convert XDCAM HD CODEC to CINEFORM and load the executable routine into device memory with a software switch actuated from a button press on the Nano or XDR. (Scroll back and re-read my original proposal on the other page)

Hi Mark-
Sorry a "simple" XDCAM -> Cineform software conversion routine is not so simple to implement. We do not have enough logic inside the nanoFlah or XDR to implement this conversion. Our recorders are fundamentally hardware based and do not have a high-power CPU.

BTW, welcome to the club of developing digital video recorders. It's a bit more challenging then most people realize! When you get your first working demo, you're about 10% of the way to a finished product.

Cheers-

[Mark Job]

Hi Mike:
Yes, it's frigin hard to design your own SSDR ! So true ! Right now, all I'm aiming at is first working prototype. Once we're there, then we'll see.

[Steve Kalle]

Mike, I made my original comment prior to testing the newer Mainconcept plugin for Premiere & AE. Having the MXF files work in AE is essential for me, so I was quite relieved to find the updated plugin working. And I should be ordering a Nano within the next couple of weeks.