What are the advantages/disadvantages of each, and which one would you recommend?

(I know this topic has been pounded to death, but I want some more opinions.)

Thanks.

What are the advantages/disadvantages of each, and which one would you recommend?

(I know this topic has been pounded to death, but I want some more opinions.)

Thanks.

The main advantage of Raylight is native DVCPROHD which means
no recompression or zero loss of quality on cuts. In other words
the data contained in each frame (as recorded by the camera)
is left untouched during the editing process. I would recommend it
for anyone might be doing a transfer to film, or digital projection,
since it will deliver the highest quality image possible to the
transfer process.

The main advantage of CineForm is it is NOT NATIVE, therefore you aren't limit by DVCPRO_HD's lower 960x720 resolution, you are free to do post elements like color correction, transitions and titles, without the multi-generation losses that native codecs suffer (CineForm vs DVCPRO-HD -- http://www.cineform.com/technology/HDQualityAnalysis10bit/HDQualityAnalysis10bit.htm.) Mario has said on other posts that native for film out is best to do cuts only and then employ the film-out house to do the color correction and titles (and I guess transitions also.) In this he is correct -- mathematically, but the benefits of this work-flow are nil as it shows no visual difference if you did cuts only CineForm. He is correct that users can make mistakes, making it more difficult for film-out, yet converting to CineForm does not change the dynamic range of the image, preserving all the original data. I would think if you planned to pay a film out house to go all you post work you wouldn't be considering either CineForm Connect HD or RayLight.

So to answer the question (which I was hoping would be answered by non-corporate players). CineForm's advantage is flexibility, higher quality in typical multi-generation post, higher performance, flexibility in resolution, flexibility in bit-rate, simpler file handing (one AVI file per clip vs AVI + many MXFs), flexibility to cut HDV and P2 media together in the same codec.

Remember both products are free to try.

I use both Raylight and Cineform.

I'm pretty fond of the Cineform codec. It's useful to have a higher resolution playback for clients and it seems to speed up editing for me.

When editing with Raylight I normally switch between the different resolution settings and that adds a bit of time when you're in the NLE no matter what you do.

It is usefull not needing to worry about all the MXF files too.