The differences between 601 and 709 are easy to spot with the eye. I pasted a screen capture of each video image into Photoshop to make it easier to compare.

I couldn't find anywhere that said what CoreAVC does or doesn't do, which is partly why I posted here to see if anybody could confirm or find error in my findings.

I'll list below exactly what I did so you can recreate.

CoreAVC Decode, CoreAVC RGB conversion, Windows Media Player
Untick all the outputs in CoreAVC except RGB32 (or RGB24). This ensures CoreAVC is doing the RGB conversion and not the video renderer. The result exactly matches FFDShow's RGB conversion using ITU-R BT.601 option.

CoreAVC Decode, Windows Renderer RGB conversion, Windows Media Player
Untick all the outputs in CoreAVC except YUY2, and select TV output 16-235. This ensures the video renderer does the RGB conversion. The result exactly matches FFDShow's RGB conversion using ITU-R BT.709.

Notes
1. The reason I untick all the outputs in CoreAVC rather than rely on the priority order is that it didn't seem to work for me - even though RGB was at the top of the list, CoreAVC was still sending non-RGB to the Video Decoder.
2. When I selected YV12 instead of YUY2, the number of vertical pixels reduced. So instead of 1920x1080, I got a picture approx 1920x1070 or thereabouts (haven't counted).
3. If I select PC output 0-255 for YV12 or YUY2, I get clipped blacks and whites.
4. Selecting TV output or PC output with only RGB selected has no effect.
5. I'm not exactly sure what Video Renderer is being used, but it will be whatever is default on Vista with Media Player 11. I think it is the Enhanced Video Renderer (EVR).

I then wanted to cross-check my results, in case FFDShow wasn't a reliable benchmark, so I used the Haali Video Renderer and Zoom Player.

CoreAVC Decode, Haali Video Renderer RGB conversion, Zoom Player
Set CoreAVC to output YUY2 only, output 0-255. Set the Haali Video Renderer to output 0-255, and either BT.601 or BT.709.

The result was much more saturated than Quicktime or Windows Media Player, but saturation aside, the difference between 601 and 709 reasonably matched FFDShow.

Notes

If I select YV2 in CoreAVC, Haali clipped blacks and whites regardless of 16-235 or 0-255 options

Finally, I wanted to see how Quicktime compared.

Quicktime Player Version 7.6 (472) Quicktime Version 7.6 (1292)
Most noticeable is the picture is brighter. In Photoshop, I used the levels tool to brighten the other images to match. I found setting the midtone input level to 1.14 resulted in an almost identical picture. Following the brightness adjustment, Quicktime exactly matched CoreAVC and FFDShow's ITU-R BT.601.

Vegas Workflow 5D Mark II
 

So, after many discussions & alternatives, is a successful workflow for the 5D Mark II and Sony Vegas 8.0c (32-bit) as simple as follows:
Success means preserving 1080 resolution and faithful (no crushed blacks, etc.) coloration.

1. use NeoScene to transcode 5D mov to Cineform avi.
2. edit Cineform avi in Vegas

My NeoScene trial ran out before I reinstalled 32-bit Vegas, so to buy or not...

Thank you.

Neil, I think each release of the Neo Scene beta has its own trial period so if you downloaded the first 1.1 version there is now a second one you can try. This version solves the explorer crash problem and supports 5DII files (initial support). It should run okay with Vegas but I'm running with Premiere so I can't say for sure.

Yes, there is an issue with blacks. Here is my current understanding - Cineform correctly converts the 5DII files, but when they do this they can overrun the 8 bit color range of the editor, so in Premiere you have to use a 32 bit color filter in case the blacks or highlights are crushed (which can be a pain). The logic from Cineform is that the 5DII video is fine but if they compress it to fit the 8 bit editor they will lose data.

I don't know if Vegas will handle this, or how the color filters work in Vegas. But my expectation is you should be able to work with it.

Vegas respects the data beyond 16-235. You can use the Computer -> Studio RGB filter, if you want to run studio levels with 8-bit processing. If I'm not mistaken, you can run Vegas in 32-bit mode and it expects video to range from 0-255. Note that Vegas is much faster when processing in 8-bits.

To add to my previous post, a Cineform file created with the latest Neo Scene matches BT.709.

I couldn't open it in Windows Media Player, I got crushed blacks. But I could open it in Zoom Player using the Haali video renderer.

In Vista, I have been advised by David Newman to use Media Player Classic to play the Cineform files. Something screwy with current WMP

Sorry, the above was incorrect. I was leaving all outputs ticked (RGB, YUY2, YV12, etc) and assuming RGB format was always being used, which isn't the case on my system. Corrected paragraph follows:

Once you are certain that CoreAVC is really being used, for using it to preview native 5D .mov files in Windows Media Player go back into the CoreAVC Decoder Properties and untick all Output Formats except YUY2. Ensure Input levels are set to PC: 0-255 and Output levels are set to TV: 16-235. This will show using BT.709 in Vista/Windows Media Player 11. You can untick all Output Formats except RGB32, this will show using BT.601 format.

Note the above is based on a visual comparison in photoshop, and not based on any documentation. So it could be wrong, or specific only in certain configuration. Hoping others can confirm/deny the above.

And David, sorry to hijack your thread with so many seemingly unrelated Cineform issues, but this all came about from my question regarding using external decoders rather than the new 5D Decoder built into Neo Scene in order to end up with a Cineform file 16-235, BT.709.

To answer my own question, I bought a copy of Quicktime Pro and tried it. Yes, as you raise brightness using Procamp and the 32-bit mode, the sub-blacks do come into range. BUT... in rewrapping .mov to .mp4, Premiere Pro now incorrectly interprets the pixel aspect ratio as 0.7555 so I get a squashed horizontal picture with black bars either side.

Also, using Quicktime Pro to change the wrapper isn't a suitable solution for processing multiple files because there is no batch option.

I seem to recall the fuller versions of Cineform (Neo HD and Prospect) had a rewrap AVI<>MOV option in HDLink. Does re-wrapping a native 5D MOV to AVI, and importing that into Premiere Pro CS4, allow use of Procamp to access the supers, without messing up the pixel aspect ratio? Also, can HDLink batch process MOV to AVI rewraps? My trial(s) of Neo HD and Prospect have run out so I can't test.

Thane, if you have CoreAVC installed then Neo Scene gets its starting video from Haali/CoreAVC and you get the squished 16-235 range. If you uninstall Haali/CoreAVC then the video goes to Neo Scene through the Canon decode filter. In this case when you run Neo Scene you get the 0-255 range in Premiere. However the Cineform file can still go outside the 0-255 range and have clipping, but you can recover this with ProcAmp. I'd be interested if you could give this a try.

Hi Charles,

When I tried Prospect and Neo HD a few weeks back (prior to the native 5D support in the latest Neo Scene release), HDLink called a Directshow filter for the decode just as you describe. I'm not sure if substituting Canon's decoder for CoreAVC will make a difference to the way CS4 handles the -15 and 236+ range; I can't test as my trials of the the full HDLink supplied with Neo HD and Prospect have expired.

However, I have the latest Neo Scene on trial (2 days until expiry) and I can confirm this latest release doesn't call an external decoder and it does the conversion internally. Either that, or it is hard-coded to use a directshow filter that isn't CoreAVC or FFDShow.

I'm sure you can get your trial periods extended. I've done it with other products often, when there is a valid reason. Just send them a link to this thread.

I've been doing some experimenting to find a workable Premiere Pro CS4 workflow. I've posted a solution here.

I'm looking forward to full Cineform CS4 compatibility now and especially the CS4 Prospect trial!

Any reason this couldn't be used with CS3?

Showing my stupidity: What is A3 and why is it needed with QT and Neo Scene?

So just to recap all the discussion up to this point, and let me know if I'm correct in my assessment:

- NeoScene can now transcode 5D2 mov files. However, files transcoded in Scene will have the famous Crushed Black issue, whereas if the native mov files are imported into Vegas, they do not have the Crushed Black issue.

- Cineform has not addressed why NeoScene exhibits the crushed black issue especially when the issue was suppose to have been fixed with the 7.6 QT update.

This is damn confusing. I wish someone with a talent for technical writing could summarize this for us.

1) 5D2 clips converted with Neo Scene have nothing crushed. The data goes naturally and correctly from 0 to 255. However much software expects the the traditional narrower range, ignores the metadata, and causes problems when the neo scene clips are converted with that software.

2) There is no problem for Cineform to address.

3) I have no idea if QT 7.6 has fixed everything. When I import a QT 7.6 scene from 5D2 into Premiere CS3, and look at an RGB parade, I see band banding that clearly shows it is screwing up something in the color values during the 5D2 conversion or somehow when importing into Premiere.

3) As I mentioned a month ago, I don't think the QT 7.6 update has corrected the issue 100% yet. If you are using raw 5d mk II files on the timeline (at least on Vegas Pro), you are losing some levels. See what I posted here: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/canon-eos...ml#post1000320. This is another reason why I have chosen to purchase Neo Scene and use that workflow. Now if only I could get it to work on my system I'd be in business.

Damn you (<grin>). I thought I had a working process with Neo Scene until you pointed out problems. I'm going to study them also.

Keith: Why isn't Scene converted 5D2 files not working for you in Vegas?

I wish I knew :D
In a nutshell, there are 3 issues i've identified. 1) on large file transcodes, hdlink is crashing (seems to be a memory leak) 2) on smaller clips, it creates a file, but they are significantly oversized (possibly related to #1), 3) on some clips, the video clip is being truncated at some point prior to the end of the clip - the full audio is transcoded but in one particularl clip only about half of the video is transcoded, and this is on a file that ends up being about 5.5 times larger than it should. On the same machine that I've observed these issues, I have a Windows 7 Beta virtual machine installed and I tried installing the neoscene trial on this virtual machine and #1 and #2 are not a problem at all, but #3 is still a problem. So that tells me there is likely something on my primary machine that is creating a conflict with NeoScene and not a universal bug (but others may encounter the same problem). #3 is possibly related to issues with specific source clips, but I wasn't able to try any more out before my 7-day trial expired.

Hopefully Cineform support will figure it out soon.

In order to get rid of problems such as you mention, Cineform sent me a long list of things to do to remove remnants of old stuff from my system. That plus removing anything having the slightest thing to do with codecs or players (except WMP) cleared me out. Then I installed Neo Scene and it worked fine (knock on wood).

Codec handling in windows is one of the worst things in there, and that is saying a lot.

Is that the same list that was posted here earlier (involving removing Cineform related folders and keys from the registry)? If so, I've been through all of those steps a couple of times and I still have the problems.

His instructions are enclosed. It had no copyright claims.

thanks, that's pretty much what was posted in another thread. I tried that with no luck. The one peculiarity was that when I tried the step that says: Remove 'CineForm HD VFW Codec' from Add/Remove Programs (if it is listed there)., I just got an error that said it couldn't be removed, with no reason given or fix suggested. Maybe that's my problem.

I think there are utilities that will let you find the actual files for the add/remove program so you can delete them (and confuse the heck out of the add/remove program). It would obviously have something to do with the registry.

Keith, there is hope. Some time ago I had installed a trial version of Aspect HD and when I uninstalled it I went to lengths to get everything out, including editing the registry. Then when I installed the first beta version of Neo Scene that had the problem of crashing explorer I uninstalled and installed Neo Scene several times, a couple of times with registry editing. FYI I use CCleaner quite a bit, to root out bad registry data as well as to save the registry before any edits (where I use regedit); CCleaner might also work to remove the VFW codec. After all this the current Neo Scene version runs very well for me, actually on two different computers. Of course I still can't edit smoothly and am axiously awaiting the CS4 importer.

Reference #1: When using Neo HD and HD Link, I had the same problem. HD Link would use more of Windows Page File each time a MOV file was converted, and never release it. After a few files, it would gobble up the entire Page File and HD Link would crash. I've not experienced the same problem with Neo Scene.

Reference #2: When I used the Trial version of Neo *HD* and HD Link, I was noticing that the converted files were anywhere from 20-50% larger than the native MOV files from the 5D mmk II. With Neo *Scene*, the files are AT LEAST 5-8 times larger than the native MOV fles straight from the camera. A 60MB clip in MOV format will be nearly 500MB after conversion. This causes problems for Premier Pro, as you can't put many 500MB clips on the time line before it runs out of memory and crashes.

Since purchasing Neo Scene, I've been able to create a nearly 4-minute long video, but Premier Pro CS3 crashed at least 30 times during the edit (simple cut transitions), most likely due to memory problems. My work flow ended up being: Drag a file to the timeline, make an edit, save the project, make another edit, save the project, crash, restart Premier and load the project and continue the process.

Julian

You guys who are having issues with NLE crashing while working with NeoScene files, have you tried transcoding other files to Cineform codec? If NLE continues to crash with media transcoded from another source such as HDV, then NeoScene is the problem...

That's a good thing to try... but to answer your question, no, I haven't tried it yet. I'm sure it's a memory problem, for example, loading 3+ GB of video files into Premier with only 3GB RAM on the motherboard. The problem is that there souldn't be 3+ GB of video files in the first place!

I think Neo Scene is creating files which are just way too big (as I said, 5-8 times as large as the original MOVs). Neo HD's HDLink created files which were much smaller, only about 20% larger than the originals. When a single short clip (60mB MOV) becomes a 500MB monster AVI after conversion, you won't be able to fit many of these short clips on the timeline before you run into problems.

Julian

First of all, right now to get Neo Scene to work, you have your totally clean your machine of every codec and player and then reinstall it.

Also, The only premiere CS3 crash I've ever seen was when I was trying to show a clip for which the codec was missing and even then it would first show the clip all screwed up.

I have been informed that there is a build that fixes the hdlink crashing issue, but it's not going to be released until next week. Hopefully this (memory leak?) is related to the filesize bloating issue as well, and will fix the PP crashes.

Interesting.. so there discussion of whether this is as designed? Why do the files from NeoHD come out so relatively small? Are the NeoScene files big only for 5D2 input files? or other sources as well? If it's also other sources, then I can not use NeoScene in my workflow as I anticipate of having large hour long files from my wedding business...

I have observed that Neo Scene works properly on a "clean" system install. As I posted in another thread, when it's working properly, the files it generates (using the default "Medium" setting for the codec) are only very slightly larger than the source 5D file (131MB vs 127MB on one test file I encoded). It is comparable (in terms of filesize) to rewrapping the .mov files to .mp4 (due to the audio transcode in the rewrap process). But there's something on my main system configuration that is tripping it up, and some other folks seem to be having the same issue.

Keith, have you tried the new version 1.1.1 fix?
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/cineform-...4-windows.html

It wasn't really intended to fix the issues I reported, but I tried it anyhow, with no success.

What is the point of the Neo Scene Cineform conversion when it still eats up the blacks and whites of the original QT file? Same as any free converter/rewrapper.
File size goes up from 150MB to 1GB and still no real time Windows playback?
Am I a coplete idiot when I say that this is the most pointless waste of money if the Neo Scene stays that way?
I really want to buy something to edit (Premiere CS4) my growing amount of 5D footage but at any price there just isn't a way to properly do it.

Please tell me I'm a fool doing something really wrong but out of the box the conversion only messes up and crushes the blacks and whites and eats up disk space.
It actually won't allow me to edit at all in Premiere as I can not play back the sequence.
Sure it crashes and everithing as it's suposed to on a Windows machine but why bother with a product that just wastes three hours of my time to make sure it is not usable.

T

I was going to post those same results... I installed it on my Clean system when I got home last night and it briskly zipped through the same MOVs I'd used earlier in greater than real time. The original conversion of a 60MB file on the messy system was just under 500MB. On the clean system, 130MB!

Neo Scene stopped in the middle of processing the 16th file in the batch (I used the "Select Folder" option), creating a zero-byte file. I used the "Select Files" option and selected the remaining 20 or so files, including the one it had trouble with, and it successfully converted all of them.

I replaced all of the old, bloated AVIs in my project with the new skinny AVIs and Premier didn't crash once. In fact, whereas before, I could only import 3 minutes of video before Premier would crash. Now I had well over 6 minutes of video on the timeline and Premier was fine. During conversion, on the clean system, my Windows Page File never went above 750MB. On the messy system, it grew to well over 3GB.

As Toenus points out though, the blacks are still crushed, but if you use the Fast Color Corrector, you can adjust the Black Output and White Output levels and the shadow detail comes back. I'm not sure if this is the preferred, or even correct method, but it works. I have full speed play back using the Cineform intermediate CODEC, but as soon as I add the Fast Color Correction effect, playback begins to stutter and slow down again.

Julian

It is not designed to do that. As far as I know, it is designed to enable us to bypass the stupidity of Quicktime and their screwed up handling of YUV-RGB colorspace conversion (though I would like to see a bit more about how Neo Scene is really handling that - some configuration options would be nice just in case there are future unforeseen issues). It is also designed to generate files of manageable size which are easier to edit with than the raw footage that is spit out of current HD cameras. When it is working correctly, as far as I can tell, it does these things. It's just that some of us have encountered some snags and Cineform are working through these snags.

This is just my perception, but at its core Cineform is a very specialized technology company that was initially focused on a very specialized market. But with the advent of more affordable gear that can shoot great hi-def footage, a new market has emerged that consists of video enthusiasts, prosumers, and pros. The size of this audience is potentially orders of magnitude larger than Cineform's original market which consisted almost strictly of pros. In other words, as they tap this new market, there will likely be some growing pains as they find their way through supporting the demands of the new market and balancing it with their original core market.

This would be different than the dreaded "black crush" issue. The original issue was that there was clipping and no way to get it back unless the file was processed through Color or by bypassing Quicktime. So far, on the test files I was able to successfully convert with Neo Scene (on the "clean" system), it appears that I am getting the full range (at least on my Vegas 8.0c timeline). It does have a considerably different gamma than what you see from the Quicktime 7.6 player (I would hazard a guess and say that the Quicktime player is obeying the 2.199997 gamma tag in the 5d Mk II file's header). The cineform file's gamma is also slightly darker than what the QT plugin generates on the Vegas timeline with "raw" .mov files straight out of the 5d Mk II, but you can get the same look with if you apply a gamma of about 1.14 to the Cineform clip (I believe I have seen this gamma number referenced in another thread).

Keith,

In Vegas, do you get a 100% smooth histogram when using Cineform? Note that you need to set your preview to "Best" and 1920x1080 in order for the histogram scope to show the video accurately.