New betas for Prospect/NEO 4K
 

It is Friday and time for another beta release. Version 3.4.3 contains some cools upgrades and fixes, particular for Premiere support, but there are base level codec changes for NEO as well.

In Premiere we have renamed all the appropriate filters to it have 32-bit in their name (Prospect HD/4K only.) It's handy to know, but it is also great for selecting filters, just put "32" in the search field and up pops all of the CineForm deep pixel filters.

One of the long missing 32-bit filters is a Levels plug-in -- Finally! The Premiere levels control is only 8-bit, limiting it usefulness, while the Premiere Fast Color Corrector include 32-bit levels, it is pretty slow. This new filter is fast and simple to use and plays back in real-time.

As computers are getting faster the scrubbing will remain in 32-bit mode, unless you turn that feature off. Previously we switched between 32-bit and 8-bit to get a small improvement scrubbing speed, but it made high dynamic range work more painful. I think you will prefer it this way.

YC scopes now work correctly. Previously they clipped at 100% even if the data did not clip. That was also a related bug in the last few builds that clipped 107 IRE from YUV sources, that is now fixed.

Several minor bug fixes.

Of course let us know if there any introduced bugs, but if you are not in the middle of a big project, this is a beta worth trying out.

Links:
Prospect 4K http://www.miscdata.com/cineform/P4Kb182.zip
Prospect HD http://www.miscdata.com/cineform/PHDb182.zip
NEO 4K http://www.miscdata.com/cineform/N4Kb182.zip
NEO HD http://www.miscdata.com/cineform/NHDb182.zip

P.S. As it is a weekend and I'm in LA for the RED Los Angeles User Group (CineForm Insider: See me live at the RED LA User Group) where I will presenting using this new version on Prospect 4K. Please use my twitter page to send me any reports. Follow me at Twitter / David_Newman

Gosh, as an Aspect user I'm feeling a little left out here.... <sniff...>

Anything for us?

David, so far everything seems to work but I could not find the plugin that you described here below....

"One of the long missing 32-bit filters is a Levels plug-in -- Finally! The Premiere levels control is only 8-bit, limiting it usefulness, while the Premiere Fast Color Corrector include 32-bit levels, it is pretty slow. This new filter is fast and simple to use and plays back in real-time."

I do see " Levels " but not under any Cineform folder... ???? nor does any Levels show
when searching for 32 bit

Oopps! Yes, the new Levels filter is missing from the installer. I'll get on that.

The P4K link has been refreshed and now includes the Levels filter. It seems the PHD build was fine.

OK, the levels looks good... works well, wouldn't have minded that it used the conventional display of a levels control... where you slide the three levels on a chart.. but it does work
well :-)

on a different question...

why not have the "display filter stack bit depth" selection be a sticky.... I always have to
reset the option every time I start Premier Pro...

Later and thanks...

The convention Level controls, while visual appealing is not a good design for whites much greater than white (1.0) and black darker than (0.0.) As this is a float point filter the input can be very wide ranging, particularly when using Active Metadata and 3D LUTs.

All the controls in Playback settings can be saved as a project preset, just as if you were making a project with a custom resolution or frame rate, you can also save a preset the "display filter stack bit depth" set on.

Thanks David, I had forgotten about saving the settings... works fine now...

Seriously, is there a reason Aspect doesn't seem to be getting the same attention as Neo and Prospect?

We build Prospect 4K first as it has all the features. NEO 4K, NEO HD, Prospect HD and Aspect HD as all subsets of Prospect 4K. So a Prospect 4K beta will help debug all the whole product line. When there is a particular HDV related enhancement we often do public betas on Aspect HD, as that product is more focused there.

David, On the Levels plugin....

tell me what I'm seeing and maybe its just operator error....

adjusting the Black level slider towards the right ( 100 ) the footage gets darker and then
when it the slider gets to 100 the footage goes white... so at 99 the footage is almost black and then when the slider hits 100 it goes white... and on the other side of things, when
you put the slider all the way to the left towards -100 the footage never actually goes white
but it gets close... its almost like the slider is offset by 1 click to the right and it wraps around from going dark to light... when the slider should be white at -100 and black at 100

That is all correct. You can even reverse white and black points to inverse the image. But generally you move black between -20 to +20 and white between 80 and 120, but there is no point in limiting it as it can handle HDR source data.

hey, how cum Premiere gets all these "bells and whistles"? Are the other NLE writers uncooperative, proprietary, or what? Can't Vegas, Edius or Avid get color maps, level curves, or something?

Premiere has a full SDK allowing the replacement of the playback engine, other NLEs generally don't. Those NLEs are limited to mainly a filter SDK only, enabling excellent tools from companies like Red Giant. CineForm doesn't get involved with filters useless we can do something more that just a effect, in this case we also built the back-end to play the new filter really fast. We will make custom tools for Vegas, FCP and others, in the future, but our angle for these tools can't be acceleration based (like is is in Premiere) without an API to support it.

Isn't Avid's SDK more than a filter SDK? Any possibility of Cineform becoming a type of Boris Continuum Complete/Red product for Avid?

... Maybe Cineform could license its 4:4:4 codec to Avid. DNxHDCF. One can dream.