Release Date for Cineform CS4
 

Hi, I was just wondering if anyone's heard anything about when Cineform is releasing a version of Prospect which supports CS4? I've been waiting on news since November - I had read on their site it might be December, but nothing since. Not having an intermediate is seriously impacting my workflow at the moment, I've heard alot of good things about cineform, but there's only so long I can keep my numerous projects waiting!!

End of January

Yeah, I'd heard it might be January, but everything seems to have gone very quiet. Plus 'end on Jan' could quite easily slip into Feb, and beyond! Would be nice to hear from the Cineform guys!

It hasn't gone quiet. Both Davids from Cineform post here almost daily, often including weekends, to answer questions about their products. Last update on CS4 compatible versions was just one week ago:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/cineform-...pport-cs4.html
and their own web site continues to say late January:
http://www.cineform.com/products/ProdUpdates0812.htm

With a revamped product line and a lot of coding and testing to do, I'm amazed they're able to spend as much time here as they do. Busy guys!

The CS4 release will come in two pieces. The first piece is a CineForm importer (not the full RT engine) and should be available as a Beta in about two weeks, perhaps less. We won't market the importer as a complete solution for those used to using Prospect HD, but for those who really need better use of CineForm footage in CS4 it will work for this.

The second phase is our RT engine which will follow as a Beta "a couple weeks later". We're not sure exactly when we'll have the second-phase Beta release yet, but getting this finished is our number 1 job right now. We'll know more about the timing of the RT engine after we release the importer.

Thanks David - appreciate the speedy reply - especially on a sunday!! I'm new to cineform, so far I've been struggling along with editing HDV without an intermediate - it's painfully slow as I'm sure you're aware. Will the 'importer' release allow me to convert footage into cineform and edit? If so I imagine it will be quicker to edit with, just none of the real time edit functions? As I'm not already a cineform 'member' will this version be available to buy or download as a trial? Thanks again, please don't rush to get back to me, enjoy what's left of the weekend!!

Well I'm done with my hike at Torrey Pines Reserve, so no problem.... Great day here in San Diego BTW....

Yes, with the initial Beta release with the CS4 importer, you'll be able to convert footage into CineForm and edit on the PPro timeline, but not with the usual RT multi-stream performance and effects you get with the full version or Prospect HD. The performance difference between the importer alone and our RT engine is in the range of about 3X, so it is material.

The Beta release will be a free expiring Trial.

CS4 Importer Clarification question
 

David,

Many thanks for keeping prospective Cineform customers in the loop as there are several of us wanting to buy your product for CS4. Just for clarification, if a file is converted using NeoScene (and not Aspect), will the CS4 importer still be necessary, or are you going to update the codec only for CS4 users? The reason I ask is because I have had pretty good success with NeoScene converting AVCHD over and using the footage in CS4 with an AVCHD preset, but the HDV conversion does not work property (I sent your engineers an email with something I discovered where the AVI metadata wrapper is not being correctly created with HDV converted footage, but is correct with AVCHD 60i to 24P conversions). AVCHD 60i to 60i still does not work exactly right when the footage has embedded 3/2 pulldown no matter what the version of PPro.

Thanks

David B,

It doesn't matter what version of CineForm product you use to create CineForm files. All CineForm files are created equal - so to speak. But within PPro and AE an importer is required for proper interpretation by PPro/AE of the specific codec if that codec is not natively supported by PPro. So...we need an importer for any compatibility. Once available we intend to ship our CS4 importer with all Neo products for compatibility with both PPro and AE (which use the same importer).

The next level is our Prospect products that include our real-time engine. This is a different animal and allows us to literally replace the PPro playback engine with our own engine. This has many feature and performance benefits because the Wavelet compression we use has many unique characteristics which can be exploited in post if your engine (our engine) knows about the characteristics. PPro doesn't know about these characteristics when there is only an importer, but with our RT engine we can take full advantage.

I think I went further than your question about importers but hopefully that was useful. I won't comment on the AVCHD issues you're reporting as that seems best handled through support.

That's great. All I really care about is the importer, frankly. I'm pretty much just a straight-cuts edit kinda guy. So I don't do a lot of effects work. This way I'll be able to resume work on a few projects. Which is great, cause now the project is frozen. I don't fault Cineform, I just fault my own stubborness for not installing CS3 until CS4 was supported :P

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is I'm perfectly happy to get this beta the moment it becomes available.

overlay
 

Hi David,

How will the new cineform work with full screen overlay? Currently it relies on the video card driver and as you already know Nividia has stopped implementing Full screen overlay on any of the their cards....

Prospect and 5D MkII
 

David, when the CS4 importer and CS4 Prospect are implemented will the 5D MkII color space be correctly handled in PPro? (0-255 converted to 16-235.) Or is this a QT issue that CineForm can't resolve?

We handle the colorspace correctly for all yuv source cameras, supers are not lost.

will this update mean that Premiere Pro cs4 will no longer draw the red or orange bar with neo scene clips?

No, sorry that is a CS4 feature. Only Prospect tools add a real-time playback engine that removes those markers.

Will we make the January goal for CS4 release
 

I am holding off on starting a large project as I want to edit in CS4.
I know the question has been asked but will the update for CS4 prospect HD be released this coming week?
Thanks

They hinted in another thread that there would be a slight delay, unfortunately.

I'm looking forward to it too, even if it's only just the importer functionality for now.

I got an email that said the upgrade discount expires on 2/15. As they'd previously said the discount would expire when the new version came out, that could be the projected date.

Some of the new stuff will start coming out around then, but not all at once. But we have to have a hard date of the discounted upgrade.

Oh, you are such a tease...

CS4 Upgrade
 

If I purchase PHD now for my CS2, will I be allowed a full/free upgrde to PHD CS4 when it is realeased?
I would just like to get a feel for this excellent product before I roll full speed in CS4
Thanks,
Biily

Answer is yes, found on site

NeoScene for CS4
 

What is the forecast of a new date for the NeoScene upgrade for CS4? I have a new HDV project that I would like capture with it.

RE: Current Options
 

I'm upgrading my computer this weekend with Intel i7 920, 6gigs DDR3 1600, ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution motherboard, BFG 260 GEFORCE 896 ram, 150 gig WD Raptor System Drive, 300 Gig Seagate Applications Drive, 1TB G-tech ESATA external in software raid for video, ESATA Blue Ray burner, DVD CDRW Burner, on board sound (it's decent on this MB) but may install sound card?

OS- Vista Ultimate 64bit

Option 1: Plan to install Premiere CS4. I would like to use Prospect HD for it's real time and excellent codec, and Blackmagic Intensity card for overlay of time line to an HDMI external monitor, and perhaps later ingestion of 8 bit HD through HDMI once I have a better external raid array.

I'm waiting to see if Blackmagic, Cineform, and CS4 in 64 bit Vista will become a working reality? If so I will buy it right away.

Option 2: Alternative is to install my Matox RTx2 that I had running on my old Machine. They have new Matrox Tools Version that is for CS4 64 bit Vista, and you can overlay with RTx2 through DVI to an external monitor. Problem is that right now Matrox Tools RTx2 appears to be very full of problems with CS4 in 64 bit Vista, and I am not looking for a hair pulling project.

Option 3: Edius 5, with their HD spark card that has just HD out to external monitor. Apparently this all works well with 64 bit Vista. But I don't know Edius that well, and am much more familiar with Premiere, and also will have Photoshop and likely will have After Effects on my machine. Edius has great stability and excellent real time performance, but much less feature rich than premiere.

Any thoughts. . . anyone? Right now I think I'm going to be in a waiting mode more than anything else. There really doesn't appear to be any great option?

I do mostly 20-50 minute documentary on DVD of the history, culture, and genealogy of small villages on Polish Russian Boarder, but will now have Blue Ray option. I use motion video, quite a few stills, transitions, sometimes picture in a picture, etc. Sometimes music in the background and/or narration. I also just play around with video since days of Bravado MJPEG card, just prior to DV.

Tilford
Tilford Bartman is online now Report Post Edit/Delete Message

Tilford,

I'm going to interject here and throw in my two cents on the subject. I myself being somebody who is working with Vegas on an i7 platform and also using Vista Ultimate 64-bit.

My question for you would be do you really feel you need to use Vista 64? Yes, I realize in order to take advantage of all that RAM you don't have another choice however 64-bit software and the 64-bit VISTA actually use quite a bit more RAM.

The good news is that since Ultimate 64 ships with *both* 32-bit and 64-bit Windows in the box, why not just go ahead and work with the 32-bit version for now and hold onto that 64-bit version for down the road if/when the software you mentioned all matures to the point to really take advantage of that without the hassles that are going on right now?

Jon

CS4 Issue?
 

I think the problem isn't an issue of 32 vs 64 bit Vista. The blackmagic design card and the matrox card all have 64bit Vista drivers. The problem is that these products including cineform prospect HD either don't work at all or are very buggy with Premiere CS4. Apparently Adobe released the SDK quite late, these guys haven't had much time, and apparently it's a job to rewrite them for CS4. Matrox appears to have been the first, but also seems to be having quite a few issues.

Probably what I'll do is I'll build my new machine, and install CS4 and After Effects. Then I'll just wait and see what develops. Right now I don't have any projects that need to get done. So I'll just play and get familiar with CS4 premiere and after effects.

Tilford

I just recently upgraded my hardware. The path I chose was to install CS3 Premier Pro and After Effects, and then the full CS4 Master Collection. These can co-exist on your system. This way I can use the new features of Phoshop CS4 64 bit and still get video work done using Premier Pro CS3 + CineForm.

Roger

Will there be an upgade path/discount for current Prospect users?
Thanks

Actual ProspectHD users
 

The same question as Paul, what will be the update policy to current ProspectHD users (clients prior to october 2008)?
Thanks

So would i, bought NC a month ago, have not used it because of this importer thing.
So any news on the release date?

Is there any more news on the roll out of Prospect support for CS4? At the start of the thread I was told end of Jan, I'm just wondering how close we are now? Not a biggie if it's delayed, would just be useful to know as I'm about to start another big project - ideally I'd like to do it with cineform, but if it's going to be another month or so realistically then I'll go ahead without. Cheers.

We have few CS4 glitches that we needed work around before the importer release. CS4 includes a lot of changes, some don't make third party development as easy as we would like.

Hello. I readed this in other forum: "... they said they are waiting on a new update from Adobe then all Manufacturers can release CS4 drivers".
Possibly Cineform is waiting also.

I'm still not even sure what this CS4 importer is... is it a standalone product, or an accessory for current cineform owners for use in CS4? I cant find any info on the CF website. What does this product do exactly

thanks,

Technobabel, "CS4 importers" mean your CineForm AVI files will open (import) in CS4 with 32-bit float precision and all that goodness.

Have upgraded from Aspect to Propsect ready for the CS4 release. I've not actually attemopted to install over CS4 yet though. but can I? Won't expect CS4 to offer anbythign just yet but presumably HDLink will work just fine and I can start capturing some tapes hopefully. Wil lthat work?

Alan, Yes that works.

Wasn't expecting late-January to turn into mid-February :(
 

I know first will come the importer, but how does Cineform plan to implement the speech-to-text feature of CS4? Will it transcode into a new Cineform AVI file when it adds the metadata for speech? Will all CS4 features like this ultimately be supported?

"but we\'re targeting a beta release before the end of the year with the production version in January."

I understand you\'ve run into some difficulties with the cineform CS4 version, but is it time for me to stop checking the cineform website daily on the lookout for this release? Do you have a revised idea of when this will be available atall?

Thanks

Matt

CS4 update release
 

I JUST bought NeoScene so I could edit my Canon 5DM2 video content easily in CS4. I was too focused on the 5DM2 compatibility release to read the fine print on the website on CS4 compatibility.

Now, I\'ve dropped the $$ for NeoScene and I can\'t use it. I know, should have gone with the trial version first, but all the reviews I\'ve been reading make it sound like this product is a necessity for 5DM2 video editing on a PC. I was too trusting and impulsive.

So, to the fine people from Cineform, when will my NeoScene files be compatible with CS4??? The website still says Feb09 release, so is that still accurate, or is this looking more like April/May?