Neo HD or Neo Scene and quality settings

[Jan Cannon]

I am wondering which version of CineForm I should get and also what quality settings are best for my project shooting with a 5d mk ii.

I am thinking that NeoScene is probably the right way for me to go as I really won't be doing a whole lot of post processing and so won't really need First Light. I'll generally just be adjusting brightness, contrast and the contrast center within Vegas.

I would obviously like to keep my CineForm files as small as possible without compromising quality. In the Cineform tech blog it's suggested that a "medium" quality setting is fine if you don't do a lot of pre-rendering of scenes. How many generations could I go from my original CineForm conversion without noticing a degradation in image quality? That is probably a moot point for me anyway as I'll most likely not do any pre-rendering and render just once for my final output.

Thanks.

[David Newman]

I never use anything less than High and often use Filmscan 1. Medium is fine for HDV based edits, which medium was originally designed, yet the 5D holds more information than HDV.

"I'll generally just be adjusting brightness, contrast and the contrast center within Vegas."

Then you should be using First Light. Adjusting color/brightness/contrast within Vegas, you will be using only 8-bit, with been you can cuase banding in your output. Wheras First Light does these operations at a higher depth, before going into Vegas, avoiding one of you biggest causes of contouring/banding.

[Jan Cannon]

David, thanks for the information. It sounds like NeoHD is the way to go.