AE Cineform renders & Mocha
 

I came across something odd today which has happened before. I rendered out some flying footage to a Cineform file using AE CS4 but could not open it in Mocha to stabilize it. I wouldn't normally do this but had adjusted the initial edit in AE. I put the rendered file into Premier CS4 and rendered it again using Cineform and it opened in Mocha without a problem. I have tried a couple of other files and the same thing happens. Mocha doesn't seem to like AE Cineform output. Is there a reason for this?

There are a couple of problems with Mocha and Cineform. First, AE CS4 4.1 tends to not work correctly with 1440x1080 (1.333 PAR) CFHD files, either MOV or AVI. I've posted that on the Imagineering forum, but so far, I haven't gotten a response.

The problem that you have described is also odd, but you can "fix" it by using CFRepair on the CFHD avi file. The odd part of it is that no other software that I have tested has a problem with the few CFHD files that don't load with Mocha AE.

Same situation here.
Mocha and cf does not interact well - specifically 1440x1080 & there must be more to it than CFRepair as I also have tested it - with variable results.

Yesterday I uploaded an example file to support staff at imageneer systems and they will have a look at it.
I'll keep you informed on any progres here.

Sorry, I was a bit unclear in my previous response. These are two distinctly different problems. The 1440x1080 issue cannot be solved by CFRepair.

However, if a CFHD file won't load at all in Mocha AE (Ray's original question), then try CFRepair on it. That should allow the file to load properly.

Because I use a lot of CGI I work in square pixels. When I capture I resize HDV footage to 1920 x 1080. Cineform repair did work but not consistantly when I tried other clips.

I don't have enough clips to test, in order to figure out how common this error is. The few that don't open in Mocha, also don't work if you just try to re-wrap them with HDLink to MOV, The only other option would be to try to re-wrap them to MOV, with Quicktime Pro (the $30 payware version).

Once you go to a transcoding option, you might as well convert the CFHD AVI to an image sequence, since Mocha "likes" that format better anyway. There is a new version of Mocha AE (2.04), but I haven't checked it out yet to see whether it fixed this issue.