5D II/Neoscene/Premiere Pro 2 and cs4

[Elliot Gabor]

I downloaded the trial version of Neoscene to see if it would be a good soluiton to finally start editing some of my 5D footage. I was intrigued by the codec but more so the fact that my my black and white levels wouldn't be crushed.

After converting some footage and importing it into an uncompressed timeline, it actually appears like the footage is crushed even more than the original MOV when compared side by side. When I tried the files out on my laptop which just has neoplayer installed, the footage looks good/corrected even in premiere pro 2. THis seems to be confirmed by the yc waveform.

On a side note I tried installing the DNxHD codec and converting some footage to both avi and mov wrappers and importing into premiere. Premiere doesn't recognize the video on the AVIs and the MOVs are significantly darker (the white levels) than the original footage.

I've had so many different codecs and programs installed over the years on my desktop that i'm afraid something in the past is conflicting with the cinform codec. I instaled the latest version of quicktime player but i've had quicktime alternative also.

I really don't want to reformat my comptuer to eventually learn that something else was causing the issue. right now my trial version of neoscene has run out and I'd like to make sure it will work before I actually purchase it. If it really works then $129 is nothing for a good solution to edit 5D footage.

[David Newman]

NeoScene is working fine -- either you got you footage backward or you have something conflicting (I have avoided quicktime alternative for reason long forgotten.) NeoPlayer (which worked on your laptop) and NeoScene/HD/4K/3D all use the same decoder, so there is no reason to have one decoding differently to another.

Download NeoHD, for a 15-day trial, if you get everything working purchase NeoScene, it you can't resist NeoHD after using FirstLight (no better way to preserve your shadow detail and highlights.)

[Elliot Gabor]

Thanks David,

What does NeoHD offer that does a better job at preserving shadow and highlight detail than Neoscene?

[David Newman]

The tool is called FirstLight. Here is a brief online demo

CineForm FirstLight color correction through Dropbox on Vimeo

The reason FirstLight will do better that using the codec alone (and your NLEs color correction tools) is that FirstLight is always using high bit-depth processing develop the image, even if the NLE is requesting 8-bit data (as it so often will.) 8-bit decodes with color corrections on top are no match for corrections through FirstLight. If you can convince your NLE to do 32-bit float processing, you can achieve similar results as FirstLight but at a fraction of the speed, typically requiring rendering. Whereas color changes in FirstLight are generally real-time wherever you use your CineForm clips (not just in your NLE.)

[Elliot Gabor]

Thanks David, this makes sense.

One final question. Now that we are anticipating the 24P firmware update in the foreseeable future, are there going to be any compatibility issues with neoscene 1.5 and these new MOV files? If the file is already 23.976 or 29.97 will neoscene just skip the framerate conversion and do the luma/black level conversion?

[David Newman]

Yes, we expect it to work as is.