New releases for Mac and PC are out.
 

PC versions is at 5.2.0
Mac version is at 5.0.23

Download from cineform.com

Highlights form the PC release notes

* HDLink can now generate proxies
* more control of the Decoder for speed and 422 to 444 upsampling.
* more 3D control
* more CS5 integration for MOV files.
* enhancement to FirstLight and manual updates.
* Support for MXF 4:2:2 cameras like the Canon XF300 series (NeoHD and above.)
* lots of bug fixes.

Mac also gets many similar enhancements. Please try out the beta 5 version of FirstLight, this operates far more like the FirstLight addition on the PC. This will soon replace the old FirstLight on the Mac.

No downloadlinks. That means they are available from cineform website via support ... right ?

Awesome!! I love new builds :)

neg invert glitch.

It works properly sometimes, but not anymore. 514 build was a little glitchy too.
I thought it was working correctly, then, i adjusted my WB and it stopped working correctly.

With White balance turned off, it flips normally.
When I use the proper white balance, the neg flip turns the image tinted blue.

When I use my inversion LUT with the proper white balance the image flips, and colors remain neutral.
- I would just use my inversion LUT, but my primary controls then become inverted.

I suspect something isn't right with the ordering of the negative flip and the White Balance. Do you think that could be the culprit/resolved?

Justin, your analysis is wrong. You are assuming that you can white balance then apply the negative flip and expect the white balance to still be correct, it will not be (or a fluke if it is). Using the inverting LUT is applied in curved space, where the balance it applied in linear space, this is part of what it throughing you off. Also the negative curve is applied before the white balance matrix, so of couse the red and blue will be transposed (as they should be.)

Hey David!

Thank you for clarifying. I didn't realize that is how it worked.
Currently I am using Silicon DVR - and when I invert the image using an inversion look and grade that in DVR, everything is A-OK, but when I get into First Light, I am unable to continue my workflow because that look gets applied after the primaries, causing all my primary color correction controls to be inverted/backwards.

Then the current position of the negative invert is great, but then as you mentioned, it will change my WB.

Thoughts on a way around this? Possibility to apply a look before the Primaries may solve this.

There still no After Effects exporter?!!! CS5 has been out since Spring and I still can't render 10bit CineForm files, is this correct? If so, you may want to put that at the top of the list of things to do.
If I import an After Effects rendered CineForm file back into AE it is listed as Trillions of colors in the project window, but I assume it was rendered with 8-bit accuracy since I can only choose millions of colors in the exporter.

Be worked on now.

5.2 Issues with Matrox MX02 ?
 

I installed 5.2 but have major issues using a Matrox (MX02) Preset. anyone else notice this?

When opening CS5, no files will play back in timeline or in source monitor (hangs), was using build 5.1 (build 71 I think) prior to upgrading all was fine. I reverted to an old version after installing 5.2 but the problem still continued. I then restored (via Norton Ghost) my O/S drive and apps back to a good install with build 171 again and all is fine, tried the upgrade again and same issues when installing 5.2.

Also noticed a purple line on the HD monitor via MX02 that was not there before when trying 5.2.
I have no time to troubleshoot this so will revert back to an older build for now.
Any known issues?

That doesn't make much sense, we don't do everything custom for MX02 so it hard to imagine what could have changed. We will test the MX02 out next week.

I have always had problems with Cineform files with Matrox especially files with an alpha channel.
I don't believe this is a Cineform problem but a Matrox problem.

CineForm AVI and MOVs are implemented via an Premiere importer, so they is no direct interaction, Matrox should be loading CineForm images just as it would any other, and not be away on the source media type, abstracted by Premiere -- so this is all puzzling.

Thanks for the feedback chaps. Yes I agree, I don't think its Matrox as I have removed all Matrox drivers and I am having the same issue. I can't load cineform AVI's into the source monitor, it just displays white and kind of hangs... sometimes I can get audio playback but no video. If I use a cineform sequence I can put cineform AVI directly on the timeline and they play back in program monitor but not source... Something is definitely up and I don't really want to rebuild right now as I am on some tight deadlines, will probably stick at the old revision 5.1 unless there are any other suggestions.

Source monitor is work fine here with OpenGL off. We do have a bug with source monitor with OpenGL enabled in our play module. Matrox users shouldn't be using that.

I see the same issues with no Matrox, in the Source and in the Program. (I dont have any Matrox hardware at all.)

To be able to playback and have no hangs with CF files:
I deleted this folder and its content: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\CS5\MediaCore\CineForm
I then renamed "CFHD_AVI_Importer.prm" and "CFHD_AVI_Importer32.prm" to "CFHD_AVI_Importer.OLD" and "CFHD_AVI_Importer32.OLD" in the folder: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Pro CS5\Plug-ins\Common\CineForm

I can playback files in AE without changing anything.

Sound like you need to file a trouble ticket with support. Your system might be missing required DLLs.

No probs... I will open a ticket, thanks David.

Can somebody explain what the proxies option is for?

Proxies are particularly useful for 3D, as stereo 4K is a bit of a burden for many systems. Also 2K RAW on some systems is compute intensive enough. If someone were to generate DNxHD or ProRES proxies, they losses all the benefits FirstLight and no-longer have color/3D metadata travel from the edit in finishing. CineForm proxies are like no other in that perform all the color/3D active metadata corrections identically to their parent/master files, and changes that are applied on proxies automatically apply to the master files. In Avid MC5 and FCP 7, these tools really prefer 1080 sources, if you shoot >2K+ you can be in trouble, so proxies help there also. In most cases proxy files are not needed, as CineForm masters edit smoothly, but there are many extreme projects which CineForm is used more commonly (e.g. we've done a lot of IMax files) and these are the project where these files are most welcome.

Do you have to do anything special to use the proxies aside from checking the box? Is there a discussion some place of this I can look at?

It has been briefly mentioned a few times in the last few beta releases, but nothing else written up yet. There will be a techblog.cineform.com article soon.

Other then checking proxy, and typically fast scale with a smaller target size, your sources must be your CineForm master files.

Looks like same old problem keep on coming back.
I did convert some older 5D2 files 30fps to CF AVI. Audio did not sync any more.
System is Vista 64 and Vegas Pro 10.

Easy to diagnose, are the clips flagged as 30.0 or 29.97fps? Do they play out of sync in mediaplayer, or is simple more samples in the audio than video? From the screen shot not much can be learned, other than look like the audio playing about 18% slower than the video, which is not an known bug (.1% is more typical for 29.97 vs 30 issues.) Please fill a trouble ticket with support.

At least Vegas Pro is showing original 30fps and CF avi 29.97fps.
But ok I can use original files instead CF. VP 10 will be now faster previewing original mov files. Propably CF files will be later as fast or faster playing with Vegas 10.

We convert to 29.97 as a default, as 30.0 is not commonly used. If you want 30.0 there is a option to turn that off, will written here somewhere on the forum or support can tell you.

first light v5 beta mac:

Looks are working now, nice.

tools not working. - cannot get histo/rgb.. etc any of those to appear.

I should add my voice to Rich and Roger's chorus - I'm having a similar issue.

I upgraded to Neo 4K 5.20 and in Premiere CS5 the playback would hang after a second or two. I uninstalled 5.20 and then reinstalled 5.13 - it now works fine.

I don't have any Matrox hardware installed, but I did just install a Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle. I don't think I tried 5.20 prior to installing the Shuttle, so I can't vouch for the effect of the Shuttle.

- Rick

As the isn't being commonly reported, please file a trouble ticket.

I'm having similar problems.
CS5.0.2, Win7 64.
Mid project with N4K 5.10 b 268, no problems, smooth as glass.
Installed N4K 5.2- same project has playback hangs, image in program monitor stays the same when moving CTI, or changing sequences until playback actually starts, then image refreshes.
Also noticing very marked interlace artifacting with playback- never a problem before.
Sometimes refuses to open or close sequences.
On changing playback rez in program monitor I got the BSOD.
No Matrox, Blackmagic, etc., just straight CS5.
BTW, all the CFHD is on RAID 0- no bottleneck issues.
I do have Open GL turned on- seems like the only way I can get my HDTV monitor to get full screen overlay with Quadro fx 3800 (using N4K 5.1xxx, or 5.2).
Anyway, I rolled back to 5.10 and all seems to be well for the moment.
I've never had any problems at all with any of the prior v 5xx updates.
Seems like something is afoot with v 5.2 :(

I'm in the middle of a project on Premiere Pro and, with 4 tracks of videos/stills, my computer is grinding to a halt. I converted my Cineform master files to proxy. Do I now need to reimport them into PP? I want to save existing edits, but move over to the proxy files.

Thanks.

To use proxies, with premiere closed, swap out the prioxy files for the masters, i.e. most the masters somewhere else (a sub folder, so the move is instant) and when Premiere "says where are my files?", point it to the proxies.

Just read about the other issues reported with 5.2, I have opened a ticket for troubleshooting but wonder if there is something in common with our systems where we experience the same problems with 5.2. It does not seem widely reported some perhaps some hardware issue?

Here is my system specs -

Mobo - Asus P58X68 Premium
Intel i7 960
Windows 7 64-bit
12 GB - DDR3 RAM
Video card - nVidia FX4800

2 x RAID 0 volumes for O/S and cache (4 x Intel SSD drives)
RAID 5 e-sata volume for video

How would you use the proxies with Vegas?

Rich -

Here are my system specs:

Motherboard - ASUS P6X58D-E
Processor - Intel i7 980X
Memory - 12 GB DDR3
Video - nVidia GeForce GTX 480
Operating System - Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Edition 64-bit

1 x 1.5TB Drive for Operating System, Projects, Previews
4 x 1TB Drives RAID 0 for Video

- Rick

5.2.1 was released last night, that should help with several issues.

Same as all NLEs. With the project closed, move the source video into a sub directory, then reopen the project. Vegas (like Premiere and FCP, etc) will ask where the media is, you can then point to either the masters or proxies as you need.

I installed build 279 and playback in CS5 is much better although it's still glitchy and hangs quite often especially in the source monitor. I also had 2 blue screen system crashes in several hours which I have not had before. I could not play back cineform AVI's in either VLC or classic media player either due to errors, have reinstalled build 268 for now.

While it sound like we still have some improvement for the source monitor, are can't be responsible for any blue screens as that is due to software running at a lower system level than we provide. Likely you need device driver update for something, update you graphics card drivers, RAID drivers etc. Blue screens should always point to a hardware layer failure or the drivers that connect to hardware. In the user mode software we develop, we couldn't cause a BSOD even if we tried.

We work in media player without issue, classic or the version now shipped, I use these all the time. So you may not have had a correct install. VLC doesn't support DirestShow, VideoForWindows or any third party codecs -- it is a open source distribution codec player only (H.264, MPEG base etc.)

Hmmm...
My experience as well- including BSOD (first time this has ever happened on my Win7 64 system).
I do have the latest fx 3800 GPU drivers & can't think of what else (hardware wise) would impact this.
Since I am in the middle of a big (1,000+ clips) project, I think I will stick with build 268 for now.
Everything works perfectly- hard to beat that...

It's good to know it's not just me me, Perhaps we have similar system specs. I ghosted my O/S back to build 271 and have had no issues in 5 + hours of editing. I just updated nVidia FX4800 drivers (the previous release were July 2010) Raid drivers are all up to date. I have not tried any 5.2 builds since upgrading FX4800 drivers as I have too much work to get done but the old vcard drivers were only 3 months old. Raid drivers and mobo are all up to date. Mabey a MOBO Bios update would help?

Anyway - Cineform folks are doing a great job at providing these releases, it's appreciated and I know of no other company that consistently works with their customers at this level and provides such awesome tools!

Hadn't thought about a BIOS update- I'll look into that.
CF guys are indeed really great!!
This glitch is nothing like what we went through FOREVER with CS4/CF.
Build 268 works great, so it's not a critical issue