Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

ehm...
i don't know why GoPro head decide to stop Premium and Pro version developing, but about some comments on money before mine, if is only because it not catch enought money why not do a new payed upgrade?

from what i saw cineform for users is free upgrade around the years, every other software i bought (with exception of zbrush where user installed licences grow at exponentially speed) every year or two go out with a payed upgrade, that pay developing team and developing cost.
I not understand why many people think that software update is not a work, and want not pay a work of developers per years.
every years i spent a bit of my budget to update software, like mocha, adobe suite, lightwave3d, cinema4d, plugin update like i update when i can my hardware camera, lens, filter and more..

i will be happy to see a new Uber GoPro Studio with new feature, or only actual features with a better integration of some tool for ingesting video, frame sequence etc. And i will be happy to pay the work of developing of new tool. better if is it with an hardware key that allow me to move from a computer to a computer without this annoying internet activation, be cause i often change hardware of my computer, and i hate everything lock me to some hd or a cpu, be cuase cause me too much time to spent to activate tool instead to use it.

Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

That's great to know Jake. My motherboard just crapped itself and have updated to a X99, fortunately all the hdds plugged straight in and everything booted ok. I was anticipating having to go through all the activation stuff but it all seems ok. I'll let you know if I have any probs.

Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

Good news for some of us


Well I got an e-mail from RAW4Pro and they have just released a version that does not require a paid Cineform license but can still export to Cineform RAW and video. Good news for all you Blackmagic design camera users and also any camera that outputs Cinema DNGs.

I must say this is a step in the right direction and excellent news and I assume this was done in collaboration with GoPro. If so, I hope it is a sign of things to come that will truly free us from being tied down with activation required versions. Nice one Gopro - made my day......that's how you win friends........

Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

Thanks Carlo, I appreciate the tip.

Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

Last request to the Gopro Cineform guys,

Would it be possible to have Firstlight as a standalone program? I am not sure whether it has to have an activated version of Cineform to function but it certainly 'checks license' at boot up. If not and we can use it with an un-activated Premium product, then ignore this. If so then can you unhook it? I think I have had to accept that I can live without HD-link as I can use Vegasaur in Vegas to do pretty much all my transcoding for me.

But Gopro studio is too buggy on my system for grading.

So I have come to realise that actually the most brilliant part of the products I used was actually Firstlight. Everything else is sort of covered but it always just worked on my system with few issues.

Best
Henry

Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

ohhh I remember that drama - That was end end of cineform for me - a good product screwed by gopro

Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

In order to prepare for all the changes coming forth, I have built up a new editing rig, fresh installed Windows 10 and reinstalled/deactivated and re-activated the last version of Cineform Studio Premium (2.0.1 b319). Alongside that, I also installed the current free version of GoPro Cineform Studio (2.5.6). My workflow is within Adobe and everything is great except one thing - video capture.

Does anyone know if there an alternative to HDLink software bundled with Cineform Premium that can use Blackmagic cards (Intensity/Decklink) to capture directly to Cineform (preferably .avi)?

I can do away with Cineform Studio Premium but this one problem is keeping me from moving forward and just use the free version of the codec. Unfortunately if I use native capture within Premiere Pro CS6/CC 2015 I have no choice but to either use what's provided by BM: Uncompressed, MJPEG, or DVCPROHD - all of which I am not really thrilled about because it will require an added step to convert captured media to CF files rather than in real time as with HDLink.

update: I dug around a bit more and I found something I haven't used in ages which may work. VirtualDub. I'll report back after I do some testing.

update#2: Scratch that.. I cant get capture to work properly. I can get it to display live feed video through BM Intensity card but when I try to capture using CF VFW codec, I get a "Video compressor error: The source image format is not acceptable. (error code -2)." If I use a BM's MJPEG or uncompressed, it works fine. GoPro Cineform Codec v9.0.5 is listed but it doesn't seem to work...

Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

I do use v9.0.5 to capture and encode in VD. Afaik this codec works best with rgb24 data so if your card is giving something else this may be the problem.

Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

RGB24 is very common in VFW, but not the most efficient for compression. YUV through VFW is tricky, but better (faster.) We also implemented v210 -- 10-bit YUV through VFW, I know VD can be made to support it. Unfortunately I don't have hands on experience with this type of capture.

Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

Well so far, I have tried different settings and have been unsuccessful so far with VD + Cineform + BM Intensity card.

I am open to suggestions, are there any other alternative hardware/software solutions that will allow me to capture in real time using Cineform (non-Premium)? Perhaps Aja/Matrox? I am willing to alter workflow but I would like a method to be able to acquire footage via capture directly to Cineform.

Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

So whats the difference between using premiere pro/media encoder to encode files compared to using HDlink or neoscene?

Is the something happening to the file? I kind of liked having that external program to encode a large number of files.

If i use media encoder to convert 30p to 24p is that the same as using neoscene?

Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

Cineform used to be the standard for turning 4:2:0 HDV into a 4:2:2 intermediate with the chroma interpolation built into the conversion. You get a nicer looking image from 4:2:0 material, but likely all of that is about to go by the wayside nowadays.

Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

Is this something you could answer? thanks!

So whats the difference between using premiere pro/media encoder to encode files compared to using HDlink or neoscene?

Is the something happening to the file? I kind of liked having that external program to encode a large number of files.

If i use media encoder to convert 30p to 24p is that the same as using neoscene?

Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

They should be very similar, however I don't have access to the internals of Premiere, if you are using YUV 4:2:2 the result should be the same (I believe Premiere does 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 up conversion correctly for some time now.)

30p to 24p is never recommended. Neoscene had a pretty good 60i to 24p, which is still uncommon in other workflows (you could hack something together with AVISynth)

Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

Great interview with David,
May fill in a few blanks for us. Sorry for giving you guys so much flack earlier on. Personally thanks to the Cineform guys - this video helps me at least understand your goals. Perhaps we shall see a flavour of VC5 in cameras in the next few years. Blackmagic could really take a hint here. I would still love to have a separate version of Firstlight hint, hint.

Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

Nice to see what you GoPro and David Newman got in mind out there. I have been using Cineform from HDV days on, and it continues to be an excellent intermediate editing codec for me in Vegas Pro. I think this is really the first time I have seen David Newman in an interview, and it was a pleasure to see that he exhibits such enthusiasm about the product. Thank you all at Cineform and GoPro for the moves you are making to standardize Cineform !!

Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

Just watched the video. I don't think that the standardisation of the codec will have any impact at all. I don't know of any one who is developing there own codec. They are more likely just to licence a codec from Gopro.

Another issue is the lack of hardware acceleration for the codec.

My main interest is 3D which Cineform seems to have abandoned. Adode does not support 3D and Gopro Studio cannont even multiplex or demultiplex the left and right views.

Gopro Studio is too crude for serious video editing. It seems to me that Vegas Pro is the only editor supporting Cineform 3D.

Re: GoPro abandons Premium and Professional users
 

Just bout 2 months away before Prem/Prof Cineform goes away for good....

Still haven't found a decent alternative to capture directly to CF without HDLink. At any rate, trying to future proof my system for the near future with new gear. I'm hoping at some point some company or someone will support it or have it available as a native codec for capture. In the meantime, backing up all my system drives (cloning) in case it ever goes south on me. However cross my fingers that my new system doesn't die on me then its goodbye CF Prem, for good.

In case anyone is wondering, the new Blackmagic Intensity 4K capture card works no problem with the last version of Cineform Premium/Professional using the latest BM drivers (10.5 I believe). Depending on what kind of source material, you can feed and capture directly to CF at much higher resolutions/frame rates than the previous versions.