seductive metadata control

[Oliver Koeppel]

Cineform created a brand new crossplatform, crosssoftware, realtime colourcorrectiontool for 2k and 4k. It sounds amazing!
look at http://www.freshdv.com
click on cineform

Olli

[David Newman]

I couldn't find the link, and I would to see what they wrote.

[Oliver Koeppel]

Hi David. Wow! First post is one of the masterminds themselfs...
Thanks for that!

http://freshdv.com


Like on the screenshot. Look at he lower right corner. there´s an embedded player click on cineform and it will work

[CJ Roy]

Holy shit David, that is amazing. I'm really glad you guys are supporting the Mac, now. Consider me sold, just on the .look file support alone.

Incredible. Well done.

-CJ

[David Newman]

Thanks Olli,

I had only done a text search, so I missed the video elements. It is good to see D.T. do that presentation, which I had done myself many many time these last few days.

[Oliver Koeppel]

Will it be part of NEO 4k or ist it standalone? How about the price and when will it be available?

Olli

[David Newman]

NEO 4K and Prospect 4K are available now at $999 and $1999 respectively. The conversion utilities for Red One are not shipping yet awaiting the SDK. We will be finishing a RAW to RAW conversion management tool, that will be $1999, all owners of our 4K products before May 31st, will get grand fathered this capablility for free once it is released.

[Michael Hastings]

NEO 4K and Prospect 4K are available now at $999 and $1999 respectively. The conversion utilities for Red One are not shipping yet awaiting the SDK. We will be finishing a RAW to RAW conversion management tool, that will be $1999, all owners of our 4K products before May 31st, will get grand fathered this capablility for free once it is released.

David:

spent about a half hour talking to David at NAB. As you know, he's very articulate guy that gives a great demonstration. I was extremely impressed with your active metadata - it seems a brilliantly simple approach to working with the 4K files - almost too good to be true. I think I understand it enough to know that it isn't too good to be true - that it's real but I wondered if you could expand on it and maybe bat it around here with the other geniuses so I could understand it better.

My two specific areas of interest are:

1) What might the limitations/downsides be to this approach and

2) What is to stop Apple from incorporating this directly into Final Cut Pro? and what additional goodies do we get with Cineform that even if Apple can do it that would be better or additional features? I'm not asking this to create FUD (and even if Apple does it - given the state of their follow through with Quicktime/Final Cut/RED - I wouldn't necessarily trust them to do it right anyway) I'm sincerely just trying to understand the technology and its ramifications.

Again, I was very impressed and your software is on my short list of items I saw at NAB for purchase over the next few months.

[Gunleik Groven]

YUP, this may stirr the pot a bit...

[David Newman]

David:

spent about a half hour talking to David at NAB. As you know, he's very articulate guy that gives a great demonstration. I was extremely impressed with your active metadata - it seems a brilliantly simple approach to working with the 4K files - almost too good to be true. I think I understand it enough to know that it isn't too good to be true - that it's real but I wondered if you could expand on it and maybe bat it around here with the other geniuses so I could understand it better.

My two specific areas of interest are:

1) What might the limitations/downsides be to this approach and

2) What is to stop Apple from incorporating this directly into Final Cut Pro? and what additional goodies do we get with Cineform that even if Apple can do it that would be better or additional features? I'm not asking this to create FUD (and even if Apple does it - given the state of their follow through with Quicktime/Final Cut/RED - I wouldn't necessarily trust them to do it right anyway) I'm sincerely just trying to understand the technology and its ramifications.

Again, I was very impressed and your software is on my short list of items I saw at NAB for purchase over the next few months.

Thank you for the positive feedback. Active Metadata is one of the features that helps demonstrate that we are much more than a codec, even on the Mac. It is a concept we have been planning and working on the a long time, SI getting the first early version of it about 18 months ago, now opening up for all RAW, and soon 444, sources. So I will not get into question 2 other than I believe we have a good lead over Apple for this technology, it does favor RAW or 4:4:4 encoding over 4:2:2, but we would love Apple to directly support it with CineForm compression in their native real-time mode (that would be nice.)

As for the downsides. None really, as Active Metadata is non-destructive technique, users can completely turn it off or just ignore it, use the compressor as a simple DPX replacement. It is just a cool addition to using the CineForm workflow, greatly assisting for smaller productions and collaborative workflows. As a techniques it does favor on-line workflows vs proxy conform, but we are looking at in use in both workflows. Also it is a low level codec function, it does require the use of CineForm compression, a downside for some and a positive for others.

[Rudi Herbert]

David,

I couldn't attend NAB but saw the presentation at freshdv.com and, yes, was very impressed. Cineform is truly a magic tool, and my planned path for posting RED footage, whenever it becomes possible. However, I see that it can do real time at 2K and 4K, but the windows David was working on were downsized to something like a 720 format as it looked to me. Does this tool really work real time at true full 2 and 4K resolutions? Granted, you'd probably need a projector for 4K, but what about 2K, have you tested on a 30" monitor?

[David Newman]

4K plays at 2K real-time with the active metadata today under Windows, and slightly less than that on the Mac (we have nice PC and old Mac Pros, not quite the some system performance.) We hope to complete the Mac optimization for 4K projects by the time the RED SDK is available. The FreshDV presention was likely a 1K decode (the window size in FCP automatically sets the about of decode work we need to do.) We can do a 4K real-time decode with real-time demosaic on Windows today (expect to do nothing much else), but there is no where to send that data. However 4K playing at 2K on 30" monitor looks amazing, we where showing that all week.

P.S. When we mix 2K RAW with 4K RAW or 4K 444 on a timeline, they all play at 2K (if requested), the 2K RAW is demosaiced in real-time, cutting very nicely with the 4K, even with multistream elements.

[RayFrisby]

NEO 4K and Prospect 4K are available now at $999 and $1999 respectively. The conversion utilities for Red One are not shipping yet awaiting the SDK. We will be finishing a RAW to RAW conversion management tool, that will be $1999, all owners of our 4K products before May 31st, will get grand fathered this capablility for free once it is released.


This is great news for all existing Cineform customers and a nice way of thanking them for taking the plunge when others were doubting. David will existing Neo 4K customers also be entitled to the RAW to RAW conversion tool for free ?

[lordtangent]

NEO 4K and Prospect 4K are available now at $999 and $1999 respectively. The conversion utilities for Red One are not shipping yet awaiting the SDK. We will be finishing a RAW to RAW conversion management tool, that will be $1999, all owners of our 4K products before May 31st, will get grand fathered this capablility for free once it is released.

Do you mean the RAW to RAW convert capability?

We spoke about speed a little at NAB but can you refresh my memory? What is the transcode speed like from .r3d to Cineform RAW?

[Mark Crabtree]

I was at the Cineform booth on three separate occasions and always got the same answer. 12 FPS. Or we can just keep using Redcine and render out to a
an encoded format like Prores, but of course my realtime experience rendering on a MacPro 3 GZ Quad core is more than 1.5 Seconds PER Frame. When you do the math, Cineform users are going to get to have a life.

[David Newman]

Sorry guys, no one should have mentioned 12 fps, we are getting 10fps using own internal only tools (using 4K 2:1 mode footage.) The reason it is fast, is we aren't doing and demosaiced during the conversion. Once the SDK is out we intend to do the same RAW to RAW operation, and we expect to achieve similar speeds with the SDK (fingers crossed.) We will be charging for the RAW conversion tools once we can ship them, but we will remain a very cost effective solution.

[Mark Crabtree]

Thanks David for that correction. But it is really only a small difference in the huge speed increase over having to demosaic as you encode. I do have a couple of remaining questions. 1. Redcine has options for sharpening, OLPF correction and matrix on or off. How does Cineform deal with these and if not how do you suggest we address them? 2. You mentioned that any buyer/owner of Cineform by May 31 would get your conversion utility free. Does this not apply to the raw converter? If not, how much will it cost?

[David Newman]

Our range of demosaicing filters have built in NR and sharpening controls to compensate for OLPF and the general softening that can happen with a good demosaic. While don't have the dates on the SDK yet, so May 31st is a placeholder, and yes for the RAW convertor. Basically we are rewarding the early adoptor and the existing CineForm customer. We hope in the meantime the issues with RedCine export to CineForm can be addressed, as that is the Red official way of doing things until the SDK.

[Oliver Koeppel]

It seems to be a great tool. When do we get it for RED? I know about the Sdk, but ... did Jim mentioned when it will be?

[Mark Crabtree]

At the Red User party Red folks would not comment on build 16 other than there is no release date.

David,

What about Redcine's ability to have matrix on or off?
Also, do your conversion tools allow for adjusting the amount of NR and sharpening?

[David Newman]

The matrix is part of our active metadata engine. The NR and sharpening level is through choice of demosaic -- of course you can do whatever you want on top of that with NLE or compositing filters.

[mjeppsen]

For anyone that had trouble finding the Cineform demonstration video in our video playlist at FreshDV (http://www.freshdv.com/freshtv), here is a direct html link with a QT MOV download.
http://www.freshdv.com/2008/04/nab-2008-cineform.html

Thanks again to David Taylor for a fantastic presentation on a very intriguing product!

[lordtangent]

David, giving the RAW to RAW converter to early adopters for FREE is an awesome gesture. And 10FPS conversion speed is still fast enough to easily convert a days worth of multi-camera shooting overnight.

I'm tempted to get Prospect 4k even though it's WAYYYY over kill for my needs right now. I'm still using an HV20! But then I'd have the RAW to RAW option open to me later without having to spend the extra bread when I get my Scarlet.

Of course, that is casting my bet on Cineform big-time since a lot can happen in the market in one year. Though... based on your track record it seems like a pretty good bet. And if I HAD 12bit 4:4:4:4 at 4k now I'm sure I could figure out other uses for it, considering my business. (3D CGI)

Here are some more questions for you:

What kind of render speeds are you seeing on final "Flattening" of the 4k RAW to 4k RGB? (Full quality demosiac, etc) How about 2k RGB? I'm guessing it could get really I/O bound if the target was DPX or TIFFs so let's assume I'm talking about Cineform RAW to Cineform 4:4:4 flattening. (for export to a post house that supports Cineform...or whatever)

How well threaded is Cineform Prospect in Premiere? How well are you seeing it scale on stuff like 8 core machines?

Last question. Can you talk at all about Cineforms involvement in Adobes CinemaRAW initiative?

[kmikami]

So how exactly does this work within After Effects? Take that video in the demo for example. In the RAW version there are some shadow details in her white clothing but when the look metadata is applied the whites get blown out. If you brought that footage into AE and threw on a levels effect could you pull those highlights back down and get the shadow detail back? Or do you have to take the cineform look off to access the full raw dynamic range?

[lordtangent]

Well, it's sending the image though the AVI or Quicktime interface to the software with the Metadata applied. So if the image is clamped in that "out" data from AVI or Quicktime, I assume you couldn't pull the image back down in After Effects. You'd have to remove the clampy Meta-data LUT or apply a flatter meta-data LUT to get the detail though the interface.

It's still an awesome feature though. The fact that you can non-destructively apply a look to everything for dailies or rough cuts as a matter of course, but switch it as is needed is quite cool. It makes a basic NLE much more powerful as a result.

What would REALLY be cool is if Speed Grade had access to this Cineform Active Meta Data and you could do color grading sort of "side band" in that database. Then EVERY application that decoded the RAW though Cineform would get it automatically. I mean, how cool is that? It would really help make the final conform/grade process a lot more distributable/collaborative and less linear. (Not sure how you'd do "Power Windows" and that sort of thing. But even just LUTS would be really cool.)