New PC Betas

[David Newman]

Version 4.2 is a nice bump in features, with more to come. You will want them just for the decoder speed up.

From the readme:
Added: timecode base at the framerate for non-TC sources in HDLink.
Added: HDLink now extracts Timecode and Time/Date info for most file conversions.
Added: ExifTool support to exact additional shooting info metadata from diskbased files, particularly for Canon DSLR sources.
Added: Add a directory structure style navigation to FirstLight passive metadata to handle the potentially large number of new metadata fields.
Added: Custom Copy/Paste Filters in First Light. Ctrl+Shift+C will bring out a window to filter which properties to copy or Ctrl+Shift+V will do the same for paste.
Added: Local (per clip) overlay templates -- now metadata layouts can be clip or globally applied.
Added: Free View 3D mode -- like side-by-side but not anamorphically squeezed.
Added: Overlays with center justification are now draggable.
Added: Green Magenta anaglyph to First Light
Enhanced: 3D overlay placement.
Fixed: Fixed a decoder performance issue as the Active Metadata color processing was on when not needed.
Fixed: a memory leak in the overlay engine.
Fixed: (3D) Swap eyes for side-by-side mode.
Fixed: MOV Import a divide by zero error when a audio track is flagged but has no samples.
Fixed: Bug in StereoMux (3D) where it would find the muxing tool.
Fixed: (3D) overlays working in YUV side-by-side, under-over and interlace modes.Enhanced:

Download links for trials and updates.
Prospect 3D http://www.cineform.com/downloads/Pr...235-100106.zip
Prospect 4K http://www.cineform.com/downloads/Pr...235-100106.zip
Prospect HD http://www.cineform.com/downloads/Pr...235-100106.zip
Neo 3D http://www.cineform.com/downloads/NE...235-100106.zip
Neo 4K http://www.cineform.com/downloads/NE...235-100106.zip
Neo HD http://www.cineform.com/downloads/NE...235-100106.zip
NeoScene http://www.cineform.com/downloads/NE...135-100106.zip

[Craig Irving]

Thanks!

Hey David, any plans to release a FirstLightLUTs-pack2?

I still haven't been able to comprehend First Light fully so I usually shy away from the fancy features and just browse through a list of the LUT presets. They look great! Would love even MORE options down the road. Was that the idea? Or maybe Cineform users here can start a sharing database, that'd be cool.

[David Newman]

We feel the users should be creating there own LUT packs. Both Prospect in CS3 and now First Light itself can export LUTs. Please create your favorite looks and share.

[Jay Bloomfield]

Originally Posted by David Newman

Added: ExifTool support to exact additional shooting info metadata from diskbased files, particularly for Canon DSLR sources.

I assume that this means that any non-Canon Exif (and XMP) support doesn't work. Some of my Cineform files have both types of metadata and dragging them directly to the exiftool.exe file does show the metadata. Firstlight only shows Cineform metadata and one freeform metadata entry that I added to the registry.

[David Newman]

No. We add everything that exiftool reports, on new conversation only, you might be looking at an old file. Exiftool is very cool, we now need something to extract more per frame metadata. All CineForm metadata can be per frame. I think you are talking about XMP data abode (mostly uselessly) appends after import. We want aquisition related metadata. All file based HDLink conversion now append all found metadata to each frame - no sidecar files, clip only data.

[Michael Panfeld]

Couldn't care less about any of these features. Only one thing matters: real-time Engine for CS4. When is that coming? Thanks

[Jay Bloomfield]

Originally Posted by David Newman

No. All file based HDLink conversion now append all found metadata to each frame - no sidecar files, clip only data.

I was talking about Exif data also, that I added to a Cineform AVI file at some point after conversion with abcAVItag. But I figured FL would only display whatever passive metadata came over from the camera's original video file at acquisition time. So, I assume that even if I add a tag later (even with write function in ExifTool) it won't show up in FL, unless it matches one of the spectrum of tags that you are looking for from the Canon DSLRs, etc. (like in the the screen capture that you posted).

There doesn't seem to be a generic (meaning "across all common video wrapper formats") open source library/SDK for per frame metadata (at least I haven't seen it). DVMP Pro 4 will read the per frame metadata for MPEG2 and AVCHD files, in a manner similar to the way that the German HDVdataMon freeware program did for HDV files, so it can't be that hard to do. I've never seen any extraction and/or display of per frame metadata for MOV files, but then I'm not a Mac guy. There is code online as to how to extract everything in each frame, since this has been a big virus/cryptography (Lego my Stego, hehe) issue with mp3, jpg and avi files:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/securi...nodotnet4.aspx

Where exactly is the per frame metadata stored in an AVI file, though?

[David Taylor]

The key to the new metadata capability in First Light is new conversions in HD Link. The recent version of HD Link grabs all metadata from the video file and inserts it into the converted CineForm file. Earlier versions of HD Link did not grab all the metadata.

[David H. Wilson]

Originally Posted by Michael Panfeld

Couldn't care less about any of these features. Only one thing matters: real-time Engine for CS4. When is that coming? Thanks

While I understand your concern, many of us are enormously appreciative of the new features in this latest build.

[Marty Baggen]

Originally Posted by David H. Wilson

While I understand your concern, many of us are enormously appreciative of the new features in this latest build.

And we understand your appreciation.

[David H. Wilson]

We appreciate your understanding.

[David Newman]

Originally Posted by Jay Bloomfield

I was talking about Exif data also, that I added to a Cineform AVI file at some point after conversion with abcAVItag. But I figured FL would only display whatever passive metadata came over from the camera's original video file at acquisition time. So, I assume that even if I add a tag later (even with write function in ExifTool) it won't show up in FL, unless it matches one of the spectrum of tags that you are looking for from the Canon DSLRs, etc. (like in the the screen capture that you posted).

There doesn't seem to be a generic (meaning "across all common video wrapper formats") open source library/SDK for per frame metadata (at least I haven't seen it). DVMP Pro 4 will read the per frame metadata for MPEG2 and AVCHD files, in a manner similar to the way that the German HDVdataMon freeware program did for HDV files, so it can't be that hard to do. I've never seen any extraction and/or display of per frame metadata for MOV files, but then I'm not a Mac guy...[/url]

We still seem to be talking across purposes. Take your original source files M2T, MXF etc, convert them in HDLink than load the result into First Light, you will see all the metadata ExifTool reports is now embedded (we convert the full ExifTool output input CineForm metadata.) We have nothing custom for Canon DSLRs, although they are a rich source of metadata.

I have looked at DVMP Pro 4, I should probably see if I can convince them to make a shell version that HDLink can call, so we can append its data in addition to all the ExifTool data. We don't want to reproduce their work, I would rather up-sell a script-able version of their tools through integration. Do you know anyone behind that tool?

All metadata is stored within each frame of a compressed sequence, it can't be lost, and the decoder core is aware of it (very useful for Active Metadata and burn-ins), which it couldn't do if the metadata was in the file's header or in a side-car.

[Brian Parker]

I understand your appreciating and appreciate your understanding.

But seriously, my last few comments on this forum have all been complaints about the lack of mac cs4 updates. I just want to say to redress the balance a bit that when cineform come through and make neohd usable, it is going to be awesome. I can't wait to get my teeth into first light and start playing with luts. Metadata support is great too. Adobe Bridge with all of it's xmp etc power, is useless for browsing avchd files because it cant see any of the data. It might finally start to become useful.

Hope it all happens soon though. My hard drives are filling up with a year and a half's worth of avchd and mpeg2 intermediate files, waiting for the time when I can export cineform masters for proper archival.

[Stephen Armour]

Any possibility yet of correcting the previously incorrect framerate metadata (always 25 fps) from earlier HDLink conversions, so we can include burn-in TC windows with the correct timecode output with previous Cineformed data?

Or is that another reason you're looking at DVMP Pro 4 and similars?

[David Newman]

Stephen, the fix for the old files is engineering work that we just can't justify at moment. Particularly as in is not an issue going forward and mostly cosmetically impacts a minority of users (PAL users can't use timecode burnin accurately.) It requires that we have a post encode metadata insertion tool that is file based, i.e. not using the database. This might happen for other reason, is so, we can consider the old file timecode patch.