After rendering original HDV footage (.m2t from Canon A1) to Cineform in Vegas 7 I see a (very, very slight but still noticable) loss in image sharpness, comparing the original (1,440x1080 .m2t) with the rendered file (1,440x1080 Cineform). If I render from .m2t to .m2t instead (using the Vegas main concept codec) I do NOT detect this minimal loss in sharpness. I'd have expected this to be the other way round. Can anyone confirm this?

(This comparison can be performed in Vegas simply by arranging the original clip frame accurate over the rendered clip and soloing either one of the two tracks.)

What quality level are you selecting for your CineForm conversion? If you are using the Vegas license for CineForm it only offers "Medium" which is slightly softening. Within HDLink select High or Filmscan and retest.

David, thanks for your quick response. As you proposed I retested with Cineform quality level "Filmscan 1" and the softening is gone, indeed. Good to know that. Thanks again!

Yes, Filmscan 1 mode was developed with a film scanning house (thus its name) to make a quality level that would preserve characteristic of film grain. When in doubt it, is the go to quality level. Yet "Hig"h is also good as that has been used in film out work for features before the Filmscan modes where offered -- High will often save you 20% disk space over Filmscan 1. For the ultra paranoid, there is Filmscan 2, we don't use in in house, we consider it overkill -- a 4:1 version of uncompressed.

I recalled reading an earlier post where it was mentioned (by whom i forgot) that Cineform convert does smooth the video a bit (something to do with the MPEG artifacts?)

Chan,
I normally use film scan 1 and the image quality is excellent.

I captured all my footage for my feature in "Medium", as I read that "Medium" should be fine, and you'd get no visible degradation of image.

As I haven't captured any of it in "High" (my HDLink doesn't have FilmScan 1 - is this new in Aspect v5?), I don't have anything to compare it to.

Should I recapture the footage I've used? I'll be going out to SD DVD as well as HD DVD and BluRay - probably not blown up to 35mm though.

Does anyone have any experience or opinions on this?

(I'm capturing using HDLink - set to Medium, and editing in PPRO CS3, 1080i 25fps preset)

douglas I switched from medium to high a while back and there is improvement, so if ur pc and storage space allow I would use at minimal the "high" setting.