View Full Version : Why No Conversion of FlashXDR XDCAM to Cineform


Bill Ravens
July 15th, 2009, 06:33 AM
Hi David....

I'm a little confused about Cineform's decision to not provide conversion support of the XDCAM 422 codec as used by the FlashXDR and Nanoflash. According to a reply to my trouble ticket, Cineform knows what the problem is, but, you consider this a low priority problem, so, Cineform will not be addressing the issue. In a different post, you indicated that the problem is that Sony has not released a decoder solution for this codec, so, Cineform will not address it until a decoder is released.

As a workaround, I am currently demuxing the XDCAM 422 codec with Snell and Wilcox(for the video) and the Mainconcept reference Codec(for the audio). Once the video and audio are dis-embedded, I can convert the resulting m2v video file with Neo HD. Unfortunately, Snell and Wilcox provides an aes audio file, which is unreadable, so, I have to run the Mainconcept reference to decode the audio to wav.

If I can work this path, why does Cineform need the Sony decoder? I am assuming there are not enough XDCAM 422 users for Cineform to address this issue.

David Taylor
July 15th, 2009, 07:38 AM
Bill, there is nothing sinister or draconian going on. It's simply a matter of too many projects and too few resources. There is quite a bit of software engineering to do on our side to support the Convergent recorders, but there are also a lot of other projects we're being asked to do. We simply haven't been able to put this on the short-term list right now. Our comment about Sony's decoder availability (or lack thereof) was a hope that Sony would offer a component to make the life of their customers easier. If they had a decoder we would be able to integrate it quickly. With the lack of a decoder we have to write our own and it is more work than we have time for in the short term.

Bill Ravens
July 15th, 2009, 08:12 AM
Ahh, I see. I didn't think anything negative, just curious is all. Not a conspiracy theorist ;o)
With the interest in the Nanoflash getting greater, I would hope the demand gets bigger.