I know that First Light is advertised as non-destructive, but I've used Vegas, AE and other programs and as far as I can tell, they are all non-destructive in that they don't modify the source file. What's different about FL?

No they are not when you want a color correction from Vegas to appear in AE (or anywhere else), for that you have to render out -- time consuming and destructive. Color Corrections within FirstLight require no rendering and appear in all tools instantly, and can be changed whenever you need.

Keep in mind that CineForm has really built much more than a codec...

They have a new workflow based on a new pipeline.

The adjustments you make in First Light are employed DURING the decode of the material as opposed to a color correction adjustment applied in Premiere or Vegas or FCP, where the color correction is applied after the decode...often making a new preview render necessary to play back at full framerate in many NLEs, and a re-encode necessary to export to another application for Post FX or transcoding for final distribution.

The decode needs to happen anyway, so that color correction applied in First Light is not only non-destructive (it's strictly a metadata 'tag'), it takes no additional system resources over playback itself.


I remember when the David Taylor was explaining what they were working on to me before First Light came into being (must be 2+ yrs ago now). Frankly it sounded great but it seemed like quite a leap...but here it is.

I don't think it's overstating it to say that the fact that it also does Stereoscopy parameter management within that same decode step, makes First Light an application that is really in a class by itself, in a workflow that also seems to be in a class by itself.



Disclaimer: I am a CineForm user and have been fascinated by the quality of the images and the efficiency of the processing ever since I saw David T. running one of the first versions of Aspect HD on a pod in the Adobe booth at NAB, when I was on the pod next to him demonstrating the Canopus workflow at that time...which has to be... 7 years ago maybe...

Thanks guys. Those benefits may be the reason I convert from Neo Scene to Neo HD.