Hello there seems to be a major problem with Cineform HDLink handling the re-wrapping of cineform .mov into cineform .avi. Doing so strips the clips of any meaningful time-code (on my system each file becomes Start TC 00000000) This pretty much precludes any use of cineform codec in a pro finishing environment. Is it a bug? Is it by design? What do I do?

AVI don't have a standard widely unused mechanism for storing timecode, so we store the timecode in the sample (compressed frame.) Inside tools like Premiere Pro we extract the timecode directly. I gather you are not using Premiere, which NLE are you losing the timecode in?

Actually time-code is lost during the cineform quicklime .mov file to a cineform.avi file re-wrapping in HDLink. The time-code becomes something arbitrary but the same for all of the files re-wrapped or simply 00000000. This is affecting metadata display in Premiere Pro, AE, etc. and, more critically, makes the files not usable with applications that depend on the time-code explicitly (ie DaVinci Resolve being fed cineform.mov in the end of the pipeline).
When not using a re-wrapping with HDLink but using Adobe Media Encoder which of course re-encodes the files rather than non destructively re-wrapping them the same behavior is not exhibited, as the host application seems to read the .mov time-code and pass to the encoder. This of course is not loss-less and takes a significantly longer time.
Also it seems that when cine-form files go through an application like VirtualDub time-code is lost as well even if it exists in an original .avi when ingested.

More of the same but different, somewhat related: when trans-coding files that came from a source that doesn't record a time-code (ie. Panasonic consumer) HDLink will use the time of creation as the TC beginning value like 13:04:45:01. When doing conversion in GOPro Studio Premium time-codes written all start with 00:00:00:00.


Hope it clarifies the issue.

A rewrap does lose timecode if it was in the sample, so I guess the timecode was only in the rewrapper. How where the original MOVs made?

The timecode behavior in Studio does need to be improved on the PC.

Original cineform .mov files were made were made by Compressor on Mac using Quicktime Cineform codec (I was coming from a format not supported by cineform on a Mac)

I can now confirm that time code is also lost when using HD Link to change existing Cineform .mov aspect ratio. Timecode is lost in a mov going to mov through HD Link.