Cineform & Keying

[Daniel Patton]

Right off I would like to say that the Cineform product is a great solution to HDV editing, I personally promote the product at every turn. However I'm more than a little disappointed in the lack of a direct phone support system, and having to use a forum or online trouble ticket smack in the middle of a short fused project BLOWS.

Now, rant aside... I'm having to rework a project shot on the JVC HD100U and am using the Cineform Aspect HD Build 59 HDlink to ingest the green screen footage for keying in Ultra 2. After ingesting roughly 45 minutes of footage with the HDlink "Preferences" option set to:

"Convert to CineForm Intermediate and keep MPG2-TS files(*.m2t)

I have found that the AVI version of the Cineform ingest is harder to key, and has rough edging around the talent (looks to be compression artifacting, or change in chroma???), compared to the mt2 version. Or am I just imagining things and they pretty much the same.

We would prefer to ingest to Cineform AVI so that we can also use it native in PPro2.

I have the recent release of Cineform build 6 also but have not installed on my system just yet. What exactly does it address?

Thank you!

[David Newman]

What is build 6? Are you referring to the new 4.1.3 -- read about the changes in the "Aspect HD v4.xx Update Log" at http://www.cineform.com/products/Asp....htm#UpdateLog

The chroma key shouldn't be greatly impacted by wavelet compression, although we do recommend the higher settings for keying work -- and on Prospect HD offer special chroma key compression modes.

Regarding phone support, unfortunately that would result in poorer tech support not better. As only one phone message can be handled by each member staff, there is no way of ranking the support need. The ticket system gets us the needed information fasters, so can get answer out quicker. We not big enough yet to route telephone support to India -- and that wouldn't likely just you the help you need.

[Daniel Patton]

My bad David, I'm running v4.1.1 Build 59 and looking at installing v4.13.
Why in the world I typed "build 6" I'll never know. I was in scramble mode for the most part.

Thanks for the feedback on keying the Cineform file types. I tackled the keying again from scratch and found that although the settings for key are fairly different than the ones I set for the M2T, it can still be done with the AVI file type and with fair results. Worth noting however, the results from the M2T key are still better with less compensation when using Ultra. This is just our personal findings. It's essentially all I needed to know.

As for phone support, we are also a small company and I feel your pain. I have a lot of interuptions throughout the day supporting technical issues. I do not however agree with you on the issue of avoiding phone support altogether. Phones can be evil, but it's a necessary evil of doing business. When I need an answer quickly to a workflow delima, I need the option of placing a call, even if the answer is delivered in broken English. ;)

Sorry if this has been asked before but...
- Is there a DTE recorder for the HD100U that uses Cineform besides the Wafian recorder (via 1394)?
- Deck control through the HDLink has been sketchy and often requires a reboot of the deck for proper control, reliability appears to change with each update, is this a known issue or again am I just imagining things?
- PPro 2 deck control using Cineform recently is even worse, any ideas would be welcome.

In all fairness we have not sent our deck in for the most recent update so deck control may not be a Cineform issue at all. But until I shut down that area of our production, I have only the option of asking questions where I can. You guys have a great product and are trusted for our HD workflow. being that this is a business and not a hobby, that's saying something. So thanks again.