Several NEO 2k questions

[Jaromir Pesr]

Hello,
yesterday I've downloaded a NEO 2k tryout, played with it a little bit and have to say the quality of codec and filesizes impressed me. I tried to export DPX 2k film scans from After Effects in "film scan2" quality and there is just an almost unnoticable difference from original, so it should be very interesting for our film workflow. But still I have several questions to ask:
1) I tried to convert uncompressed 2k AVI with HDLINK but when I press start button red cross appeared in front of selected file. Does it mean I cannot convert uncopmressed avis? What formats are supported for conversion at all?
2) Where's Cineform RAW hiding? There is just a few information about it at cineform's website (Or I couldn't find them). I thougt there will be a chance to convert 32bit log footage (like DPX) to flat RAW and use in (say) AE with all it's dynamic range advantages (such a overbright values). Also I thought there will be possible to export 32bit float comp to RAW back flat as it is possible with Cineon.
Or is it just an output format from Silicon Imaging camera? Chance to convert any HDR files to RAW and give them look right at AE timeline like other HDR footage will be a killer feature.
3) When I switch between 8or16 and 32bit color spaces there is a big gamma shift. It is completely solvable aplying gamma 2.2 in 32bit. But I do not remember similar behaviour from any other more-than-eight-bit format. Does it point to anything hidden to me?
4) Here http://www.cineform.com/products/default.htm you are saying "Resolution up to 4k". It is something it's comming? It'll be great to have a Cineform RAW solution for upcomming RED camera. Because I think their Redcode RAW will be probably impossible to use directly in AE, Combustion or Nuke on Windows platform. I have read only about FCP support what is not interesting me a lot because of its export issues. There is no need to play it realtime just to have nice HDR intermediate codec to work with in post...

Thank for any advice

Jaromir Pesr
i/o post
Prague

[David Newman]

1) We will have to test for that, however the full 4:4:4 conversion through HDLink is not yet active. We are adding DPX input, and other uncompressed sources shortly. In the meantime 4:4:4 CineForm AVI creation can happen in AE or PPro, for deep pixel data, and in VfW tools like Virtual Dub and Sony Vegas for 8-bit media (uncompressed RGB AVIs are typically only 8-bit.)

2) CineForm RAW is a bayer sensor format, so there is no advantage to encoding to it on a PC unless you have bayer sources like Adobe DNG. 32-bit log DPX can be completely stored by CineForm 444 for HDR work, that is the option you want.

3) We linearize the light with AE, which is the default for 32-bit operations. This is the desired mode. However the user control in AE to turn this feature offer doesn't work, as AE has no mechanism to tell the image importer of this user control. I have reported this bug, their response is it is supposed to be like it is. Either Adobe or I don't get it. :)

4) 4K is supported now for decoding. We my introduce 4k 444 RGB encoding but that is a rare market (even Red users will have not real need for it.) We do plan to support the RED camera with Prospect 2K/ Neo 2K, once they work out their issues.

[Jaromir Pesr]

Thank you David for quick answer.

Ad 1
It'll be great feature. And I hope it will be soon. (?) Rendering from AE is damn slow... and...

Ad 2
...if I save unmanaged DPX from 32bit AE project directly to Cineform I will not lose any picture data? Is that right? It is quite hard to verify visually. Then: I tried to render some DPXs to Cineform with "Enable 444 encoding" function on, but when importing back to AE I've seen just green solid. Am I missing something?

Ad3
Yes I've found out that aplying Color Profile Converter or setting AE project color space to linear (Adobe RGB (D65)) picture matches perfectly.

Ad4
I hope you will introduce that. As I said there is no need for any realtime performance. 2k files can be used as high quality proxies but then when final renders are making I'll be happy to have a chance to swap to 4k.

Thank you for any info again

regards

Jaromir

[David Newman]

2), yes, you are missing something. File a trouble ticket so support can investigate.

4) You won't need any file swapping if we don't they way we would prefer.