Offline Editing Formats: Dv or Cineform

Unfortunately the free GoPro codecs are decoders only. I.E., you will only be able to play back already encoded cineform footage but you will not be able to encode your footage without paying for the encoder. The least expensive of which is $129 for cineform NeoScene. I do in fact use Neo (now legacy and replaced by Cineform Studio), and it is fantastic.

I would do everything i could to edit an offline in the same frame rate. Adding pulldown could mess up your online in the long run.

Why would you have to add advanced pull down to go to DV footage? Can you not just downrez to DV and maintain the frame rate? My understanding has been that the pulldown is a consequence of recording on tape in the 60hz stream. Besides, advanced pulldown is usually removed immediately by your NLE.

What are you using to edit? Any Compressor/Sorenson Sqeeze/Media Encoder, can spit out just about anything you want if you just use the frame controls. You should be able to select DV NTSC Anamorphic, set the frame rate to "Same as Source" or you could force it to 23.976 and then just select square pixels. I could be wrong but you try just using a test clip (or someone else on the cow could correct me).

Ultimately, cineform is fantastic but it won't just magically make everything better. You need the minimum of what HD takes. If ProRes can play, you should be fine with cineform. But again, test clips. Why not download the NeoScene trial and see if that would work in you NLE without dropping frames? If you can, go cineform. If not, get creative with your conversion software and do an SD offline.

Also, the idea with cineform is that you don't need an online/offline. It should just work all the way through to the end. It will be much better than H.264 which your computer won't handle.

Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17", 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
AJA IoXT
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of William and Mary

Joel,

I stand corrected! You're right. GoPro Cineform Studio does look to be brand new. I only purchased Neo in October and already they've changed everything.

But given that, I would say that this would be your best bet. Download GoPro Cineform Studio and try to make your conversions.

The reason I said that the idea of cineform is that you don't need to do an online/offline is that cineform is designed to be processor efficient far beyond H.264. In fact, cineform markets themselves as an H.264 hardware accelerator without the hardware. The idea being that cineform is already a master quality codec that you can stay in through your entire project, export, and call it a day.

The truth is, yes you are underspecked, but not completely in the red. I have a friend who edits full raster 5DmkII footage converted to cineform on a 2008 2.6Ghz Core2Duo MacBook Pro on his internal hard drive without any major issues and uses the worst back up system I have ever seen. He's a complete an total idiot for it because he cuts $10K music videos that way, but somehow, someway, someday, it works and he's stubborn so he stays with it for now.

My advice is: Since you need to convert your files to a full raster cineform anyway (more on why you should below), edit a bit in that before you make low rez proxy files. See if it works. You might be pleasantly surprised.

If it doesn't work, make your proxy's, and then reconnect all of your clips to the low rez versions. That will replace it with your low rez footage and will maintain the edits in your timeline assuming that they have the same file name and timecode info which they should. (Again - TEST EVERYTHING - Your system may behave differently than mine - I'm on a Mac, you may be on PC, different settings, who knows). Then, assuming it worked, right click on the replaced file in the bin and select "New Sequence from Clip." That will create a sequence with the settings that you need and then just copy and paste your original timeline into the new one once you've replaced all the clips.

Now, the advantage of cineform: My first project with cineform I was shooting on a 5D and I thought that the footage looked pretty good right out of the camera but after the conversion it actually looked BETTER than the original after just a format conversion. I'm talking multiple stops of dynamic range and latitude. I made the conversion and all of a sudden there was more shadow detail, skin tones that looked reddish looked like skin. Basically, cineform uses some chroma interpolation algorithm to convert from the 4:2:0 of your original footage, to 4:2:2. And it doesn't take a trained eye to see it. So, be sure to convert all of your camera masters to cineform masters so that when/if you reconnect, you are reconnecting to the highest quality you can. Also, when it comes to your color correction, you will need to grade in the full raster footage and the 10bit 4:2:2 cineform will hold up much better than the H.264 files. Not to mention the advantages that the extended dynamic range will give you when you start to mess with contrast.

I hope this helps!
Matt

Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17", 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
AJA IoXT
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of William and Mary

Hi Joel,

Glad to hear that it's working out for you! Please do keep me posted on how everything goes! I am definitely interested to see how it works especially with ultra-books coming onto the market. Many may be underpowered to sacrifice size and weight and I think that a lot of people will be interested in what you find.

Yes, Cineform Studio looks like a great product! I paid for Neo which was the step above Neoscene. It included the bundled applications like FirstLight and ReMaster. They give you a lot of pre-processing controls before you go into the edit. And they all use active meta-data so it doesn't sacrifice speed at all. But yes, all very robust. I've been thrilled with Cineform's products, and their support is fantastic. I don't mean to sound like a fanboy here, but it really has made a very big difference to my workflow and the quality of my work.

Glad I was able to help! Again, keep me posted!

Best,
Matt

Panasonic HPX170 P
2011 Macbook Pro 17", 2.3 Ghz Quad Core, 8GB RAM
AJA IoXT
Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5, Final Cut Pro Studio 3, Avid Media Composer 3.5.4
The College of William and Mary