lower thirds

CineForm's Camera-to-Post Workflows; Best Kept Secrets

Friends of mine over at CineForm made a couple of announcements today; cool developments with compression-based workflows.  This is definitely a company to watch.  I've been paying more attention to them recently and these announcements, I believe, are the first in some very interesting developments to come.

Today they announced support for Red One, and they're also broadening their offerings cross platform.  Here's what they had to say today:

 

Media Contact:

David Taylor
CineForm, Inc.
(858) 345-4164
dtaylor@cineform.com

 

CineForm Neo HD/4K Family Extends Compression-Based Post-Production Workflows for MacOS up to 4K Spatial Resolution

Native Mac Support for QuickTime Applications Offers Format Conversions and Telecine Removal, Plus Broad Camera Support Including Red One and Grass Valley Infinity

Solana Beach, CA -- November 11, 2008 – CineForm^®, Inc., creators of high-fidelity compression-based workflow solutions for the post production marketplace, today announced availability of its Neo™ HD and Neo 4K™ software products for Mac OS X.  Neo HD/4K for Mac extend CineForm’s industry-renowned workflow solutions to all QuickTime-based video editing and content creation applications for the Mac platform up to 4K spatial resolution, including Final Cut Pro, Motion, After Effects^®, and others.  Differing only in the spatial resolutions they support, both products offer CineForm’s respected compression-based technologies, including its Active Metadata™ architecture for renderless color workflows, plus numerous format conversion utilities in support of most HDV, HD, 2K, and 4K cameras on the market.  Separately, CineForm today also announced 4K post-production support for the RED ONE™ digital cinema camera on both Windows and Mac - using Neo 4K Mac and also Prospect 4K™ on Windows.

“CineForm’s compression-based workflows have become respected as industry leaders for their high visual fidelity and versatility for film and television content creation”, said David Taylor, CEO of CineForm.  “But our bigger goal has been to enable seamless workflows across Windows and Mac platforms, and between standard industry applications like Premiere^®Pro, Final Cut Pro, and others.  Using Neo HD or Neo 4K for Mac, our customers can now easily capture, edit, and share media during post-production with colleagues who may be using different applications on Mac, or who may be using Windows.”  

About Neo HD and Neo 4K for Mac

Neo 4K supports up to 4096 x 4096 spatial resolution with 12-bit precision, and is intended for “online” editing using Final Cut Pro or other Mac-based non-linear editors with no need for proxy files or conforming.  Neo 4K also supports 12-bit CineForm RAW™, its compression format for the emerging class of high-resolution digital cinema cameras such as Silicon Imaging’s SI-2K and Red One. Neo HD supports up to 1920 x 1080 spatial resolution, and supports virtually all HD cameras on the market including 

Grass 

Valley 

’s JPEG 2000-based Infinity camcorder.  Both products support CineForm’s 10-bit YUV and 12-bit CineForm 444 (RGB) compression formats.  Apple’s ProRes is offered as an optional compression format when Final Cut Studio 2 is installed.  Further, Neo HD/4K both include:

1)     

CineForm’s ReMaster™ application which provides image/video pre-processing plus camera and file conversion functions.  ReMaster supports numerous camera source formats including HDV, DVCPro HD, XDCam HD/EX, Red One R3D files, and others.  Among other features, ReMaster can extract 24p (progressive frame) signals that are embedded in 60i (interlace) recordings to enable 24p editing workflows and resample non-square resolution video formats into common square pixel formats.  ReMaster will write converted files into CineForm QuickTime files or optionally into Apple’s ProRes format.

2)     SetActiveMetadata™, an application that manages CineForm’s Active Metadata™ architecture for non-destructive color workflows without rendering.

Pricing and Availability

Neo 4K and Neo HD are both available for download as fully-functional Trials from CineForm’s website.  Neo 4K ($999) and Neo HD ($599) are available for purchase from CineForm’s website or through its network of resellers.  Existing Neo HD or Neo 4K customers on Windows with a valid Mac Codec serial number may upgrade for free to the respective version of Neo HD or Neo 4K for Mac. As an introductory promotion through the end of November, CineForm is emphasizing its cross-platform (Windows/Mac) workflow by offering a free serial number for Neo 4K Mac with any purchase of Prospect 4K on Windows, a savings of $999.

About CineForm and CineForm Intermediate

CineForm Inc. develops compression-based workflow solutions for the post production marketplace.  Offering the industry’s highest fidelity compression technology, CineForm is trusted among 

Hollywood 

filmmakers, television producers, videographers and digital media artists who rely on high image quality, high performance and innovative compression-based workflow solutions with up to 4k spatial resolutions for their online content creation projects.  Available on both Windows and Mac platforms, CineForm workflow solutions are optimized for direct-to-disk camera recording, high-resolution post production and long-term content archives.  For more information, visit www.cineform.com.

 

########## 

 

Media Contact: David Taylor CineForm, Inc. (858) 345-4164 dtaylor@cineform.com

 

CineForm Delivers Powerful Cross-Platform Workflow Solutions for Red One Post Production

Neo 4K for Mac and Prospect 4K for Windows Enable Online 4K Post-Production for Red One Media Using Adobe Premiere Pro and Apple Final Cut Pro

---

Solana Beach, Calif., November 11, 2008 – CineForm^®, Inc., creators of high-fidelity compression-based workflow solutions for the post production marketplace, today announced that its Neo 4K™ for Mac and Prospect 4K™ for Windows software products now support a real-time, online post-production workflow for media originating from the Red One™ digital cinema camera.  Neo 4K and Prospect 4K include converters for Mac and Windows respectively that transform Red One R3D files into CineForm’s extremely high performance and high quality online editing format for cross-platform (Windows/Mac) compatibility and cross-applications (Final Cut Pro, Premiere^® Pro, After Effects^®, etc) compatibility.  The newly created CineForm files become the new source masters for the remainder of the post workflow.  After conversion, users benefit from CineForm’s real-time, multi-stream editing environment, even up to 4K spatial resolution, without the need for proxy files and conforming, thus saving labor and equipment expenses compared to more traditional workflows.

“Higher spatial resolutions and “Raw” formats, such as enabled by Red One, bring incredible quality images to a wider group of filmmakers”, said David Taylor, co-founder and CEO of CineForm, “but they also impose challenges to achieving an efficient and affordable post-production workflow.  Through Prospect 4K and Neo 4K we defined three primary goals to address these challenges.  The first is to offer visual fidelity equivalent to traditional uncompressed workflows, but at a fraction of the cost. The second is to empower workhorse industry tools from companies like Adobe and Apple as online 4K editing platforms.  The third is to an online-all-the-time workflow by eliminating the need for traditional proxy files and conforming”.

Neo 4K and Prospect 4K Support for Red One

Neo 4K and Prospect 4K include Mac and Windows converters to transform Red One R3D files to CineForm files for online post production.  Users may choose numerous conversion parameters including the preferred spatial resolution (4K, 2K, HD, 1K, or SD) for editorial plus chroma format (12-bit CineForm RAW, 12-bit CineForm 444 (RGB), or 10-bit CineForm 422 (YUV)). 

All CineForm files are supported by its Active Metadata™ architecture which offers a renderless color workflow that improves visual fidelity of source files by maintaining image highlights without clipping. Active Metadata supports color and image developing parameters including white balance, 3D LUTs, gain, offset, color temperature, etc., and can be thought of as similar to an Adjustment Layer in Photoshop^®.  Active Metadata is processed dynamically inside the CineForm compression engine independently of the calling application (e.g. Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, etc) and eliminates the need to render (or flatten) such parameters into the source file until final output is desired. 

CineForm is also introducing a new editing concept called Express Files™ which are color-perfect 1K resolution files that represent the 4K source files, which simplify and cost-reduce high resolution workflows.  Express Files are easily edited on virtually any timeline, including on laptops, allowing use of real-time color correction, transitions, effects, etc.  With no conform process required, and at a time convenient to the editor, Express Files may be unlinked from the project, with subsequent re-linking of 4K CineForm master files into the same project which retains all effects previously applied in the project.  Not only does this allow lower-performance workstations to participate in online editorial, Express Files are small enough to easily share with numerous project participants who may reside at different locations.

Prospect 4K also includes CineForm’s 4K video processing engine that augments the Premiere Pro video engine for real-time multi-stream 4K playback, and includes support for HD-SDI monitoring of 4K editing timelines.

Pricing and Availability

Neo 4K ($999) and Prospect 4K ($1999) are available for purchase through CineForm’s online store or through its reseller network.  Both products are available as fully-functional Trial Downloads on CineForm’s website, and will operate for 15 days with full functionality.  As an introductory promotion through the end of November, CineForm is emphasizing its cross-platform (Windows/Mac) workflow by offering a free serial number for Neo 4K Mac with any purchase of Prospect 4K on Windows, a savings of $999.

About CineForm

CineForm Inc. develops compression-based workflow solutions for the post production marketplace.  Offering the industry’s highest fidelity compression technology, CineForm is trusted among 

Hollywood 

filmmakers, television producers, videographers and digital media artists who rely on high image quality, high performance and innovative compression-based workflow solutions with up to 4k spatial resolutions for their online content creation projects.  Available on both Windows and Mac platforms, CineForm workflow solutions are optimized for direct-to-disk camera recording, high-resolution post production and long-term content archives.  For more information, visit www.cineform.com.   

The Most Impressive VFX You’ll Never See

Sometimes the most impressive, technically challenging VFX are the ones you never see.  There’s no question, Hollywood has dazzled us with some of the most astonishingly realistic and mind-blowing visual effects in the endless stream of block buster films coming out of tinsel town.  But there’s a rising tide of visual effects artists redefining a rapidly growing segment of television production -- the automobile commercial.  

Robin Hobart of BrickYard VFX out of LA and Boston, is one of those designers who attributes significant growth in their business to those commercials which you’d never know were ever touched by an effect.  And with client names such as Cadillac and Hummer, it’s more important than ever that you have the caliber of tools in your kit that enable you to create the highest quality, believable images possible.  And to get this done, Hobart relies on Imagineer Systems’ mocha.

“At BrickYard VFX, we’re becoming renown for the quality of the car commercials we produce, and anyone who’s produced a spot like this knows there is a tremendous amount of tracking and roto needed to produce a clean shot.”   

On a recent Cadillac spot, the team had a shot of the car loaded with camera rigs, totally obscuring the car.  Add to that, rig and helicopter reflections were all over the car and had to come out.  

“Car commercials are using a tremendous amount of visual effects these days. Most of the work we are asked to do involves seamless, photo-real compositing and rig removal and tracking are large part of almost every spot.  mocha's planar tracker excels in picking up the angles of a car's shape. mocha has helped us to create solid tracks and mattes in a fraction of the time, in fact, we were able to roto 400 frames in about 10 minutes, it was a huge time saver.  mocha has been a life saver for us!”

Hobart and his team at BrickYard depends heavily on mocha from Imagineer -- not only because of its powerful planar tracking capabilities, but for another very important feature not visible in the end product: seamless workflow integration and ease of use. 

Hobart adds, “In addition to our Imagineer Systems tools, we have a number of Flame systems as well.  The interaction between mocha and Flame is superb.  Our ability to easily export content from mocha to our Flame systems is another huge time saver and a very important feature for our team.  mocha is relatively simple software to learn as well.  We can put it in front of jr. artists and they can be delivering quality work to our compositors in a few hours. Tracking and roto are a necessary evil and no one looks forward to days of pulling splines around. mocha give us the ability to concentrate on the overall creative of the spot without getting bogged down with the tedious tasks of tracking and matte work."

Vico Sharabani of rhinofx, a New York-based post production house specializing in commercial, broadcast, film and gaming industries, often finds himself in similar predicaments, however, in a recent auto commercial spot, while his challenges were similar, Imagineer Systems’ mocha came to his rescue in other ways.

In his directorial debut, Sharabani co-directed a recent 30-second live action/effects spot, teaming up with co-director Alex Lamarque of Bully Pictures for a Subway promotion with Subaru.  In the final shot, the automobile is racing down the road as the landscape curls up behind, and chases the car, like a tidal wave about to crash on top of the car.  While the eye goes to the effect of the ‘tidal wave’ curling menacingly over the car, that effect actually wasn’t the challenging part for Sharabani and his team.

Sharabani turned to Imagineer Systems and had this to say about mocha:  “Whenever you’re tasked with complex tracking of fast moving objects, like a car racing down the road, you get a little nervous wondering how you’re going to make this look clean and believable.  Imagineer Systems’ mocha and its incredibly powerful planar tracker, made this shot a breeze.  We could not have stabilized this shot without mocha!”

While many auto makers continue to strive for that visually stunning, effects-laden mini-feature film look, today there are many more, especially in the high end, luxury category, where clients are looking for clean, elegant imagery that is powerful in its simplicity.  And more than ever, these are the spots where you have to strain to see where the VFX artist has added their signature touch.  mocha from Imagineer Systems, with its one of kind and highly innovative planar tracking technology, was designed with these artists in mind and is why mocha continues to be the VFX tool of choice among the industry’s most discriminating artists.  To learn more, please visit www.imagineersystems.com.