On 12/30/2008 Cineform released the new Cineform Scene transcoder for $129. This looks like an AVCHD subset of Neo for substantially less money. According to their website it converts to 4:2:2 lossless Cineform AVI and works with Vegas. There is a 15 day trial. I plan to give this a try next week.
Thanks for pointing that out. Will definitely take a look. I was just on their web-site the other day thinking NeoHD was way too expensive. This appears to be a lot more like it.
If you currently have Neo HDV, you can get Scene for $69. I'm in the same spot... I have Neo HDV, and Scene would be enought right now, but if you have Neo HDV, you can also upgrade to Neo HD for $199. A tough choice if you'll eventually need Neo HD. There is a post in DVINFO on this http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/cineform-software-showcase/140560-cineform-discontinues-neo-hdv.htmlHere. [/link].
I actually don't have any of the Neo products right now. HDV was penciled on my "to buy eventually" list. But Scene would meet my needs much better. So I'm glad to see the product line update.
I was almost going to order this but I am moving to a Vista Ultimate machine shortly, and on pg. 2 of the DVINFO thread listed, there is no Vegas 8.1 64 bit Vista support. I wonder if that's on their horizon. This seems like a great product at a good pricepoint.
Hopefully this is a VFW-compatible version that will allow decoding and encoding of 1920x1080 Cineform AVI files in programs like Virtual Dub and not just Vegas and Premiere.
Whoa, REALLY??? I wonder if it works in Blender. I've been looking for a solution to get HDR images from Blender to Vegas for editing on a 32-bit Vegas timeline. Until Vegas can open OpenEXR I'm kinda stuck. Vegas doesn't like Blender TIFFs.
If Scene works in Blender you may have just made my month!!
--
Mike
EDIT: I downloaded the Neo Scene demo and it DOES work in Blender 3D. However, I can't get Blender to render anything higher than 8-bit color to the Cineform/AVI codec.
I have installed the trial (which happens to be a 3 days trial, not a 15 days trial as mentioned on the web site.
Here is my initial experience:
- The Cineform codec does not show up at all in Vegas 8.1
- The supplied application HD Link crashes with a lot of error messages when trying to convert my Canon HF 10 M2TS files to AVI
- The codec does show up in Vegas 8.0 c, the right version shows up, and rendering to AVI using the Cineform codec works well
Additionally:
- Their website looks like something made before 2000
- The user interface for the codec looks like somehting made for Windows 3, in 1995
- When I get all the error messages in HD Link, there is no way to copy these messages out, or save them to disk, to conveniently supply them to their support department.
I know these three latter issues does not mean anything in particular for the video quality, still it makes me wonder, because such things can be corrected so easily. It gives me the "first time shareware writer" feeling..
> WMP plays the files, but it looks like realy large interlacing going on?...
I saw this too, but paid no attention to it, since I think it will be sorted out when rendered to the media that supports interlaced video (DVD played back on a TV).
If something doesn't work, please report it to www.cineform.com/support we are trying to determine what on peoples systems is causing the conversion failure for some AVCHD sources, as for mostly it works fine.
The interlacing on WMP playback is fixed in the next release -- it only happens on 1920x1080 not 1440x1080 footage, so HDV users under NEO HDV (from which this product was based) never reported it.
Video not showing Vegas 8.0c means Vegas is using the wrong CFHD.dll, this is an old Vegas/system config bug that in not under our control. The simple fix is to rename C:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas Pro 8.0\cfhd.dll to something like C:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas Pro 8.0\cfhd.old.dll
General feedback:
1) Website, yes it sucks and we have web consults on hook to fix it (properly.)
2) User interface is very utilitarian, as it was always just a small part of our other products for professionals who don't care about looks (just quality.) Now it is a cosumer product it could be prettied up.
3) Log window, click on it, ALT+Print Screen to cut to image into clipboard, paste that and send that to support.
dan:
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JJK