tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-133728012012-02-02T16:29:23.287-08:00This is not an official news source for CineForm product releases, just some bits and pieces of stuff I happen to be working on. My work and hobbies are pretty much the same thing. -- David NewmanDavidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.comBlogger1341100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-48918514660491793052011-08-21T11:04:00.000-07:002011-08-21T14:22:11.947-07:00

As regular readers know, I have had a team in the 48 Hour Film Project every year since its beginning in San Diego. This year we came second in the whole competition, competing against a record 64 teams. We also received the audience award for our premiere screening and best sound design. We do not have a professional team; we only do this once a year with friends and family. For example,

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-1622152193974357692011-06-05T16:43:00.000-07:002011-06-06T14:21:53.988-07:00

Clearly there is no better 3D camera system for POV shooting than GoPro Hero 3D kit. If you already have a couple of Hero HD cameras, adding $99 for the 3D housing, sync cable and accessories is a no-brainer -- you got to do it. But what about non-POV, hand-held shooting? The 2D GoPro Hero HD allows you to add the LCD BacPac, for simple point and shot image framing, but the connector it uses (

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-15050634108011273212011-05-26T15:10:00.000-07:002011-05-26T20:54:32.882-07:00

We are starting to see a range of cool new 3D consumer cameras, like the Sony HDR-TD10 and the JVC GS-TD1, both great companion units to a GoPro 3D Hero setup. ;) The new Sony and JVC cameras record to a single 3D file in a Multiview Video Coding format (MVC) which is very cool, yet it currently has limited video editing compatibility. MVC simplifies the capture down to one video file for 3D,

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com35tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-12293443753347812812011-05-19T10:06:00.000-07:002011-05-19T10:22:09.525-07:00

The tweets have coming fast with lots of recent activity around shooting curves, particular with the release of Technicolor's CineStyle (tm) profile for Canon DSLRs. I'm all for specialized encoding curves as I once helped developed the Log-90 curve used in the SI-2K (helped by Jason Rodriguez.) What Technicolor has done for Canon was a harder task, to squeeze the most out of an 8-bit heavily

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-12724978052564691762011-04-14T20:27:00.000-07:002011-04-14T20:37:16.810-07:00

See me exhausted after 4 days of our most exciting NAB every, discussing some of the impact of the GoPro acquisition of CineForm (yes it was that way around, we had many express their surprise that we brought GoPro.)My FreshDV interview .Technical corrections to the above. Sorry Resolve, I had temporarily forgotten your name. And I meant Phantom, not Viper, in the very end of the interview.

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-52349430062252796032011-04-04T16:01:00.000-07:002011-04-06T10:15:18.853-07:00

I know I own everyone a nice long blog entry on the recent GoPro acquisition of CineForm. Yes the team at CineForm is very pleased about this. In the meantime (with NAB so near), I there is no way can do better than this quote from John Hewat over on DVInfo.net:"CineForm and GoPro make what I consider the two easiest, smoothest products that I ever get to use. I'm very pleased that they're

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-21390732315569014952011-01-24T23:27:00.000-08:002011-01-27T08:35:24.845-08:00

Roger Ebert, blog post : Why 3D doesn't work and never will. Case closed. with the help of Walter Murch, tries to use some science to explain that 3D won't ever work, but gets the science wrong.Here is my reply (on his blog) in response to his post:While there are issues with 3D presentation, the claim that the "convergence/focus" issue makes 3D unsolvable is false. There is an error made in the

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-29671786679416627252010-12-10T14:42:00.000-08:002010-12-10T14:52:13.815-08:00

In the last few posts I have enhanced to support for camera RAW to CineForm RAW conversions, and this feature was released as part of the Windows Neo4K or Neo3D builds yesterday (Dec 09, 2010.)  The DPX2CF tool itself has since undergone one more update to support stereo conversions of RAW sources.  DPX2CF v6.02 Download  (replace in C:\Program Files (x86)\CineForm\Tools)The syntax for raw

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-1805229388363202262010-11-30T20:13:00.000-08:002010-11-30T21:52:39.671-08:00

Now that you have your Camera RAW images in a CineForm RAW file (see last post), remember to set the demosaicing quality/look in FirstLight.  There are currently 9 different demosaicing filters to select from, each we slightly different image characters for detail and sharpness. This is just another control you have over the development of motion RAW sequences.  Click on the image to the left for

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-43416819781686777032010-11-28T15:10:00.000-08:002010-12-09T15:19:11.566-08:00

For a while now I've been wanting to finish a Camera RAW to CineForm RAW converter, so after the long weekend of Thanksgiving, I've completed the first pass.   As CineForm RAW is a motion format and camera RAW typically not, this particular hack is mostly for those wanting the highest quality processing for stop motion or timelapse video/photography.So far I've only tested with Canon 7D .cr2

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-46884936097036242312010-11-13T20:26:00.000-08:002010-11-14T13:16:54.886-08:00

I had two inquiries today on using native DSLR in today's modern NLEs vs CineForm intermediates. Both these users who knew to use CineForm for finishing, multi-generation and effects renders, but wondered if the native DSLR decoding of the NLE was now the same quality. While CineForm has been known for its performance and workflow advantages for mixed media, sometimes users forget we are

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-91564277500009835822010-08-01T13:32:00.000-07:002010-08-01T14:38:57.163-07:00

.. a box with an external fan on high.This blog entry discusses how we at CineForm successfully presented the San Diego 48 Hour Film Project in HD (for the fourth year,) while the 90 other city locations for this competition are still presenting in SD off DVDs. This is a common problem for film festivals in general, so many of the short programs are still shown SD only, often using the cheap

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-33710019004537078052010-07-03T12:18:00.000-07:002010-07-03T13:15:17.126-07:00

I posted this in response to recent thread on CML, but seems it might be of interest to others, so it is reproduced here:----Whether RAW is from a CFA Bayer sensor, vertical striped sensor, or three chip source, there is no desirable true sensor RAW, as all camera manufacturers do (or should do) some pre-processing. Direct sensor data is not pretty; you want black balancing, fixed pattern noise

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-62719481112852595542010-05-26T15:43:00.000-07:002010-05-26T21:31:23.849-07:00

Please check out Studio Daily's great writeup on using Neo3D within FCP to edit and online Phish 3D. This film was finished well before Neo3D v5 was out, but thanks to an excellent partnership with the editing team, Don Wilson and the crew at Evergreen Films, we were able test out the upcoming features and develop new tools to help make this project happen. Special credit for Craig Davidson, our

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-81285860532537543082010-05-03T15:30:00.000-07:002010-05-03T16:05:12.374-07:00

The recent archive on osnews.com by Eugenia Loli-Queru has created quite a stir, revealing that camera licensing from MPEG-LA (for MPEG2 and AVCHD encoding) is for "personal use and non-commercial" applications despite the professional nature of the cameras for which this restriction seems to be attached. This was then picked up by Matthew Jeppsen at FreshDV.com. In both articles CineForm is

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-47655972909684442202010-04-15T11:57:00.000-07:002010-04-15T13:56:19.858-07:00

Each year I have traditionally headed back one day before the show ends as I'm normally completely exhausted and have lost my voice (I'm of little use in booth presentations.) While by voice is at 50%, this was the hardest year to leave early, as we have been so warmly embraced by customers (old and new,) and by the many business partners (old and new) who spent time at our booth (and us in

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-58433209658893994832010-03-08T20:28:00.001-08:002010-04-04T13:00:59.639-07:00

CineForm color and 3D corrections tool FirstLight is completely database driven, with no need to render any element. Yet we want to share color corrections and other database changes we do need to export something, don't we? I've just post my second tutorial video on vimeo that shows how to share you color correction automatically using Dropbox (dropbox.com.)CineForm FirstLight color correction

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-61598756657620541802009-12-15T09:53:00.000-08:002009-12-17T10:11:47.490-08:00

This post showcases one of the many applications for the CineForm codec. BrainSalt Media uses CineForm decoders to drive 16 seamlessly tiled projectors on a 250 square meter curve screen for an awesome virtual aquarium installation in China.To top the aquarium, here is BrainSalt's 30 Megapixel at 60 Frames dome projection also using CineForm (15 titled 2K projectors.) Here is a photo for the

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-21127577263197508442009-11-27T12:38:00.000-08:002009-11-30T16:16:55.009-08:00

Just before the Thanksgiving break, CineForm released new betas for the Neo and Prospect product lines (http://tr.im/FNSb.) These have a new feature that we have been planning for ages (years it seems,) the ability for the decoder to render its own passive metadata. The decoder has been applying Active Metadata for many years, developing the image through color parameters and 3D LUTs for

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-5192630277126915602009-10-08T21:46:00.000-07:002010-03-15T10:15:22.427-07:00

I'm am enlisting your help (testers needed) -- details at the end of this post *.For many years now, fans of CineForm compression have been wanting a single frame version in addition to streaming AVIs/MOVs, as this would be particularly handy for frame based render-farms. Yet there is a catch-22 for supporting any new image format, as too many tools need to support the format before it is viable,

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-47922336044655978152009-09-01T11:32:00.000-07:002009-09-03T11:30:05.522-07:00

This will likely be the first Canon still camera I ever own. Had plenty of Canon video cameras, but I've been a Pentax guy for years (my lens collection has kept me there,) but the video features of the Canon 7D will change that. While the 5D Mk-II produces some awesome looking motion images, the 30.0fps has been a complete pain. We competed against several 5D movies for San Diego's last 48

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-22970883360062356672009-08-25T23:30:00.000-07:002009-08-25T23:34:40.216-07:00

I've been missing from much of my usual online forum and twitter activities over the last 10 days, I've been flat out with the 48 Hour Film Project, my annual step in the creative side of the business. Lots of new things to report this year. First non-tech thing is CineForm staff members Jake, Tim, Craig and myself, formed two teams rather than just one this year. While this was saddened me at

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-38900355432949555612009-07-28T21:19:00.000-07:002009-07-28T21:44:27.554-07:00

This year will be the first time I'll will make to IBC, thanks to the persistence of Phil Streather to have me present the editing workflow section of his "3D at the Movies" super panel. The full panel will cover many elements such as pre-visualization, shooting and post, all presented in a large Real-D equipped movie theater. It will be a first for me to demonstrate 3D convergence manipulation

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-51995288436764387642009-07-09T15:03:00.001-07:002009-07-09T15:20:17.213-07:00

For last 5 years CineForm as put a team in this touring film making competition. In the last two we have sponsored the event by providing HD playback and HD up-res services for those submission that need it (everything is converted to CineForm AVI/MOVs for playback.) San Diego's 48 Hour is still the only city that is allows HD submissions for 1080p projection. This year we expanding, we are

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-82783366030859023182009-05-06T14:30:00.000-07:002009-05-07T10:01:03.309-07:00

The title of the post is a come back to Daniel Engber's article in Slate "The Problem With 3-D", with the sub-title "It hurts your eyes. Always has, always will." As CineForm is entering the 3D post production world, I was curious whether his claims are valid. I'm personally one who doesn't find modern 3D film difficult to watch, and very much prefer to look at recent films like Coraline 3D

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-60861611120967465302009-04-29T14:06:00.000-07:002009-04-29T14:29:49.643-07:00

We are now all back and working very hard after our huge NAB. We pick several (all?) the major show awards, win best of show from both Videography Magazine's Vidy award (recognizing outstanding achievement in the art and science of video technology) and TV Technology's 2009 STAR award (Superior Technology Award Recipient.)In addition to the NAB Filmmaking Central on the last blog post, we've had

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-77950797037275270152009-04-21T00:00:00.000-07:002009-04-29T14:32:30.979-07:00

While the camera is in way too much of a close up on my head (thanks to Dave Basulto of Filmmaking Central), you can see some of what CineForm is showing at NAB this year in this video interview.

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-6867840475338949292009-03-31T08:12:00.000-07:002009-03-31T10:21:58.746-07:00

When CineForm developed the first RAW video compression (yes ages before those other guys,) we developed a related feature called Active Metadata. You see the problem with RAW imaging is the more RAW it is, the more boring it looks, frustrating to constantly explain to you film's investors, "yes it is supposed to look flat, with low contrast and green." Active Metadata came to rescue, allowing

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-84667188162683994862009-02-28T15:00:00.000-08:002009-02-28T16:49:49.089-08:00

Another Canon 5D Mk-II post, you would think I owned one, I don't -- Canon can you help me solve that? It is the camera's behavior that has caught my interest, plus the large video post market it is generated.In the previous two posts I determined that the Canon 5D is using the full YUV range all 0 to 255 values. This can cause headaches throughout post as cameras typically use a luma range of

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-2282846137501507752009-01-21T15:48:00.000-08:002009-01-22T16:54:19.595-08:00

In my last post I discovered that using different decoders produce different results on Canon 5D footage, some more favorable than others, but I was wrong in my conclusion that something was being misinterpreted in the Canon 5D bit-stream. The Canon 5D video bit stream is fine, in fact is a little better that, as it making the best use of its heavily compressed 8-bit MOV (of course a less

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-75114379495729221372009-01-19T16:52:00.000-08:002009-01-21T16:03:52.488-08:00

I been seeing many posts on how crushed the black levels and highlights are with the Canon 5D video mode. Stu Maschwitz has a great post on how to tweak the camera to improve the situation, but also points out the default presentation FCP is also wrong. It turns out that this presentation fault is in all popular editing packages on Mac and PC. They could possibly share the same AVC decoder, but

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-62786729091613327022009-01-13T12:39:00.000-08:002009-01-13T14:38:38.456-08:00

Not only did Slumdog Millionaire clean up at the Golden Globes this year, Slumdog being a mostly CineForm RAW acquired feature shot with the Silicon Imaging SI-2K Mini, one of CineForm's engineers just won a Audi RS4 (Audi Record the Rush Challenge) from a CineForm posted video he self produced also shot with an SI-2K and a Sony V1U.  Looking to be a good 2009 for those at CineForm.

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-20324983771526888662008-12-24T08:49:00.000-08:002008-12-25T12:25:58.959-08:00

24p DVD mastering.First some basics, there is no true 24p mode on standard DVD, there are is only 60i encoding (and 50i for PAL.)  So all those film source are encode to DVD by adding 3:2 pulldown (or 2:2 for PAL with a 4% speed up for 24p sources.)  How this pulldown is added impacts how well your DVD presents on today's common progressive displays. Adding 3:2 pulldown for NTSC DVD creation has

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-71688524487629603862008-12-12T16:30:00.000-08:002008-12-12T16:55:40.795-08:00

After 5 years we are now retiring Aspect HD, and I say Yah!!!! David Taylor, CineForm's CEO, has post as to why on DVInfo.net, but I like this change as we no longer need to remove key features from Prospect HD to make Aspect HD (that is how it is built.) This will streamline development and testing, plus slicing off all the really good stuff always bothered me. We will still have entry level

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-49305064013373488452008-12-12T11:05:00.000-08:002008-12-12T18:51:44.022-08:00

Here are a couple of videos internally created by CineForm engineers (plus friends) just for fun. The first is this year's entry to the 48 Hour Film Project. We drew the tough genre of "Holiday Film", so it is now seasonally appropriate (we created this one back in August.)Competition requirements: a "Holiday Film" to be written, shoot, edited and delivered within 48 hours with these elements:1

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-36641105641335805042008-11-19T19:18:00.000-08:002008-11-19T20:00:39.094-08:00

Wow! That was my immediate reaction when I first did a CineForm decoder performance test on the new Core-i7 processor. I've had access to these new Intel processors for a while now and I knew they where fast, I just didn't how fast. The system we very honored to have early access to was a Intel Core i7-965 Extreme Edition system (Nehalem architecture) running a 3.2Ghz quad core. When we first

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-22249352493189106132008-11-18T10:34:00.000-08:002008-11-18T11:10:20.341-08:00

On my drive into the office I'm often listening to media related podcasts like TWIM, Red Centre, and Filmspotting. Today's drive I was catching up on Filmspotting podcast episode #235, which opens with a nice review of Slumdog Millionaire, the latest feature from Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Sunshine, etc.) Now I knew this was Silicon Imaging SI-2K project, shoot as CineForm RAW,

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-15966128170817068002008-11-13T10:44:00.000-08:002008-11-14T04:35:34.484-08:00

Very cool. The higher the bit-rates and the higher the resolution goes, the even greater need for high performance compressed digital immediate for post, mezzanine and long term archive, i.e. CineForm. And for anyone wishing to produce their own compressed RAW video cameras, Red and SI are not going to be in that business alone; CineForm RAW is ready when you are.Anyone notice how the whole Red

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-60787784644546153862008-11-07T16:00:00.000-08:002008-11-07T16:21:10.245-08:00

The last 2-3 weeks I found my time consumed with more decoder optimization. While the core of the CineForm codec has now been around for nearly 7 years, it enhancement has never stopped, whether we are adding new pixel formats, Active Metadata, improving quality or striving for more performance. Working on the codec core is more rewarding as an engineering success is not dependent on

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-75298524513921388572008-10-21T15:32:00.000-07:002008-10-21T15:58:34.988-07:00

With all these new high resolution video sources out there, it great to know you can pan into a 2K, 3K or 4K frame and still deliver sharp results at your 720p/1080i output.  However, this oversampling advantage can be easily lost with incorrect use or setup within your NLE. We often see user setups that run the larger source media on a timeline that matches the target resolution, e.g. 4K source

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-75391028722174279452008-10-12T21:18:00.000-07:002008-10-12T21:25:44.437-07:00

As a gift for my 40th birthday, my wife got me the awesome 2nd gen. iPod Touch. I've been playing with a Graphing Calculator app, experimenting with various video encoding curves.Legend.Red - LinearBlue - Gamma 2.2Green - RedLog (Silicon Imaging Log-90 is very close)Yellow - RedSpaceTodo -- Add PanaLog and Viper Filmstream

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-46273582218058682332008-10-03T17:18:00.000-07:002008-10-03T17:22:23.913-07:00

It is Friday and time for another beta release. Version 3.4.3 contains some cools upgrades and fixes, particular for Premiere support, but there are base level codec changes for NEO as well.In Premiere we have renamed all the appropriate filters to it have 32-bit in their name (Prospect HD/4K only.) It's handy to know, but it is also great for selecting filters, just put "32" in the search

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-5377524341037866322008-10-03T10:00:00.000-07:002008-10-03T10:06:40.100-07:00

I will be presenting the CineForm workflow for RED sources at Kappa Studios for theRED Los Angeles User Group. Saturday October 4th, 9:00 - 12:00 noon. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP. CineForm is offering a door prize for one Prospect 4K or NEO 4K seat (winners choice.)

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-58300078153969120522008-08-18T12:38:00.000-07:002008-08-18T12:54:41.292-07:00

The weekend just past featured the screening the San Diego division of the 48 Hour Film Project, a film festival for extreme film-making (41 films shown all Saturday.) Like last year, CineForm sponsored the event by providing HD projection and up conversion services for all the submitted films. 90% of HD teams even submitted CineForm AVI or MOVs, making our job so much easier -- a thank you

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-89567392366964659572008-08-03T17:10:00.000-07:002008-08-03T17:23:11.175-07:00

Things continue to happen, but clearly not much on this blog. We have several of high-end projects and partnerships pending, but no news I can break yet. So often I post on technology issues, compression comparisons and pixel format, etc., but now with the base technology so mature, it the business relationships that are coming to the forefront (and I can't talk too much about those.) Not that

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-9407166090081261482008-06-13T12:14:00.000-07:002008-06-13T12:45:52.320-07:00

I just discovered this Nike "Evolution" commerical was shot nearly entire point of view using a SI-2K. The results are a lot of fun. Check it out: Nike Football.

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-65617373967445908162008-05-15T08:58:00.000-07:002008-05-15T09:06:30.305-07:00

I will be doing more updates here, just been too busy since NAB to create any well thought out content. In the meantime I'm trying out Twitter, you can follow me at http://twitter.com/David_Newman. Yet me know if there is any particular content you want be to try and post there.

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-85832937894344662932008-04-19T09:01:00.000-07:002008-04-21T07:49:51.939-07:00

I didn't completely avoid being captured on tape or disk this NAB, but I tried. There where more bloggers snapping photos this year, and people stopping me in the aisles, as it seems that having an avatar over on reduser.net has killed my anonymity. Also I think I was captured in 4K at the reduser workflow event, I don't think anyone needs to see me in that much detail. :) On the show floor

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-4901759114519257412008-04-17T13:43:00.001-07:002008-04-18T16:14:00.680-07:00

I'm now back in Solana Beach, CineForm HQ, returning a day early from the show. The CineForm reception at NAB this years was simply awesome, with more and more high-end companies seeing the value of compression in high resolution workflows. While most of the staff are still in Vegas, I had to get back to working on our 3.3 release, adding great features suggested by customers and fixing the

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-50543547826141815222008-04-04T08:06:00.000-07:002008-04-04T12:54:40.558-07:00

Sorry there have been no blog updates. I have been working like crazy getting Prospect v3.3 ready for NAB along with several Mac upgrades. There will be a lot of cool new features to show this year, which helps as CineForm has a bigger presence then ever before (in a booth 3 times bigger -- partnering again with Wafian and Silicion Imaging and adding Iridas to the mix.) Booth SL10609 (Lower

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-15212345766830068402008-03-04T20:20:00.000-08:002008-03-04T20:49:49.912-08:00

If you have ever read this blog, you might get a laugh at my wife's skillful skewering of the crazy language I have used over the years. Please read Riding the Wavelet over on her blog littledragonfruit.com.

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-29714305761735834342008-03-02T10:38:00.000-08:002008-03-03T13:42:20.908-08:00

In recent builds of the CineForm tools and codecs, we are focusing a lot more on the robustness and a flexibility of metadata. The CineForm codec has been carrying a special class of metadata for the last 18 months; we use the term "active metadata" to describe how it differs from classic data like edge codes and copyright info. Active metadata is the mechanism that allows camera control unit

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-22590858929536637302008-02-22T20:15:00.000-08:002008-02-22T20:28:57.667-08:00

I don't normally post clippings, but this is so me. Try to maintain an active forum presence has its dark side.Source XKCD, found through BoingBoing.

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-64524243536298131732008-02-07T14:07:00.001-08:002008-02-11T09:50:04.413-08:00

Sony's HDCAM SR and CineForm 444 are very different compression technologies, one designed for tape-based existing deck control conform/master workflows and the other designed for online disk based workflows. Below I discuss how their core differences impact image quality, and why it is not so simple to state that one is better than the other for all image sources.About this time last year, I

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-13316139862491981602008-02-04T16:24:00.000-08:002008-02-04T22:49:48.175-08:00

When shooting with a RAW single sensor camera like Arri D-20, Red One or SI-2K, the final output quality is impacted significantly by the demosaic algorithm, possibly as much as any compression applied. The demosaic algorithm is the process that converts the one value per pixel of a raw bayer sensor to the more useful three color primaries per pixel like RGB (see wikipedia article on demosaicing

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-48168257654238960102008-01-16T14:51:00.000-08:002008-02-16T10:37:28.485-08:00

This post has been revised to reflect the current status.If you haven't heard the news, here are the direct links to various online announcements : DVinfo.net, RedUser.net and the CineForm page for this new R3D file conversion utility. So I won't need to repeat myself.On the blog, which really needs some more posts, I will focus on why we created this new tool.As many of you are aware, CineForm

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-20116677074034304582007-12-06T10:23:00.000-08:002007-12-07T21:47:15.089-08:00

I never got to see this press release before it was posted, so it was nice to read it for the first time. The guys over at IRIDAS have been so supportive, we hope to continue this type of innovation through partnership.Read the release here at Studio Daily

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-90094760955909118272007-11-28T14:34:00.000-08:002007-11-29T13:51:20.978-08:00

A big thank you goes to Nathan Ottley who saw our poor concept drawing and re-did it with huge improvements. He even gave it a model number.Now to get this thing built and on the market.

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-53588469615589541852007-11-13T16:15:00.000-08:002007-11-13T17:49:30.694-08:00

Embedding CineForm compression algorithms in hardware may seem like an odd direction to go for a software company, particularly as we pride ourselves in offering very high performance software-only compression. Plus, software compression is getting easier, too, as CPUs continue their upward performance trend. When we first started HD capture in 2003, the quality modes we offered were lower than

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-14308049650712993652007-09-27T12:20:00.000-07:002007-10-01T17:18:45.541-07:00

CineForm is the company most guilty of using the term Visually Lossless (VL)-- we may even have coined it. Red has benefited from CineForm's success with wavelets, and they also uses the term, as they should. But it is a marketing term, so we all should do our best to back it up. While visual inspection of 1:1 pixel data (or magnified) at 12" viewing distances is a good way to test for VL, there

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-9084254003632678942007-09-21T14:27:00.000-07:002007-09-25T14:10:36.536-07:00

I have written on the subject of linear vs. log encoding before, but the issue keeps coming up as more users attempt to compare REDCODE to CineForm RAW. While there is plenty of mythology around most of what RED does, the smoke around REDCODE is clearing, so comparisons will and are being made between the only two wavelet based RAW compressors in existence. While I would love to do a head-to-head

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-1259389577122076492007-09-19T13:54:00.000-07:002007-09-20T08:24:04.952-07:00

Some of you may have seen our most recent announcement that CineForm compression has been selected for a 300-screen digital theater rollout in India. Please check out the press release on CineForm.com. While we are very excited about participating in this new market, it has put our codec in an unusual position; our software tools now participate in every part of the film production workflow.

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-64358858426707408472007-09-04T11:28:00.000-07:002007-09-04T15:14:53.569-07:00

If you haven't heard, Red just shipped their first 25 cameras -- likely the most anticipated camera launch in recent history. During Red's short public existence, there have been many changes in the way people consider their camera purchases, with a far greater choice of resolution, frame-rates, lens mounts, sensor size, format factor and camera designs that actually consider the post-production

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-2434782006822176972007-08-26T09:28:00.000-07:002007-08-28T22:08:46.696-07:00

Normally, I don't post here about new software releases, as we do so many with pretty regular one month release cycles, but these new builds have been a while in the works. One issue with being a "middleware" company, as some VCs have called us, is we are a little at the whim of what the big players do. Adobe releases CS3 with lots of under-documented "features" that we now have to work around,

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-72117899848450964862007-08-08T17:35:00.001-07:002007-08-08T19:39:25.731-07:00

Now, there is always a huge story about what went right and wrong when doing the 48 Hour Film Project, and we had lots of both--maybe I will get into that later. Unfortunately, we were not eligible for competition this year, as we submitted our film two hours late (The "50 hour film project"), along with 17 other late teams of the initial 49 (with two not submitting.) We did get selected as one

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-17101719214675424252007-07-26T10:20:00.000-07:002007-07-26T16:11:09.085-07:00

Yes, it is 24p.Got that out of the way. It seems that there have been a bunch of forum threads attacking Canon, saying that this awesome little camera doesn't really shoot 24p. Not that misinformation is unusual for the internet, however, these posts often quote me or CineForm as backing this position. Neither myself nor CineForm support these posts or claims.The problem arose when I did state

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-1399220535499221722007-07-25T15:16:00.000-07:002007-07-26T12:45:58.404-07:00

David Basulto of www.filmmakingcentral.com and now digitalmedianet.com, did an interview with me a week or so back. This covers some of the basics of what CineForm is all about and what we are trying to achieve. You can listen to the full interview here: videoediting.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=163809. Unfortunately, the Skype recording of the interview mixed the two voices as

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-49338117775179838842007-07-20T12:57:00.000-07:002007-07-23T15:29:19.680-07:00

The crew at CineForm has been very busy over the last four days. As intended, we trans-coded and up-converted all the 48 Hour Film submissions for the San Diego division of this international film festival. We had a total of 47 entries (including our own) and nearly 47 different video formats, compressions types, frame rates, frame resolutions and aspect ratios. This was a bigger can of worms

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-79696781466411234042007-07-12T21:28:00.000-07:002007-07-13T13:28:17.319-07:00

Sorry for the weird title, but I have just received that question twice in ten minutes from 48 Hour Film Project contestants. In my last post, I said we are presenting in 1080p24, and we would prefer 24p submissions. The problem is 24.000p is likely not available on 98% of the cameras being entered into the competition (the 2% that can shoot 24.000p are the two Silicon Imaging cameras used by our

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-53652097263182318282007-07-02T11:46:00.000-07:002007-07-03T13:49:58.943-07:00

While this post is aimed squarely at those doing films in the San Diego division of the 48 hour Film Project (yes, many of my posts will be on this topic for a while), I hope this information is general enough for anyone producing a short/feature for HD presentation.As CineForm will be re-mastering all 50 films for their theatrical presentation starting two days later, we had to determine the

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-3088742418244085162007-06-25T13:53:00.000-07:002007-06-27T15:12:49.040-07:00

With less than three weeks until the 48 Hour Film Project competition, we carried out tests today with a portable Wafian recorder acting as a digital cinema playback server to the Sony 4K projector. The results were stunning. The Wafian HR-F1 is a very convenient way to do HD presentation, using this tiny form-factor to deliver 1080 24PsF over HDSDI to the Sony 4K projector. We played a range of

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-38311419055396548092007-06-14T14:12:00.000-07:002007-06-14T17:54:01.129-07:00

For each year the 48 Hour Film Project has come to San Diego, CineForm has entered a team; we even won a prize last year (see the full story for 2006.) After each event, we can't help thinking that CineForm needs to sponsor this competition, as these cutting edge indie filmmakers are our target market. But as we lack the funding of past heavy weight sponsors Avid and Panasonic, we had to be

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-79183782117775042812007-06-01T13:54:00.001-07:002007-06-01T15:51:21.219-07:00

Digital Production BuZZ has posted an interview between Jim Mathers and myself that occurred at this past NAB. While I never feel completely comfortable when someone points a camera and mike at me and says "Tell us about all this," I think it came out okay. My monologue covers the beginnings of CineForm RAW for digital cinema acquisition to today's integrated 3D look system within the SI-2K

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-8277670199429038962007-05-29T10:11:00.000-07:002007-05-29T19:39:20.237-07:00

Jason Rodriguez of Silicon Imaging has posted a excellent demo of the user interface controlling the SI-2K digital cinema camera. It shows some of the advantages in using an embedded Intel CPU with a video camera. Click the image to jump to the demo.Note: when he is talking about compression level, and the display says "Very High," he is actually talking about the quality level. Very high quality

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-27118305181775051872007-04-25T22:33:00.000-07:002007-05-12T15:46:53.633-07:00

During NAB, I had an honored visitor to the CineForm booth, Hugo Gaggiono, CTO of Sony's Broadcast Production System Division. Unfortunately, I was not there to meet him, so he spent time with Jeff Youel of Wafian discussing our recent test with HDCAM-SR, and how we were able to achieve the results we did (the reason for his visit.) I later tried to follow up with Hugo at the Sony booth, but I

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-60041239975206565582007-04-19T10:19:00.000-07:002007-04-28T20:44:36.074-07:00

I'm back from NAB with a lot of exciting work to do -- funny how we are so busy to prepare for this show, only to have a brand new list of tasks to complete immediately after it. I skipped the last day, which is typically quieter, to get a head start on my to-do list. The show was exhausting as usual, but all indications are a very positive experience for CineForm and out booth partners (Wafian &

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-46382271432075196772007-04-15T16:11:00.000-07:002007-05-29T19:43:51.645-07:00

Several years ago, CineForm attempted to sell Apple on the idea of a digital intermediate codec for professional post. Unfortunately, back then they still had their heads stuck firmly in the DV sand, and believed DVCPRO-HD would be sufficient, which everyone today knows it isn't. With the announcement of Apple ProRes 422, it seems the CineForm message has finally taken some hold, but it seems

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-82267382811332352982007-04-12T12:31:00.000-07:002007-04-28T20:46:09.533-07:00

Things have changed a lot over at Silicon Imaging, check out the new body and styling of the SI-2K as designed by P+S Technik. See their press releases regard their partnership with P+S Technik and integrated Iridas SpeedGrade system. Even the Mini's styling got an overhaul, but that interchange P+S Technik lens mount is sweet. With adaptors you can place lens of these types : PL, B4, Nikon F,

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-25490801008056041202007-04-10T14:11:00.000-07:002007-07-07T10:30:19.803-07:00

Switching gears from proving 4K and 2K are effectively the same, to something totally consumer -- AVCHD. This entry level HD acquisition format as been troubling editors/hobbiest for a while now. You may have thought M2T (HDV) was hard to edit, but try working with AVCHD, the MPEG4 long GOP hardly even plays on most PCs. We know AVCHD to CineForm file conversion was going to the best way to edit

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-44325532970756546102007-04-07T21:22:00.000-07:002007-04-07T21:35:46.778-07:00

I've be recently watching a few episodes of Mythbusters after my father said it was fun, and it is. So I figure that's what I been trying to do here, bust the myths like compression can't be used in post, or in this post measure the real difference between 4K and 2K aquisition; I just don't get to blow anything up.This is not an blind image comparison test like I've done previously, after all we

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-40764085218888987072007-04-03T15:07:00.000-07:002007-04-28T20:42:54.576-07:00

We have been squeezing in some work for Iridas in this tight pre-NAB time frame. We weren't going to find the time for a related press release, but thankfully Iridas had the time.http://www.iridas.com/press/pr/20070403.html

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-85477640721526593332007-04-02T12:04:00.000-07:002007-04-02T22:46:02.010-07:00

HDCAM-SR has found its way into to very important parts of the market, on-set capturing and final mastering. The quality is very high so it is clearly suitable for both. In our previous tests we compared CineForm 444 and HDCAM-SR as an on-set recording format. In this test we compared the performance in mastering.Our source material was 580 frames of the Magic Hour sequence from the Standard test

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-21601491347860742552007-03-27T14:17:00.000-07:002007-03-27T14:26:45.434-07:00

This was a post I main on the cinematography mailing list, I though it would be approxiate to reproduce here.They were discussing the use of compression upon ingest, somewhat generated by our HDCAM SR vs CineForm vs uncompressed Viper tests. The discussion moved on from acquisition to post issues of compression concatenation. It seems that most now accept compression at the ingest stage as long

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-52791969307679166732007-03-26T22:40:00.000-07:002007-03-26T22:47:13.209-07:00

For those of you dying to know, here are the results for the Green Screen Challenge:Viper 1 - CineForm in Filmscan1* mode with red and blue channels quantized more than green.Viper 2 - HDCAM SR.Viper 3 - Uncompressed.Viper 4 - CineForm in Filmscan1* mode with all chroma channels quantized equally.* Filmscan1 is the second highest quality, Filmscan 2 may have lead to data rates higher than HDCAM

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-24788786479445018832007-03-20T14:27:00.000-07:002007-03-21T11:47:24.188-07:00

In our HDCAM-SR vs CineForm 444 vs Uncompressed experiment and Green Screen Challenge (still running,) I encountered a problem in reading and writing reliable 10-bit uncompressed masters. This can be an issue for anyone working in deeper than 8-bit media on the PC; if I have your attention, please read on.One part of the experiment used StEM footage played out uncompressed from a Blackmagic dual

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-13629629822621088912007-03-15T20:18:00.000-07:002007-03-24T15:47:28.724-07:00

Yes, I'm taking this post's title from The Colbert Report, but I have a different challenge in mind here. As mentioned in my last post, we have just conducted a Viper shoot to test out various 4:4:4 compression solutions in comparison to uncompressed capture. I'm in the middle of conducting some very clinical PSNR tests to measure image distortion, which is not always the best way to measure the

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-81335559474808335442007-03-14T21:42:00.000-07:002007-03-14T23:08:14.938-07:00

On Tuesday, March 13 we had an interesting shoot-out: CineForm compression vs the highest-end tape-based acquisition and mastering format, Sony's HDCAM-SR. CineForm is always striving to improve our image quality, adding 4:4:4 encoding to existing wavelet codec design, but frankly I didn't know where we stood compared with Sony SQ 440Mb/s format (and the new HQ at the crazy 880Mb/s too.) Did we

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-50252132764987878452007-03-08T09:46:00.000-08:002007-03-14T23:08:04.349-07:00

I don't have time for complete this comparison myself, but Richard Leadbetter of Digital Foundry did a great write up on his findings when using the Blackmagic MJPEG codec and CineForm codec for producing HD video game promo reels (Richard's work is very cool.) I wasn't surprised that our wavelet compression would outperform MJPEG in general, but I was pleased to hear it does well even in the

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-48346515500382080102007-03-06T15:56:00.000-08:002007-03-06T16:26:37.105-08:00

On the drive into the office this morning I was listening to the Pixelcorps's This Week in Media podcast (this is an excellent podcast to get you fill for many things production related.) The first segment of Episode 42 (March 4th, 2007) discusses the advantages of HDMI out from inexpensive HDV cameras (like the excellent Sony V1U and the upcoming Canon HV20.) They were discussing their recent

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-1168970203543851362007-01-16T09:47:00.000-08:002007-01-16T09:56:43.560-08:00

Just a quick note that I will at Sundance this year (my first time) for the opening weekend. I will be doing a couple of presentations with Jacob Rodenberg titled "Hollywood Workflows on an Indie Budget: High def & 2k Workflows." This is part of Adobe and HP's presentation series at the New Frontier Theater on Main (333 Main Street, Park City, UT.) The seasons will be at Friday 1/19: 3pm-

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-1166976290449140662006-12-27T12:04:00.000-08:002006-12-27T12:01:32.540-08:00

A month later, time for another update. Most of my time has been focused preparing for the full release for the SI-2K digital cinema camera (now finally in production, with the first of the next generation units shipping January -- yes later than we had hoped.) The software support RAW cameras in general has been evolving, but has remained mostly under wraps (first public showing will be at

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-1164211792962588252006-11-24T17:00:00.000-08:002006-11-26T11:18:05.376-08:00

Yes I have been very very busy, and it is hard to maintain a blog when you're not collecting advertising dollars from it. So here is a summary of what has kept me away.Silicon Imaging's SI-2K camera.We were nearing the completion of the software about three months ago when the idea to integrate 3D LUTs (Look Up Tables) for a highly versatile "look" engine came up. First SI said they could do it

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-1155238349245358552006-08-10T11:34:00.000-07:002006-08-11T17:37:25.863-07:00

In recent releases of all CineForm products, we now offer scaling HD source material to standard sizes of 1280x720, 1440x1080 and 1920x1080 (for those using Prospect HD.) These scaling options where added primarily to support the HXV200, which doesn't record standard HD sizes. This surprises a few people, but the 720p mode on the HXV200 only stores a 960x720 image, and the 60Hz version of the

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-1153348166034918732006-07-20T08:19:00.000-07:002006-08-17T07:52:46.723-07:00

News Update -- We won Best Cinematography for San Diego out of 44 entrants!-----Last night was our premiere screening for the 48 Hour Film Project here in San Diego. We got a very pleasing reaction for our comedic short, laughs in the correct places, and it may have even won the night if it weren't for a very funny parody mashup of the PC vs. Mac commercials with the Matrix by Genesis Films (

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-1153239353117713962006-07-18T08:57:00.000-07:002006-07-18T12:23:09.023-07:00

This is a brief announcement for tonight's screening for the 48 Hour Film Project. Every year some of the guys at CineForm put a team into the competition, this year we shot with a prototype Silicon Imaging Mini, capturing to a Sony Viao laptop. The results are stunning.We always shoot with the name "Cane Toad Productions", this year we drew comedy and made a film titled "Burnin' Love."Come and

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-1151380050016030472006-06-26T20:29:00.000-07:002006-06-26T20:47:49.546-07:00

Last Friday David Taylor (CEO, CineForm) and myself presented at the LA Film Festival (thanks to Intel to sponsoring this event.) We had a really nice projector (worth $30k apparently) to show the latest in real-time post-production with Prospect 2k and CineForm RAW -- all running off a single dual core Intel processor, the next generation -- Conroe. Now if only we had time to promote this last

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-1149621507351652272006-06-11T09:11:00.000-07:002006-07-28T16:35:21.313-07:00

7/28/06 updated with even newer Intel performance numbers---We are now seeing a large number of users with dual proc dual core system like AMD Opteron 275s to 285s, and dual core HyperThreaded processors like Intel 965 Extreme Edition -- each of these systems present four processing paths for us to play with. Plus with quad-core single processors on the horizon, we have good reasons to do a

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-1149987431224326472006-06-10T17:53:00.000-07:002006-06-10T17:58:33.120-07:00

Here is the direct link to the Creative Cow pod cast, where Jacob Rosenberg discusses all things Premiere Pro with some focus on past, present and future HD/Film projects using CineForm. Plus he drops my name so I have to link it. :)Interview with Jacob Rosenberg

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-1147129494589903312006-05-08T15:52:00.000-07:002006-05-08T16:05:28.693-07:00

Studio Daily did a series of interviews on the NAB show floor regarding the new Silicon Imaging digital cinema camera. The final production features Ari Presler of Silicon Imaging demonstrating how the camera works and myself showing the advantages in post production using footage shot with CineForm RAW. This is a nice concise news story covering why this camera is so cool (I why I had such a

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13372801.post-1146861546247933372006-05-05T13:32:00.000-07:002006-05-05T13:39:06.263-07:00

Please check out the latest IndieFilmLive blog entry . In that blog you can read about the first beta customer for the new Silicon Imaging digital cinema camera, and their experience with shooting directly to CineForm RAW. We get to watch with our figures crossed and hope that the first feature shot this way will be a huge success.

Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11820803180730920007noreply@blogger.com0