Unmatched HD Visual Quality and Editing Performance

Aspect HD and Prospect HD/2K provide a real-time, multi-stream editing environment within Adobe Premiere Pro

• HD-SDI Ingest (both AJA and Blackmagic)
• Acquire into either .MOV or .AVI
• Rewrap MOV <--> AVI
• DPX batch file conversion to CineForm (not shipping yet)
• Additional visual fidelity upgrades in the CineForm Intermediate codec

See product table below for details

CineForm's Aspect HD and Prospect HD products deliver an online compressed Digital Intermediate workflow for HD post-production, whether your source is HDV, full-raster HD, or 2K. This means you never have to work with proxy files, and you never have to conform a project at completion - you're always working with full-resolution source material using the Visually Perfect™ CineForm Intermediate codec. 

The primary difference between NEO compared to Aspect HD/Prospect HD is the real-time software video engine CineForm developed for Adobe Premiere Pro.  CineForm's editing engine replaces the native engine inside Premiere Pro to deliver a real-time, multi-stream editing environment including transitions, effects, titles, motion, etc, all performed without rendering.  This results in a very efficient workflow, allowing you to spend time editing, not rendering. In fact, with the Aspect HD or Prospect HD/2K real-time software engine, you can play from 3 to 6 HD streams in real-time on the Premiere Pro timeline - simultaneously.

Regarding CineForm RAW: Prospect 2K offers the same real-time editing workflow for CineForm RAW source material without the need to first "develop" or "demosaic" the image.  This unique technique saves significantly on up-front digital image development require of other digital raw workflows.  Prospect 2K includes CineForm RAW active metadata controls inside Premiere Pro to allow non-destructive control modification of white balance, camera color matrix, and 3D LUTs.
 

Acquisition and/or conversion of source material into CineForm Intermediate files can be performed using either HDLink, or using internal capture utilities within Premiere Pro. Resulting CineForm Intermediate files, with precision from 8-bit YUV to 12-bit RGB,  become your online Digital Master throughout your post workflow.  The lightly compressed CineForm Intermediate files offer fidelity that is visually equivalent to uncompressed sources, even through a multi-generation workflow.  This means they provide excellent sources for compositing, keying, and animation.  But the smaller file sizes allow managing an online workflow to be straightforward with Premiere Pro or virtually all other standard post-production tools.  Because CineForm Intermediate files offer the option of acquiring into either .AVI or QuickTime movie (.MOV) wrappers, you have a wide choice of Windows and Mac OS X compositing and effects tools from Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Sony, others.

CineForm's Aspect and Prospect family of products work only on Windows, although resulting QuickTime (.MOV) files are compatible on either Windows or Mac OS X PCs.
 

We invite those who have not experienced the amazing performance and video quality of Aspect HD or Prospect to download a fully-functional 15-day trial version. 
 

CineForm Product Selector Guide
NOTE: Aspect HD, Prospect HD, and Prospect 2K include all equivalent features from CineForm's NEO product line, plus numerous additional features and real-time performance enabled by CineForm's real-time video processing engine for Premiere Pro.
	Aspect HD	Prospect HD	Prospect 2K	Prospect 2K-DL
Operating System	Windows	Windows	Windows	Windows
Max spatial resolution (capture/export)	1440	1920	2048	2048
I/O Precision	8-bit	10-bit	12-bit	12-bit
Chroma format	YUV 4:2:2	YUV 4:2:2	YUV 4:2:2 RGB 4:4:4	YUV 4:2:2 RGB 4:4:4
480i/p, 720p, 1080i/p	●	●	●	●
Decoder resolution - unrestricted	●	●	●	●
Acquisition sources:	●	●	●	●
- HDV including scene split	●	●	●	●
- DVCPRO HD MXF	●	●	●	●
- HDMI (using Blackmagic Intensity)	●	●	●	●
- Single-Link HD-SDI (AJA or Blackmagic)	●	●	●	●
- Dual-Link HD-SDI				●
HDV/P2 camcorders - special mode support:	●	●	●	●
- Canon: i) 24p;  ii) 24F / 25F / 30F	●	●	●	●
- JVC: i) 24p;  ii) 60p	●	●	●	●
- Panasonic: Variable Frame Rate	●	●	●	●
- Sony: i) 24p;  ii) CineFrame	●	●	●	●
Selectable wrapper - AVI or MOV	●	●	●	●
AVI <--> MOV rewrapping	●	●	●	●
Image spatial resampling	●	●	●	●
Telecine removal (24p in 60i)	●	●	●	●
Image flip (for 35mm adapters)	●	●	●	●
DPX à CineForm batch file conversion (1)	●	●	●	●
Slow Motion - up to 2.5X	●	●	●	●
Active Metadata: WB, Color Matrix, 3D LUT (2)			●	●
CineForm RAW workflow			●	●
Real-time editing engine for Adobe Premiere Pro	●	●	●	●
- Keyframeable color adjustment	●	●	●	●
- Over 40 parameter-controllable transitions	●	●	●	●
- Slow-motion and frame hold	●	●	●	●
- Static and moving titles and video overlays	●	●	●	●
- Pan/Scan/Rotate/Zoom (PSRZ).	●	●	●	●
32-bit floating-point effects processing		●	●	●
Multiple spatial resolutions on timeline	●	●	●	●
CineForm MOV render output	●	●	●	●
Batch capture HDV with timecode	●	●	●	●
Batch capture HD-SDI with timecode		●	●	●
HD-SDI monitoring of editing timeline (AJA only) (3)		●	●	●
Price	$499	$999	$1999	$2999

(1) Not yet shipping
(2) Currently supported only in CineForm RAW.  Will be added for CineForm 444.
(3) Monitoring using OEM Xena-2K not yet supported, but will be in 2Q07
 

Scott Billups has recently participated in numerous visual tests of the Canon XL H1 recording direct-to-disk into a Wafian HR-1.  Following is a recent statement of his findings:

"I found that the Canon XL H1—recording to the Wafian HR-1 Direct-to-Disk Recorder using 10-bit CineForm Intermediate files—noticeably outperformed tape shot on a far more expensive HD camera in terms of visual image, projected image, and chroma key."
-  May 19, 2006  www.digitalvideoediting.com  

"Finally had the time to load some of our footage gathered from your magic box [Wafian HR-1] into After Effects t'night...and applied some of my After Effects magic to it and I must say...WOW!   The footage is so clean that I'm going to have to add grain to forgive the actors' facial imperfections."

"Let the ignorant assume that a compressed (CineForm) format is somehow inferior...while they wait for all of that uncompressed data to funnel in and out of their systems, we'll be making more movies here."

Performance Note: The performance of Aspect HD and Prospect HD/2K is scalable--in other words, its performance is influenced by CPU speed, memory speed, and drive speed. Systems meeting our "minimum" configuration are well balanced, and will yield excellent real-time video editing performance.  On a Minimum system you will be editing 2-4 HD video streams in real time without dropping frames, including transitions, motion, and titles. 

A: Think of it this way…. If you need to perform operations like color correction, compositing, effects, titling, etc, and especially if you have material with smooth gradients (i.e., blue sky) you will be manipulating your 8-bit source data – adding, multiplying, etc.  Each time you render the source data precision is truncated back to 8 bits.  The 8-bit truncation operations after rendering introduce “banding” commonly visible in smooth gradients.  Instead, when you manipulate 8-bit source data in post but allow precision to grow to 10 bits, your arithmetic precision increases and your gradients will remain smooth.  This is very clear in the image sequence below.  Notice the obvious banding in the 8-bit uncompressed YUV image after gamma correction. 

(Click on the image to see a full-resolution (1920 x 1080) version.)

Read more on our Upgrade page about why upgrading your workflow to Prospect HD will be beneficial.
 

"...I just want to say that Prospect HD is well worth it. I re-rendered some shots in AE, and I have this day-for-night graded shot where previously the sky had been white, and now gray because of the night effect grading.  With Prospect HD a whole bunch of clouds with full detail just popped up. Amazing... "

All Aspect HD customers may upgrade to Aspect HD v5 using the following formula:

• Those who purchased Aspect HD or upgraded from a previous version on February 1, 2007 or later, your upgrade to Aspect HD v5 is free, as long as you complete the upgrade by July 31, 2007, after which the upgrade is $149.
• Those who purchased Aspect HD or upgraded from a previous version prior to February 1, 2007 may upgrade to Aspect HD v5 for a price of $99 through July 31, 2007 at CineForm's online store.  Upgrades on August 1 or after will be $149.
• All Aspect HD customers, during the month of May, may purchase an upgrade at our online store to:
       - Prospect HD for $400 (save $100), or
       - Prospect 2K-Edit for $1200 (save $300)

All Prospect HD-Edit and Prospect HD-Ingest customers on April 30, 2007 will be upgraded free of charge to Prospect 2K v3 or Prospect 2K-DL v3 on May 1, 2007. 
 

• Fixed à Bug when importing AVIs with 8-channel audio
• Improved à After Effects importer bug fix when loading or saving older projects
• Fixed à CineForm QuickTime Importer which was conflicting with Premiere for other QT media.
• Fixed à NTSC SD capture within HDlink
• Improved à MOV to AVI re-wrapping

May 2: v3.0.1 (Build 128) Currently posted for both Prospect 2K and HD.

• Fixed à Bug when importing AVIs with 8-channel audio
• Improved à After Effects importer bug fix when loading or saving older projects
• Fixed à CineForm QuickTime Importer which was conflicting with Premiere for other QT media.
• Added à Support for differing Bayer pattern data organization for pending support of additional RAW cameras (P2K only)
• Fixed à Analog audio capture with the AJA Xena LHe
• Fixed à NTSC SD capture within HDlink
• Improved à MOV to AVI re-wrapping

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