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Product Architecture
As shown in the diagram above, CineForm's
software products Prospect HD, Aspect
HD, and Connect HD all include
CineForm Intermediate, and each has software
interfaces designed for Adobe Premiere Pro or
Sony Vegas. The scalable and modular
architecture of CineForm Intermediate allows
each CineForm product to use a unique set of
features based on the editing application
(Premiere Pro or Vegas) and other
workflow-dependent parameters. For instance,
Prospect HD uses a full 10-bit I/O path and
16-bit arithmetic path for compatibility with
HD-SDI source material, while Aspect HD and
Connect HD each support 8-bit I/O paths
consistent with HDV material. Our CFHD file
format uses an AVI file wrapper ensuring
compatibility with scores of other
applications. Our products run on standard
Windows desktop PCs, offering unmatched
high-definition performance at a price
dramatically lower than competitive solutions.
A
table on our main Product page lists the
details of specific features supported in each
product.
In the future
CineForm Intermediate will be extended to
support other hardware platforms, applications,
and operating systems.
Digital Intermediate Workflow
A Digital Intermediate (“DI”) workflow is one
that allows you to capture and digitize source
footage (film or video) once, edit the source
material (never a proxy) directly, then export
to one or more distribution formats at the
completion of post production. Because you're
always working with full-resolution material,
the workflow advantages of Digital Intermediate
include:
-
reduced costs because you only have to capture/digitize
once
-
saves time (hence dollars) because no conforming is
required at the end of the process
-
ability to view footage at full resolution while editing
Of most importance, use of the term "Digital
Intermediate" carries with it a promise of
preserving pristine source quality through the
multiple generations of video processing
inherent in post production. Achieving the
highest visual quality possible was our number
one priority when designing CineForm
Intermediate; consequently we don't take the
term "Intermediate" lightly. We encourage you
to
read our comparative quality analysis report
that analyzes the performance of our Visually
Perfect™ 10-bit codec that is part of CineForm
Intermediate
Technology Background
While it is an “obvious” solution to use a
compressed format within a DI workflow, the key
limitation to date has been the poor
multi-generational quality of most existing
compressed formats. Some recent attempts have
been made by eager manufacturers to jump-start a
compressed DI workflow, but invariably the
approaches employ simply repackaging
off-the-shelf compression formats including:
MPEG long-GOP, MPEG I-frames, DVCPRO HD™, or
motion JPEG, and positioning them as editing
formats. None of these formats were
designed for post-production – they were either
designed for capturing video on tape (DVCPRO
HD), distributing video (MPEG), or still images
(JPEG). Their application in a post-production
environment often introduces unwanted
characteristics including: i) generally
poor multi-generational quality, ii)
8-bit arithmetic processing limitations, iii)
specialized hardware, and iv) lack of a
compatible forward path to higher resolutions
(Cinema 2K/4K) or arithmetic depth (10-bit,
12-bit). In most cases these codecs are not
worthy of use in a Digital Intermediate
workflow, and is the reason many have felt that
"compression" within DI is a "bad word". (We
encourage you to
read the analysis we prepared that compares
CineForm's 10-bit Visually Perfect codec versus
DVCPRO HD.)
CineForm Intermediate changes all that.
CineForm Intermediate blends together three
elements in our patent-pending solution: i)
CineForm's scalable, Visually Perfect™ codec,
ii) our real-time high-resolution video
pipeline architecture, and iii) an
ubiquitous wrapper format (AVI) that surrounds
our compressed files and guarantees
compatibility across a wide range of PC
applications. These technologies were all
optimized by design for the demanding
performance and visual quality requirements in
post-production. Features of CineForm
Intermediate include:
-
Visually lossless quality with very high
signal-to-noise performance for
multi-generation use.
-
Real-time, multi-stream editing performance
in software on standard PCs, without the
need for specialized hardware.
-
8-bit or 10-bit source I/O plus 16-bit
arithmetic processing to maintain the
highest precision throughout the
post-production workflow.
-
AVI format wrapper guaranteeing
compatibility with a large number of
existing PC applications
-
Scalable architecture with forward
extensions to support:
- 12-bit precision and
mathematically-lossless processing
- resolution extensions to Cinema
2K/4K
CineForm’s Visually Perfect Codec
For optimum performance in a post-production
environment, CineForm’s Visually Perfect codec
has a number of unique characteristics,
including:
-
Employs a full-frame temporal Wavelet
transform, not a DCT transform. This
eliminates “block artifacts” often present
when using DCT compression.
-
Scalable precision: operates in either 8-bit
or 10-bit modes, with optimized arithmetic
precision based on source resolution.
-
Uses a symmetric transform, meaning that
encoding speed is similar to decoding
speed. This allows real-time software
encoding while capturing, eliminating the
need for specialized hardware.
-
Exploits the hierarchical structure of
Wavelet transforms to allow unprecedented
performance in an editing environment, again
eliminating the need for specialized
hardware.
-
Scalable resolution: scales compatibly to
higher spatial resolutions including
Cinema2K/4K.
While designing our Visually Perfect codec, we
optimized for two things: 1) preserving source
quality through multiple generation (instead of
optimizing for lower bitrates), and 2) efficient
arithmetic implementation in software (to
eliminate the need for specialized hardware).
Streams compressed using CineForm's Visually
Perfect Codec preserve the characteristics of
the original source material, even through more
than 15 generations of post-production
rendering. Even noisy 16mm film scans retain
the grain structure of the source through
multiple generations. CineForm's Visually
Perfect codec delivers a constant-quality,
variable bitrate (VBR) compression that allows
compression rates to rise dynamically for more
complex scenes, and allows it to dynamically
fall for less-complex scenes.
Compressed file sizes are approximately 6:1 to
10:1 smaller than their uncompressed YUV
equivalent. As an example, source material
which is 1920x1080 at 24 fps with 10 bits of
precision has an uncompressed YUV bandwidth of
about 125MB/sec. After CineForm compression,
depending on the complexity of the source
material, the resulting file size for this
footage will be nominally 12MB/sec to 20MB/sec,
even while preserving visual quality
indistinguishable from the source.
Editing Workflow using
CineForm Intermediate
Video Editing Application Support:
As illustrated in the figure, CineForm
Intermediate is designed to work with Adobe
Premiere or Sony Vegas; specific interfaces have
been designed to support these applications. As
an example within Premiere Pro, CineForm
Intermediate replaces Premiere Pro's entire
8-bit native arithmetic processing engine, yet
all of the original features of the editing
application are retained with the familiar
Premiere Pro look and feel.
Video Ingest:
Input is from a variety of 10-bit or 8-bit HD
sources, including HD-SDI, HDV, film scan, or
other file-based sources. While streaming
HD-SDI or HDV input, and prior to writing the
stream to disk, CineForm Intermediate converts
source material to CineForm’s Visually Perfect™
AVI codec format. For capture, this workflow
reduces the bandwidth of the uncompressed source
to one that is manageable by even simple 7200
rpm IDE drives.
Video Editing:
CineForm products are largely invisible to a
user while running Premiere Pro or Vegas. The
editing interface remains the familiar interface
a user is accustomed to within a specific
application. CineForm products works
transparently within the editing application to
deliver its real-time performance and Digital
Intermediate workflow. When using Prospect HD
with Premiere Pro, CineForm Intermediate
supports real-time monitoring of the editing
timeline through compatible HD-SDI cards.
Compatibility with Other Applications:
Although CineForm’s CFHD codec format is unique,
it uses an ubiquitous AVI wrapper ensuring file
compatibility with scores of video applications
including Adobe After Effects, Combustion,
Windows Media Player, and others.
Video Export:
File export is managed by the editing
application in combination with the underlying
CineForm Intermediate technologies. All output
formats normally supported by an editing
application are also supported when
using CineForm Intermediate. With Prospect HD,
8-bit or 10-bit HD-SDI output is also a valid
export format. |
