GoPro CineForm Studio Premium/Pro Settings for 5D3 RAW Video

[DANewman]

It seems like my issue is the same or close to fatpig.. as my win7 x64 in with Russian interface..

I don't think so.   You can at least run the tool, your problem within other tools - "But both Resolve and Adobe AE and Premiere die right after they open the file."

Seems we have a few isolated compatibility issues, but generally it works.  For anyone having problems, try to determine if it is just Canon RAW related.  Convert a GoPro or regular H.264 clip, and play with that to see whether your GoPro CineForm Studio has installed correctly.  If that doesn't work, you have an issue for regular GoPro support, and not something for this forum.

[fatpig]

as these tools you mention, like VR2CF.exe only ship with premium, are you sure that I don't need premium for your tool to work?
I am trying to obtain a Phantom Raw file to test with vr2cf.exe now..

also, on this site http://cineform.tistory.com/128
they say that vr2cf.exe needs another exe to run- and that these belong in the windows/system32 folder...
confusing.

which command line tool would I use for converting regular H.264?

EDIT: I am using it with 5DII Raw files. this is not the problem is it?

[DANewman]

You don't need Premium for the tool to work with the -422 option for sources that are 1920x1080 or less and horizontal resolution divisible by 16. And it doesn't crash if you forget to -422 switch with the free tools, just no output.  I thought you said it would crash just by running it, it is why I was suggestion libraries and depends -- I can't keep look up everyone's history (I don't work in support.)  But looking back over your posts, you said it ran, but with no output, but then you have the wrong switches.  When we got that sorted out, then is crashed, but only after some time.  When know there was something wrong with your source files as it said 0.000 fps.   Sorry, too many unknowns here, I'm confused as you are. I guess you can convert to DNG then use CineForm Studio to convert.  Revisit this when the tool when it is more mature or there is more data to know what the issue is.

But one last thing to try.  Let's test with known good footage.

Download M0000000.RAW from here  https://drive.google.com/a/gopro.com/folderview?id=0B5vzb1fFuV73UW91LUY4OHBrMlE&usp=sharing#

Copy that to C:\

Copy RAW2GPCF.exe to C:\
Have GoPro CineForm Studio installed

Open a CMD shell

* cd to the root of C:\

> regsvr32 "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\CineForm\CFEncoder2.ax"
// The above will ensure the correct encoder is registered, the installer should have does this.  It will have a Pop-up to say success.

> .\RAW2GPCF M0000000.RAW test.avi -422

If that doesn't work, we know it is a configuration failure, not source or pathing issues.

[kevperry]

Thank you for this wonderful tool.

Am I correct that there is still no way to access metadata of Cineform raw in Resolve on a Mac?   

[DANewman]

That would be up to Blackmagic, please ask them as they do have the ability to read CineForm metadata.

[DANewman]

Kevperry,  thank you for the positive comment.

[DANewman]

I finally got my 5D3 in RAW working reliably -- I needed to disable the auto off feature as the camera seemed to randomly shutdown.  Now that I can record 10+GB files, I want to test this workflow.

It seems for the cost conscious not wanting to purchase too many 1000X 64GB cards, the main issue is the off-load speed.   My old home computer lacks USB 3.0, limiting read speeds to something so terrible I don't care to messure.  However my new Surface Pro does have one USB 3.0 port, but it is very limited in internal space. 

So my setup for this test:
  Surface Pro 128GB 1.7Ghz i5-3317U
  CineForm Studio Premium 2.0 (beta, yes you don't have this yet.)
  RAW2GPCF v1.02
  USB 3.0 4 Port HUB (plugged into the only USB port)
  USB 3.0 CF reader (connected to the hub)
  USB 3.0 750GB 2.5" external drive (connected to the hub)
  64GB KOMPUBAY 1000X card (connected to the reader)
  All running off the Surface Pro battery (I left the power supply at the office.)

Source clip 11.7GB 1920x816 23.976  3m02s.

From a shell I converted to a Filmscan 1 quality CineForm RAW AVI file, directly to the external driver in 2m47s, to a 9:1 compressed to 1.3GB.  Surface CPU was only at 30%, so it was bottlenecked by the CF read speed (est 70MB/s -- reader more than the card.)  Even with this less than optimal setup, I can transfer, transcode and store RAW faster than I can record it.  Only need one more 64GB card for mear continuous RAW acquisition.

I plan to shoot 5D RAW for my next 48 Hour Film Project, along we a bunch of HERO3 Black edition 2.7k.

[fatpig]

@DANewman:

Thanks for your tireless work! I really appreciate it.
If I get it working I will implement it in BATCHelor so everyone can benefit.

"divisible by 16" - that one got me thinking.
As I am on 5DII, not III - my res. is 1880 - which is not divisible by 16.
There may be the problem.

I will test out your proposed method!

EDIT: You did it! It works! Indeed, it is all in the resolution. Man this is fast! No way for 1880 to be included?
New question: with the full cineform studio app, how do I make it accept the DNGs? I dropped a folder with DNGs on the import bin. no import. Also tried your 5DIII file (after using raw2dng), which it doesn't accept, also. what did I miss?

[DANewman]

I should have the tool auto crop to divisible by 16, so 1880 will be encoded 1872.  In the 10 years we've had CineForm all the video resolutions have been divisible by 16 in the horizontal : 720 (SD),  960v(P2), 1280, 1440(HDV), 1920, 2048, 2400 (BMCC), 2704 (HERO3 Black), 2880 (Alexa), 4096...  So we have assumed that multiple for speed reasons. It relates to the wavelet structure of the codec.  Vertically we can support anything, although even numbers for RAW.

[fatpig]

so, is there an option to force it to crop with a commandline action?
I tried 

Code Select Expand

-422 -c -(4,0,1876,0) - still crashes.

I can not open any DNG sequences in cineform studio GUI version. nothing happens when dropping my DNG folder in the import bin.
Is that normal?

[NedB]

@fatpig: Don't drop the folder, use the Import browse to navigate TO THE FIRST.DNG IN THE FOLDER. This works for me. Cheers!

[fatpig]

I would love to.
Sadly, DNG is not listed as a File Type, so I cant see it.

See for yourself: http://www.xup.in/dl,69694161/hmm.gif/ 

...you have to have the pro version for this, don't you?

[DANewman]

dng support is only in Premium/Pro

The windowing switch is
-(4,0,1876,960) 

You gave your image a zero height, which apparently crashes.

[fatpig]

Okay, still crashes.
Maybe there is something else about the 5DII File. Do you have access to one?
Would it help if I uploaded a 5DII .RAW for testing purposes?

[DANewman]

Please upload a 5D II RAW file as I don't have those.  Have you tried the 5D3 samples I linked?

[Brunos]

Hi DANewman, just wanted to say thanks for RAW2GPCF, it made me discover CineForm RAW, which seems the way forward to encode video. It just makes so much sense to compress before demosaicing and sharpening! Also it's really nice to have a single file for all of editing, grading and archival. I wish a mac version of RAW2GPCF were available though!
Anyway, it all works very well, the CineForm demosaicings maybe are not the best, but if you do a final grade in Resolve it does not matter.
Thanks again,
Bruno

[DANewman]

Hi DANewman, just wanted to say thanks for RAW2GPCF, it made me discover CineForm RAW, which seems the way forward to encode video. It just makes so much sense to compress before demosaicing and sharpening! Also it's really nice to have a single file for all of editing, grading and archival. I wish a mac version of RAW2GPCF were available though!
Anyway, it all works very well, the CineForm demosaicings maybe are not the best, but if you do a final grade in Resolve it does not matter.
Thanks again,
Bruno

Thank you.  Working on offering Mac tools (soonish) and better demosaicing options (eventually).  Thank you for your feedback.

[LB]

Thanks for everyone exploring the demosaicing options.  While it is assumed our current filters where selected for performance, that is not entirely true.  While there are some performance options, bi-linear and matrix 5x5, the others where the render grade filters of their day, finishing films from My Bloody Valentine to Slumdog Millionaire.  As computer power has increased even more advanced algorithms are being used. 

Thanks for all the work on the tools.

These advanced stills debayer options to one degree or another were already out long before Slumdog. I've noticed that stills software often seems to have used much more advanced algorithms. At the point that stills sharpening tools had all but done away with nasty white halos and such you'd still see commercial DVDs/blu-rays with nasty white halos all over the place, etc.

Maybe, in part, because stills software was aimed at only doing 1 frame at a time or maybe a few hundred while video stuff was aimed at tens of thousands or millions of frames. Some of it might also be that the two sides didn't cross pollinate much either perhaps.

And more recently as of a couple years ago the RAW control sliders have become much more powerful in stills software. The sliders in ACR, for instance, seem to work way better than the sliders in most video correcting software. Although in this case, some of it is that I'm not so family with video editing software and haven't likely used the best stuff either.

Of course the stills stuff doesn't let you do motion tracking corrections so easily like some video plug-ins and it's probably tricky to make sure all sorts of footage matches perfectly, if you need to do that sort of thing. And certain stills tools can cause frame to frame flicker if things are changing too much frame to frame.

The thing that is holding back Cineform RAW is the debayering/early stage sharpening/NR are soooooo far behind stills software that I just can't see leaving behind using the Photoshop/ACR/AE workflow for now. GoProStudio is nice to quickly scan footage to see if flipping through images in a stills viewer doesn't give you enough sense as to whether to process the clip or not. And using Cineform 444 film scan 1/2 is a nice codec to use as output to use in Premiere Pro or whatever to cut stuff and edit it all together and so on. It holds lots of bits just in case you still need to make some corrections still and seems to have barely any compression artifacts.

Using many options also crashes Premiere Pro out when using the Cinform RAW files made by GoproStudio. I didn't try that patch a few posts up yet though.

[LB]

Anyway, it all works very well, the CineForm demosaicings maybe are not the best, but if you do a final grade in Resolve it does not matter.
Thanks again,
Bruno

So it demosaics as will in Resolve as in ACR?

[LB]

Of course there are so many different settings that it's easy to get a false impression. It's also probably easy to start getting into a more digital and less film-like sharpness with the ACR workflow, balancing things out the detail level isn't so different compared to CF Advanced 2.

The CineformRAW demoasic does seem to be prone to creating even more false colors bits popping up (trying advanced level 2), some edges get odd chroma bits on them and there seems to be no general chroma NR either so you get that plus created chroma noise in addition perhaps.

The Resolve rendering of CIneformRAW avoids that but appears to be a bit prone to zipper/checkboard artifacts. Does anyone know what it means when Resolve lists Cineform 16bit output. What is that exactly? Also Resolve doesn't seem to understand the color data yet so it's almost impossible to figure out how to bring it back to normal looking colors.

Going back to Cineform RAW in general, perhaps it is the compression used or some luma NR, but relatively uniform areas of OOF color tend to become smooth (with occasional odd things showing up) or large grained on some dark transitions using the Cineform RAW files while the ACR method (using Cineform 444 FS2 once all the RAW stuff is complete) leaves them very finely grained and not smoothed over at all.

ACR processing stage takes forever, but things like Magic Bullet Colorista take forever during final render so I'm not sure if all that much total time is saved, although it is certainly much handier to leave long stages until the end and the ACR workflow has the long stages at the beginning.

[DANewman]

... it is certainly much handier to leave long stages until the end and the ACR workflow has the long stages at the beginning.

This is why a little nicer demosaic will complete this optimal raw workflow.  With a 10-20X shooting ratio for native filmmaking, that is a lot of processing for an ACR pass. Whereas in CineForm RAW the preview demosaic is real-time, allowing the edit without any commitment to extensive computation, until only the frames needed are selected.

[DANewman]

New version v1.03

* Fixed support for FD Mk II files with corrupted or missing frame rate information. Defaults to 23.976 is not specified.
* Auto masking the image to divisible by 16 widths as required by the encoder.

http://miscdata.com/ML/RAW2GPCFv103.zip

[fatpig]

You are the man !! Thanks so much!
what can i do about the black level?

[1%]

Debayering is still unusable. I don't have these issues with pro-res or dnxhd.

[fatpig]

maybe unusable for final render, but I think this is the way to go for fast proxies!