General Having a hard time finding a good converting program for t2i files

J

JohnFB

Member
Sorry I kind of wrote this post while still trying things,

basically what I'm looking for now is a good batch converting program that I can load all my .mov files from t2i into and convert to Matrox or Ut Video codecs in .avi format. Prism and MPEG Streamclip have issues for me.







Also a quick question about cineform VS. these free codecs;

Cineform claimes to "Properly Interpolate" the 4:2:0 chroma to 4:2:2

When Neo Scene detects 4:2:0 chroma it properly interpolates the source chroma to 4:2:2 for more accurate color processing during editing and effects work. And if you ever "key" your material, CineForm’s chroma interpolation will substantially improve your resulting visual fidelity.
Click to expand...

What's confusing me here is that, DNxHD, Matrox, and Ut Video all render to 10bit 4:2:2. Isn't that giving the same effect that cineform codec gives? Or does cineform do some special stuff hence the "Properly" line in their quote.



v Stuff I wrote here while testing, you can read if you want v

Just spent all of yesterday trying to find a good codec and program to batch convert my footage too, I've been using the normal .movs but they've been really sluggish in my editing program and I heard that they're worse in color grading...

Anyway I found a few methods:
MPEG Streamclip+DNxHD > Convert .mov file to DNxHD .mov
For some reason when I do this, when I bring the DNxHD file into my editing program (Sony Vegas) It's a lighter color, as if it lost contrast or saturation, it's the same when I play them in MPCHC, although when I open them both in quicktime it's the opposite effect.... [weird]

So then I found this other method

Prism Video Converter+Matrox / Ut Video > I convert the .mov to an 4:2:2 Matrox .avi, or an 4:2:2 / 4:2:0 Ut .avi
The only issue I'm having with the above two methods is that the file it produces comes out darker, or more contrasted compared to my original footage.

I'm pretty sure my problem above is from Prism Video Converter, I just tried rendering Ut Video & Matrox out of Sony Vegas with the original .mov and no color changes at all
 
I don't claim to know the technical mojo that neoscene uses ,but let me say what many others have and will ,it works well. I know a lot of FCP editors are using the EOS plug-in with success, but being a premier editor I rely on neoscene, and it has never failed to deliver. I don't know vegas, but if it handles avi well then I think you should try it out.
 
Thanks for the suggestion, I just downloaded a trial for the latest neoscene and tested it among other things. If anyone's interested from my first post I solved some of my problems:

Here's what I found out (I think..)
Ut Video & Matrox both do the 4:2:2 conversion, though it's worse then cineforms

The color problem I was having, supposedly was the 4:2:2 conversion happening. Reason I think this is because in cineform the same color change happens when I encode my files. Strange that it didn't happen when I put the raw t2i file into Vegas or AE (tried some other converting apps too) and choose Matrox and Ut codec to encode too, after it finished it was the same as the source

Why I'm pretty sure the above is correct is because I brought the cineform,AE encoded,Prism encoded, and source files into AE, I set 32bit and raised saturation to max to cause all the colors to be solid
in the cineform file, there was a completely different pattern (it was soft looking and clean) compared to t2i source file (was grainy and jaggedy)
The Prism encoded Matrox/Ut files (which I thought had problems) had the same pattern as the cineform file (except it was jaggedy and sharp) The same t2i source footage encoded to Matrox&Ut codecs with AE had the same pattern as the source T2i file.

I just also tried encoding the source t2i file out of adobe with the cineform codec, the color did not change and when tested with the "saturation" thing it was the same pattern as the original again (except soft this time in areas) Also just tried putting the 4:2:2 file from cineform in and rerendering to cineform in AE, Saturation method shows the same pattern as original cineform a little bit more messy though.

So anyway I also know nothing about the technical stuff here but from what I figure is: If you don't use the right encoder to encode to the 4:2:2 codec it won't do the uperconversion
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I tested the speed for myself in color correcting etc and here's what I got from the codecs:

Cineform performs the fastest (2x better then the other codecs I'd say) encodes the lowest (though I was setting max bitrate on Matrox) and has the best 4:2:2 upconversion (throwing words around here, it's probably called interpolation or something)

Matrox is the second fastest, has a variable encode size, has a sharp conversion to 4:2:2 (inless this depends on the programs converting to the codec, in this case Prism has a sharp 4:2:2 conversion)

Ut is techically lossless, performs just under matrox, has same conversion of the 4:2:2 stuff as (^)


Hope I didn't just post a bunch of wrong info, I'm just posting what I "think" is happening anyway, feel free to correct me if anyone here knows about this stuff
 
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Get CS5/Premiere, Mercury playback engine, and a quad core PC. Plays back real time with no need for a intermediate. Pretty unbelievable really, but it works right out of the box with no need to render. A fairly large local video company has sold off all it's Matrox boxes in part b/c of how sweet this set up it.

It actually has a Canon DSLR setting, which is always a relief.
 
Vegas 10 plays back native files flawlessly also without any issues. I bought Cineform awhile back and have color graded with and without the conversion. I can't tell a difference. To me, converting everything with those massive AVI files isn't worth it.
 
Before I got Sony Vegas, I use to convert my files to .avi using freeware called any video converter. It worked pretty well.
 
dylan morgan said:
Vegas 10 plays back native files flawlessly also without any issues. I bought Cineform awhile back and have color graded with and without the conversion. I can't tell a difference. To me, converting everything with those massive AVI files isn't worth it.
Click to expand...

Yeah I've been playing around with the cineform files, I really can't tell THAT much of a difference, I think the main difference is for keying which I'm going to test once I get some greenscreen footage

I use Vegas Pro 9 still, and can edit the files almost natively, I get full fps when playing back but it stutters every now and then, but if I try to color correct in CS4 It becomes really laggy... I imagine if I updated from my 3core to that new 6 or 8 core I probably could edit natively.
I heard all the buzz about converting to 4:2:2 and how it'd be amazing in color correction, It's amazing at it's speed size and playback ability but I'm not seeing the other stuff yet
 
Yeah I had Vegas 9 and it could only take so much .MOV files before it would struggle. I had my doubts about upgrading to 10, but found out immediatly that they didn't "improve" DLSR files, but FIXED it. I could see converting for Chroma key stuff also. I'm humbly asking anyone to give examples of how much greater using Neoscene is compared to the native for basic color correction. I know all about the 4:2:2 conversion, but find it hard to get that out of a native 4:2:0.
 
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