GoPro Cineform editing - how does it work?

I'm new to GoPro and Cineform studio and was hoping someone here knows a bit about the nuts and bolts of how it works with video files from the camera. I've been working with ProTune for raw WB and best color correction potential.

1. I can load files straight from the camera into iMovie, but it really bogs down the machine; seems like this format really isn't efficient for direct nonlinear editing, is that what is going on?

2. If I load files from the camera into Cineform Studio and convert to Cineform format, the resulting .MOVs can then be easily edited either in Cineform or iMovie/Premiere. Further, changes I make in Cineform do not need to be rendered, iMovie keeps white balance/image manipulation settings made in Cineform working format. Are the changes stored in metadata and processed real-time for editing?

3. I also notice that quick-view (hitting spacebar on OS X) plays unrendered-but-edited videos with editing intact, but quicktime (default video player in OS X) doesn't. What exactly is going on?

4. The weirdest behavior in Cineform is as follows:

Pic 1 is raw ProTune footage from the camera (take at about 90ft depth):


Next is immediately after using the eyedropper tool in white balance. Notice it's particularly oversaturated and vibrant:

But if I even touch the temperature/tint sliders, even if I do not make any changes or move the sliders at all, the entire WB changes to this:


The annoying result is that I can't fine-tune the white balance after using the eyedropper, without the entire clip snapping to a completely different WB setting. But if I use the eyedropper tool and do not adjust WB further, the second more saturated version sticks, including on import into iMovie. Why does this happen?

5. It seems the WB tool in Cineform is way more powerful than iMovie's. Is there any way to get similar results in iMovie without having to inject Cineform Studio into my workflow?

6. Last question - how and when is sharpening in Cineform applied? If I apply sharpening in Cineform, and then import into iMovie, am I double-sharpening if I have a sharpen filter set in quicktime rendering as a final step in iMovie? For ProTune footage, do you set sharpening in Cineform if you render in another app? I notice in Cineform that sharpening is one setting that ignores the "Split" view slider.

Thanks!

Subscribed. I've only used it to combine the 3D clips and correct for camera alignment. Never tried any color correction or other functions.

You might find this forum useful as well:

GoPro User Forum ? Index page

Yeah, I should probably post my questions to the dedicated GoPro forums. I just figured at least some of these issues may have impacted underwater shooters more (extreme white balance correction, low light shooting, etc.)...but then again, maybe not...

Firstly I dont use a Mac and cineform is a little different UI wise then the windows version, I only tried the mac version once when helping a friend learn how to use it. I found it quite different in how it behaved, didn't spend long enough on it but the end result should be the same just the interface is a little different. So not everything may be the same to the version your using for this reason.

I never use the Protune preset, the first thing I do when I start after converting to cineform format is select preset none or reset all. Most times the file defaults to protune preset after conversion and this seems much more limiting then starting from scratch, so before working on a file I reset it first to make sure this preset hasn't been applied.

The preset is there mostly to get protune recorded gopro footage more to the traditional GoPro look, with just one click for those not wanting to mess with the sliders. If you want to set all parameters yourself then you will get better results starting from scratch then using this preset as it has some strange changes that arent reflected in the sliders as they stay where they were but contrast/saturation/exposure all change.


Link to Cineform read through the articles under technology here to find out a bit more about what it is and does.

Gombessa:

I'm new to GoPro and Cineform studio and was hoping someone here knows a bit about the nuts and bolts of how it works with video files from the camera. I've been working with ProTune for raw WB and best color correction potential.

1. I can load files straight from the camera into iMovie, but it really bogs down the machine; seems like this format really isn't efficient for direct nonlinear editing, is that what is going on?

Click to expand...

It depends on the computer, I think macs generally dont handle MP4 files as well as PC's, not sure why but most likely because Mac is built natively around quicktime format. Even though MP4 and MOV files are very similar, MP4 plays best on windows and MOV on macs. On my PC I can load MP4 files directly and it works fine, though encoding is a little faster using cineform files.

Gombessa:

2. If I load files from the camera into Cineform Studio and convert to Cineform format, the resulting .MOVs can then be easily edited either in Cineform or iMovie/Premiere. Further, changes I make in Cineform do not need to be rendered, iMovie keeps white balance/image manipulation settings made in Cineform working format. Are the changes stored in metadata and processed real-time for editing?

Click to expand...

The cineform format is a minimally compressed format and will playback much better then MP4 files do on all systems. The files are much larger but much less strain on your processor and GPU as it doesn't need as much power for decoding.

Cineform uses active metadata so it makes your changes on the fly with no need to save anything. These will effect your sequence within your editing program as soon as you make them, that is unless you pre-render where you will need to delete rendered files in order for new changes in cineform to show up in your sequence. You can reopen the cineform file at any time withand make changes and these will effect the file wherever its being used.

Gombessa:

3. I also notice that quick-view (hitting spacebar on OS X) plays unrendered-but-edited videos with editing intact, but quicktime (default video player in OS X) doesn't. What exactly is going on?

Click to expand...

Not sure exactly what you mean here, I assume you are referring to cineform files not playing in quicktime after correcting but they do in CF studio. I'm not a mac user but maybe try VLC player as this plays just about anything you can throw at it and quicktime is a bit more limited in its file formats even more so then wmp on a PC. VLC player Even plays gopro 2.7k, 4k MP4 original files and has no trouble with cineform format AVI on PC but then media player also plays the converted AVI files I would have assumed quicktime could handle Cineform MOV files.

VideoLAN - VLC: Official site - Free multimedia solutions for all OS!

Gombessa:

4. The weirdest behavior in Cineform is as follows:

Pic 1 is raw ProTune footage from the camera (take at about 90ft depth):


Next is immediately after using the eyedropper tool in white balance. Notice it's particularly oversaturated and vibrant:

But if I even touch the temperature/tint sliders, even if I do not make any changes or move the sliders at all, the entire WB changes to this:

The annoying result is that I can't fine-tune the white balance after using the eyedropper, without the entire clip snapping to a completely different WB setting. But if I use the eyedropper tool and do not adjust WB further, the second more saturated version sticks, including on import into iMovie. Why does this happen?

Click to expand...

Sorry not sure about this, may be mac related or a bug in cineform but I am not using the eye dropper any more either as I found I got mixed results. Not the same issue as you just that the colours weren't getting to where I would want them and I could do better manually. It could be also due to the Protune preset being used as this does some things to the image that effect the way the sliders behave compared to using no preset.

Unrelated to the question but regarding your screen's, I noticed in the pics using eye dropper the temperature has gone all the way off the scale and also the image is far too red in the center. Not sure what you clicked the eye dropper on in that scene but your torch beam has become way too red. You may be using a filter and lights combined or just the wb is out because you selected a white point outside your light beam? and so the colours being lit by the torch will be much more red then your white point not getting any light from your torch.

Gombessa:

5. It seems the WB tool in Cineform is way more powerful than iMovie's. Is there any way to get similar results in iMovie without having to inject Cineform Studio into my workflow?

Click to expand...

Cineform is a high end grading package and codec, even though the free version is cut down quite a bit from the pro versions (before GoPro bought cineform it was $199 for the basic version we get free now) it is still well more advanced then what is even built into premiere pro. The cineform codec also plays a big role in it and you can check the articles in the link at the top of the post to find out what its doing.

Gombessa:

6. Last question - how and when is sharpening in Cineform applied? If I apply sharpening in Cineform, and then import into iMovie, am I double-sharpening if I have a sharpen filter set in quicktime rendering as a final step in iMovie? For ProTune footage, do you set sharpening in Cineform if you render in another app? I notice in Cineform that sharpening is one setting that ignores the "Split" view slider.

Click to expand...

Yes that would be double sharpening, its totally up to you which way you want to go with this, well as is everything else really I tend to just sharpen in cineform it all comes down to the final look you want, whichever method gives you the result you want in this regard just stick with it.

Gombessa:

I'm new to GoPro and Cineform studio and was hoping someone here knows a bit about the nuts and bolts of how it works with video files from the camera. I've been working with ProTune for raw WB and best color correction potential.

1. I can load files straight from the camera into iMovie, but it really bogs down the machine; seems like this format really isn't efficient for direct nonlinear editing, is that what is going on?

2. If I load files from the camera into Cineform Studio and convert to Cineform format, the resulting .MOVs can then be easily edited either in Cineform or iMovie/Premiere. Further, changes I make in Cineform do not need to be rendered, iMovie keeps white balance/image manipulation settings made in Cineform working format. Are the changes stored in metadata and processed real-time for editing?

3. I also notice that quick-view (hitting spacebar on OS X) plays unrendered-but-edited videos with editing intact, but quicktime (default video player in OS X) doesn't. What exactly is going on?

4. The weirdest behavior in Cineform is as follows:

Pic 1 is raw ProTune footage from the camera (take at about 90ft depth):

Next is immediately after using the eyedropper tool in white balance. Notice it's particularly oversaturated and vibrant:

But if I even touch the temperature/tint sliders, even if I do not make any changes or move the sliders at all, the entire WB changes to this:

The annoying result is that I can't fine-tune the white balance after using the eyedropper, without the entire clip snapping to a completely different WB setting. But if I use the eyedropper tool and do not adjust WB further, the second more saturated version sticks, including on import into iMovie. Why does this happen?

5. It seems the WB tool in Cineform is way more powerful than iMovie's. Is there any way to get similar results in iMovie without having to inject Cineform Studio into my workflow?

6. Last question - how and when is sharpening in Cineform applied? If I apply sharpening in Cineform, and then import into iMovie, am I double-sharpening if I have a sharpen filter set in quicktime rendering as a final step in iMovie? For ProTune footage, do you set sharpening in Cineform if you render in another app? I notice in Cineform that sharpening is one setting that ignores the "Split" view slider.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

I use cineform...the neoscene version with my canon 5d mark ii footage.
There are many similarities between what neoscense does and the scalled down package you are using, so I will share some of what I think might help.
When you white balance in cineform ( for me that would be in First light--the part of neoscene that does the color correcting---it uses HdLink to convert the canon h264 files in mov wrapper, into a cineform intermediate in the much larger and more accurate 4-2-2 color space--more accurate for color correcting).......On you white balance, you get an instant change to an entire clip, so on your separate editing program, any where this clip is showing through, those change immediately become visible without needing to render. If you have a clip where a few moments of a 2 or 3 minute cliip need a very specific white balance --as in your example where some lights you brought along caused the white balancing of the water 6 feet away and farther into the blue to get white balanced, but the close up area the lights were heating up had the reds way over corrected--this is a scenario where I would use Keying....I don't know if you can do keying in the free studio, but it lets you color correct in a gradient over a frame by frame approach, a secong---10 seconds, whatever you need. If you can't do this in the free studio....I see two choices....use the free 30 day trial of Neoscene to see how it should work....or, use your editor software to cut just the clip that needs to be corrected by itself---render it separately so just the few seconds of you 1 minute clip is now a 5 second ( whatever length it is) clip....and then color correct it on its own.

With firstLight, one simple solution for the over-corrected reds is to key the frames in issue, and then use the sliders to pull down saturation and luminance( gain)and or exposure, and change Gammas as well.

The nice thing about the Hdlink program converting your go pro footage to 4-2-2 or 4-4-4 color space and 10 bit color, is that in addition to having far more gradations you can show in your video after color correcting, and having this look ideal rather than banded in your camera's natic 4-2-0 ....And now you end up with a avi or mov file to edit ( avi if on PC, mov if on Mac) which will not degrade with repeated renderings of your editor, and your finished product should be much higher quality.

Gombessa:

I'm new to GoPro and Cineform studio and was hoping someone here knows a bit about the nuts and bolts of how it works with video files from the camera. I've been working with ProTune for raw WB and best color correction potential.

1. I can load files straight from the camera into iMovie, but it really bogs down the machine; seems like this format really isn't efficient for direct nonlinear editing, is that what is going on?

Click to expand...

No the files that gopro produces are normal h264 encoded files, it makes not difference whatsoever if they are mov or mp4 those are just cointainer. iMovie import sucks in general and you need to check that the import is not doing any analysis or optimisation as that kills it. The best way is to manually create events and let iMovie just generate thumbnails without touching the files. However importing in iMovie first is not the way the workflow is meant to work see later.

Gombessa:

2. If I load files from the camera into Cineform Studio and convert to Cineform format, the resulting .MOVs can then be easily edited either in Cineform or iMovie/Premiere. Further, changes I make in Cineform do not need to be rendered, iMovie keeps white balance/image manipulation settings made in Cineform working format. Are the changes stored in metadata and processed real-time for editing?

Click to expand...

Not sure what you exactly mean here but what happens is as follows: the gopro produces normal h264 encoded video files plus the protune information log. Cineform takes the video file + the protune information and creates a cineform encoded file that is easier to digest this can be edited in cineform where you have more options for color correction or processed by other program where you can do those corrections, the choice depends on what tools you have but you can work with cineform for color correction and imovie for the rest if you wanted.

Gombessa:

3. I also notice that quick-view (hitting spacebar on OS X) plays unrendered-but-edited videos with editing intact, but quicktime (default video player in OS X) doesn't. What exactly is going on?

Click to expand...

http://support.cineform.com/entries/20562063-gopro-cineform-studio-mac-known-issues


Metadata changes are not reflected in Quicktime 10.2. Users should be sure to have Quicktime 7 installed to see metadata changes reflected in playback of CineForm files.

Gombessa:

4. The weirdest behavior in Cineform is as follows:

Pic 1 is raw ProTune footage from the camera (take at about 90ft depth):

Next is immediately after using the eyedropper tool in white balance. Notice it's particularly oversaturated and vibrant:

But if I even touch the temperature/tint sliders, even if I do not make any changes or move the sliders at all, the entire WB changes to this:

The annoying result is that I can't fine-tune the white balance after using the eyedropper, without the entire clip snapping to a completely different WB setting. But if I use the eyedropper tool and do not adjust WB further, the second more saturated version sticks, including on import into iMovie. Why does this happen?

Click to expand...

No precise idea but looks like the WB picker goes more than end of scale with the temperature, when you then touch it applies a 'sanity' limit. I have to say the effect after your first white balance pick are quite weird, maybe you have to settle for a gray part

Gombessa:

5. It seems the WB tool in Cineform is way more powerful than iMovie's. Is there any way to get similar results in iMovie without having to inject Cineform Studio into my workflow?

Click to expand...

No cineform has the ability of processing the protune information, iMovie hasn't in addition to the fact that white balance correction in iMovie are basic.

Gombessa:

6. Last question - how and when is sharpening in Cineform applied? If I apply sharpening in Cineform, and then import into iMovie, am I double-sharpening if I have a sharpen filter set in quicktime rendering as a final step in iMovie? For ProTune footage, do you set sharpening in Cineform if you render in another app? I notice in Cineform that sharpening is one setting that ignores the "Split" view slider.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

If you process all the files with cineform to a point where they are looking at best you then use iMovie just to cut and join there should not be any need of further corrections or at least this is the idea behind cineform
If you think about it you could add titles or other effects in iMovie that you don't want to sharpen

My answer to how it works it "not very well." Right up front, I am no whiz at editing programs, but I think this one is basic to the point of crude. From what I have read, people who get good results with their GoPro editing do it in another, more sophisticated program. I'm in the process of trying Adobe Premiere Elements 10. I know there are other better programs, but I'm not looking to make a cinematic masterpiece, just something that looks nice to post online and show to friends. We'll see ...

Everyone,

THANK YOU for your responses and input on this, it's of tremendous help as I figure this new workflow out.

Marty Cerven:

I never use the Protune preset, the first thing I do when I start after converting to cineform format is select preset none or reset all. Most times the file defaults to protune preset after conversion and this seems much more limiting then starting from scratch, so before working on a file I reset it first to make sure this preset hasn't been applied.

Link to Cineform read through the articles under technology here to find out a bit more about what it is and does.

Click to expand...

Same, I like working from the raw, that's the entire point I shoot in Protune. Also thanks for the link, I'll read these.

Marty Cerven:

Cineform uses active metadata so it makes your changes on the fly with no need to save anything. These will effect your sequence within your editing program as soon as you make them, that is unless you pre-render where you will need to delete rendered files in order for new changes in cineform to show up in your sequence. You can reopen the cineform file at any time withand make changes and these will effect the file wherever its being used.

Click to expand...

That makes the most sense. Trading render time for CPU/GPU usage to apply live filters during playback.

Marty Cerven:

Not sure exactly what you mean here, I assume you are referring to cineform files not playing in quicktime after correcting

Click to expand...

From your above statement and Interceptor's below, I think I have the answer. Whatever video decoder OS X uses for quick-view is different than the decoder used in default Quicktime playback. They both play, but only the quickview reads the changes made in active metadata. iMovies does too, which is the only thing that's important for me at this point because this is midway through the workflow.

Marty Cerven:

Unrelated to the question but regarding your screen's, I noticed in the pics using eye dropper the temperature has gone all the way off the scale and also the image is far too red in the center. Not sure what you clicked the eye dropper on in that scene but your torch beam has become way too red. You may be using a filter and lights combined or just the wb is out because you selected a white point outside your light beam? and so the colours being lit by the torch will be much more red then your white point not getting any light from your torch.

Click to expand...

Absolutely the case. I actually shoot with no video lights and no filter, and the torch is a 6 degree beam with almost no spill. So all the red outside the hotspot is actually being captured by the GoPro, at 15ft viz and almost 100ft depth. Pretty impressive. I know that the extreme change makes the dive light way too red, but I'm going more for convenience than true-to-life, smooth lighting.

Marty Cerven:

Cineform is a high end grading package and codec

Click to expand...

Whatever it's doing, the WB tool itself seems to bring out more than I can even get with After Effects' Photo Filter or Channel Mixer. I'm impressed.

Marty Cerven:

Yes that would be double sharpening

Click to expand...

I'm going to run some tests. From photoediting, sharpening is the absolute last step I take for any image, but I have to think about the order of how effects are applied during final render...

danvolker:

If you have a clip where a few moments of a 2 or 3 minute cliip need a very specific white balance --as in your example where some lights you brought along caused the white balancing of the water 6 feet away and farther into the blue to get white balanced, but the close up area the lights were heating up had the reds way over corrected--this is a scenario where I would use Keying....I don't know if you can do keying in the free studio, but it lets you color correct in a gradient over a frame by frame approach, a secong---10 seconds, whatever you need.

Click to expand...

Dan, the free version does support keyframes, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to key effects to different areas of the clip - they seem to apply universally...making the keyframing controls nothing more than "snap to frame" bookmarks. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong...

Interceptor121:

The best way is to manually create events and let iMovie just generate thumbnails without touching the files. However importing in iMovie first is not the way the workflow is meant to work see later.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm seeing that. I think I should adjust in Cineform first, and then have iMovie import the adjusted Cineform files.

Interceptor121:

Metadata changes are not reflected in Quicktime 10.2. Users should be sure to have Quicktime 7 installed to see metadata changes reflected in playback of CineForm files.

Click to expand...

Makes sense, just means Apple's default playback tools are not using a unified decoder. Weird, but whatever.

Interceptor121:

No precise idea but looks like the WB picker goes more than end of scale with the temperature, when you then touch it applies a 'sanity' limit. I have to say the effect after your first white balance pick are quite weird, maybe you have to settle for a gray part

Click to expand...

Agreed, this is the most logical explanation for the result. It is weird, but it's not horribly "bad" especially for not running video lights/filters. But maybe I'm too close to it to be able to judge. Here's the actual video that includes the screengrab in the OP:

[video=youtube;M3oJ5wRCvRQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3oJ5wRCvRQ[/video]

Interceptor121:

If you think about it you could add titles or other effects in iMovie that you don't want to sharpen

Click to expand...

Hmm...that makes a lot of sense. There's no reason why Apple would ship titles/transitions/effects that would require any level of sharpening during export, so the real question is whether real-time sharpening via metadata setting is equivalent to rendered sharpening (intuitively I would say "no way in hell," but sharpening isn't exactly a CPU-intensive task nowadays).

Again, thanks very much. I know it's a bear to read through walls of text, let alone respond, so I really appreciate it.

---------- Post added January 9th, 2013 at 07:34 PM ----------

highdesert:

I'm not looking to make a cinematic masterpiece, just something that looks nice to post online and show to friends. We'll see ...

Click to expand...

That's what my videos are too, essentially "video dive logs" for myself and my buddies. I don't have the time (or talent, frankly) to storyboard and perfect a video, and I really want to keep my shooting gear as lightweight as possible (no lights or filters).

Dan, the free version does support keyframes, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to key effects to different areas of the clip - they seem to apply universally...making the keyframing controls nothing more than "snap to frame" bookmarks. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong...

Click to expand...

In my limited use of the Mac version of cineform, keyframes were working a little different to the windows version. In windows If I set one key-frame and then move to any other point in the timeline and make an adjustment there, it would automatically create a new key-frame for me. In Mac I think you need to actually press the + key at each point, you should see if they are being set easily enough by jumping from one to the other with the arrows. When you press play in cineform if key-frames are working properly you should see the sliders moving along as it plays back and the obvious changes to the images. If you only have one keyframe this will also mean you are changing the entire sequence, you need to set the first at a section you have as you like then move on and set another. Going through adding more if needed, I then just scroll through them to try and match each keyframes look to the others. Then playback and make sure the sections between keys dont have any negative effects and if they do you may need to add some more keys.

These work fine on the latest free windows version and it may pay to check if the GoPro site to see if you have the current latest. In windows using Key-frames disables the eye dropper like I said in the earlier post and why I do manually adjust WB with the sliders instead.

Another option for a final editing package you may want to check out the Adobe site as they are giving away Adobe CS2 for free now. It got pretty big online and there is a little clarification made by Adobe. No, You Can't Download Adobe CS2 Applications For Free - Forbes but there is the links its official plus the keys so you guys can decide if its free or not

Adobe - CS2 Downloads

I dont know how well premiere pro 2.0 would work with current gopro files or how long adobe will keep this page up but its worth a look at least for those that dont have a good editor yet.

The idea of gopro is that cineform plugs in with other not very expensive or even free software a and you can get good results
Cineform itself doesn't really slow down the workflow very much if you already convert your import in the format the editor can process
The alternative is not to retouch the files that much at all which works very well with other cameras that allow for custom white balance with the gopro is a bit more difficult
One of the challenges is that you just take a very long clip at various depth even in post the white balance adjustment will not be optimal
Normally in video you shoot clips of 20" to 1' whilst with gopro you could be recording the whole dive in that case you must split the files otherwise no matter cineform or premiere it will look poor