CineForm

CineForm Intermediate

CineForm Intermediate is proprietary video codec developed for CineForm Inc [1] by David Newman and Brian Schunck. On March 30, 2011, the company was acquired by GoPro which in particular wanted to use the 3D film capabilities of the CineForm 444 Codec for its new 3D HERO® System.

The press release in the GoPro acquisition noted that CineForm's codec has been used in several major movies including Slumdog Millionaire.^[1][2]

CineForm History

The CineForm Intermediate Codec was originally designed in 2002 for compressed Digital Intermediate workflows for film or television applications using HD or higher resolution media. The CineForm media is most commonly wrapped within AVI or MOV files types, using the 'CFHD' FOURCC code for all compressed media types.

Current implementations support image formatting for 10-bit 4:2:2 YUV, 12-bit 4:4:4 RGB and RGBA, and 12-bit CFA Bayer filter RAW compression (as used with the Silicon Imaging SI-2K camera.)

All compression is based on an integer reversible wavelet compression kernel, with non-linear quantizer to achieve higher compression. Compression data-rates typically range from 10:1 to 3.5:1, based on quality settings.

The codec uses a constant quality design, such that the data rate will vary based on the source image data. It shares some properties with other wavelet codecs, like JPEG 2000, yet it trades off some compression efficiency (larger file sizes) for greater decode and encode performance. Currently, CineForm is only available as software implementations on Mac OS and Microsoft Windows platforms.

See also

• Digital cinematography cameras
• ProRes 422
• Digital cinematography

References

1. ^ http://gopro.com/gopro%C2%AE-leading-activity-image-capture-company-acquires-award-winning-video-compression-software-company-cineform%C2%AE-inc/
2. ^ http://www.nextwavedv.com/gopro-sports-camera-manufacturer-acquires-cineform-video-compression-software-company/

• http://www.fourcc.org/codecs.php, list of codec four digit codes (like DIV3, XVID, ...)

External links

• CineForm Main page