Add CineForm support to Voukoder

Zitat von dr0

I tried to encode a few videos into CineForm with VirtualDub2 and noticed that it encodes noticeably faster than ProRes and it gives even better scrubbing preformance in Pro Pro and AE. In term of file size they're close enough.

I do like Cineform too. For me, it still performs fastest to live playback in Premiere. Even the proxies in lowest quality look so decent I've to look closely to notice difference from full-resolution original. I've tried DNX for a while but went back to cineform again. Prores is the hardest to playback, I find.

I am slightly confused though, why you ask if cineform is already supported in Adobe, has been for several years by now?

I also VirtualDub2 from time to time, including cineform. It seems it hasn't been updated for a while, so I've some doubt if it will continue on. My problem with it was its command line usage is quite cumbersome compared to something like ffmpeg. I got it to work before, but then since certain version it for some reason just refused to work anymore.

I mostly use Media Encoder to transcode to cineform. I experimented a bit with a custom "cfenc" binary some guy F1nkster/marksfink wrote, but since FFMPEG added cfhd I've been using that.

Zitat von Daniel

The current Voukoder only supports encoders that can be integrated with FFmpeg. Unfortunately the FFmpeg guys decided to not implement it as it doesn't work on any other platform than x86.

They added cfhd encoder a while back, in August. I haven't noticed issues with it in my experience so far. Unless I'm misunderstanding something.

My bad, I didn't realize it's not in official release yet. The one I have installed at this point is ffmpeg-20200818-1c7e55d-win64-static , it's a git windows build by Zeranoe but they don't build anymore now. I just tried latest Gyan.dev git build (ffmpeg-git-full) and it has the encoder too.

Encoder cfhd [GoPro CineForm HD]:
General capabilities: threads
Threading capabilities: frame
Supported pixel formats: yuv422p10le gbrp12le gbrap12le
cfhd AVOptions:
-quality           <int>        E..V...... set quality (from 0 to 12) (default film3+)
film3+          0            E..V......
film3           1            E..V......
film2+          2            E..V......
film2           3            E..V......
film1.5         4            E..V......
film1+          5            E..V......
film1           6            E..V......
high+           7            E..V......
high            8            E..V......
medium+         9            E..V......
medium          10           E..V......
low+            11           E..V......
low             12           E..V......

Speed wise, on my pc it's definitely slower than Media Encoder when converting from h264 (and I made sure to disable hardware decoding in Adobe), about 60%.

There is a quirk with Cineform that it requires the frame width must be evenly divisible by 16 and the frame height by 8. Adobe converts the file anyway even if source doesn't adhere to this rule, but rounds the width to closest appropriate value by adding tiny black bars. For some reason, it doesn't mind the height being not /8. But I've had issues before when video players of youtube would add a black or colored bar to fill the height gap. Not sure if it's an issue still.

FFmpeg's cfhd just flat out rejects the input with "bad" width and stops with error. Just like Adobe, it seems to not mind the height not being /8.

Tested, works fine, speed wise seems to be same as ffmpeg (well, obviously).

When I tried to encode a 3834x2120 ("bad" width) file it failed - which is to be expected since cfhd just fails to initialize with such files. It does actually produce a red error output within ffmpeg

[cfhd @ 000001b782e22dc0] Width must be multiple of 16.
[cfhd @ 000001b7829e6300] ff_frame_thread_encoder_init failed

Opening codec: cfhd with options: quality=high
Failed opening codec: cfhd
Unable to open video encoder: cfhd
Closing encoders ...
Opening encoder failed! Aborting ...
0000000066E56DD0

I don't know if passing some critical errors from ffmpeg is possible, but it might be useful sometimes.

On a side note, UtVideo works too and seems to be the same speed wise as the official installable VCM codec. It does normally utilize .avi container though, which I understand isn't currently supported in voukoder.

Zitat von Vouk (Daniel)

Did you try 7rc2 already?

I did install it yesterday, but didn't specifically test yet in regards to fixes.
I did just now. Exported to UtVideo (420) .avi, and h264_nvenc to VBR

bitrate 150M / max 250M/ bufsize 500M , all is fine.

On a side note, one thing slightly bothered me, is when you switch audio to AAC from another codec, when it's "initialized", the dropdown menu defaults to first entry of 96kbit/s. I realize it happens because GUI dropdown defaults to first entry, but is it possible to make it default it to something like 320?