Apple dropping codecs including Cineform, DNxHD

[ConsumerDV]

I did not find news on the topic on this forum, so here: in 2015 GoPro's CineForm codec became an industry standard: ST 2073 VC-5 (SMPTE), the new open standard for video acquisition and post production. In the press release from the SMPTE, David Newman, senior director of software engineering for GoPro, said this about the standardization:

SMPTE standardization of the GoPro CineForm codec as the new VC-5 standard is big news for the entire production and post production industry, as well as for GoPro and its customers. By further developing the VC-5 standard, we are building a new ecosystem for the industry in which we’re enabling cinema-level acquisition quality, while also providing cinematographers the workflow technology to finish their films. We are standardizing core codec technologies, and making them extensible to even support future camera formats and future post production workflows.

In a 2018 support note Apple informed that it would stop supporting legacy formats like:

Sony HDCAM-SR cameras, footage from GoPro cameras recorded in the CineForm format, video files in the Avid DNxHD/DNxHR format created with software, footage shot with many other older cameras, or files modified with older software.

That vague note was later updated, and the latest 2022 amendment lists "formats compatible with macOS Catalina or later" as well as "media formats affected by the transition to 64-bit technology". Contrary to popular belief of some members of this forum that DV is dead, all variants of DV made the staying alive list as well as variations of H.262, H.264 and H.265. AVI, MOV, MP4, MTS/M2TS containers are still to be supported. Full list of the formats is on that Apple's page. Should I save it in case they modify it again?

On another hand, popular intermediate formats like Cineform and DNxHD / DNxHR are "affected". This is unfortunate, because I have always liked Cineform and made it my in-house standard as a preservation and intermediate format.

On Windows the situation is slightly better. I can use VDub2 to open my old Cineform files and to create new ones. I cannot render to MPEG-2 from VDub2, but I can render to DVCPRO50

GoPro outsourced Cineform in 2017 and effectively stopped supporting it. There is no official way to obtain just driver/codec from GoPro anymore. It was provided as part of GoPro Cineform Studio, but this product is discontinued. The most recent product, GoPro Quik, is said to not include the codec, but it seems like it does - after I installed Quik I am able to open Cineform files in Vegas. Another possibility to use Cineform codec on Windows is, reportedly, to install renderVFW.exe:

• Download the file software.gopro.com/PC/renderVFW.exe
• Locate the following folder path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Cineform\Tools​.
• Place renderVFW.exe into the Tools folder at the above location. (There is no need to install any other software – I tried Installing Quik / GoPro Studio and that alone has no effect so I uninstalled it.)

It appears that VLC supports Cineform natively.

I guess, Cineform debacle was no big deal for some members of the forum, who claimed that they never used Cineform, which "was a stop-gap format for HD shot video 10+ years ago. DNxHD and ProRes, or H.264/AVCHD, own that space now." Well, DNxHD is also on the chopping block on Mac.

My woes are nothing compared to the troubles of professionals, who found out that Premiere on M1 iMac doesn't have GoPro Cineform Codec:

I'm working on a large television show, with several dozen thousand files - so when things go offline, it's a huge pain. I recently tried to migrate to the new update of Premiere Pro, which is natively compatible on M1 Macs (which I've been working on the entire time, using the Intel version of the software). I checked with my co-worker before migrating, and they said that the new software version is working great. They are working on a Mac Pro with Intel based chips.

However, whenever I open the M1 version of Premiere, it gives me an error message that the "files use unsupported file type CFHD". After some cyber sleuthing, I figured out that the error message was indicating that the GoPro Cineform codec (which all 28,000 files have been transcoded into for proxies) doesn't work with the software. The crazy thing is, they were natively generated from Premiere, and work completely fine in the Intel version of the software (which I can launch through the Creative Cloud).

Same problem. This is annoying. Adobe claims M1 native silicon support, but didn't update the codecs. We're also running a show with most of the VFX and Colorist files in Cineform. This means we cannot use the latest generation of macs. Running under Rosetta 2 is comparable to running an older machine. Adobe should have at least predicted this and wrote the code to auto convert media to a working format instead of tossing out a "general importer error." That's the laziest thing I've ever seen. FYI, Resolve imported all of our project assets and still runs Apple silicon native.

Some links below. I have not checked them! Just collected during a search for Cineform driver/codec. Use on your own risk.

• Cineform source code repository (github)
• GoPro CineForm Studio Premium 1.1 (informer.com, Mac)
• GoPro CineForm Studio Premium 1.3 (informer.com, Windows)
• renderVFW.exe (gopro.com, Windows)
• CineForm HD CODEC 3.2 (informer.com)
• CineForm NeoScene 5.6 (informer.com)
• GoPro-CineForm Decoder (softpedia.com)

[richardpl]

FFmpeg have faster CineForm decoder and encoder.