Cinemartin last week released Cinec 3.X, the latest version of its Windows-based video converter and encoder software tool that converts videos (of 4K and beyond) to such codecs as ProRes 444, H.264 and HEVC (H.265). 3.X, which is claimed to be twice the power of previous versions, can now support Cineform (GoPro) files and SI Cineform (Silicon Image Cineform camera format), Sony’s XAVC, and RED .r3d files up to 6K.
This release also includes support for 4K videos recorded with Snapdragon 800 series devices including the Galaxy Note 3 and the newly announced Samsung Galaxy S5 and Sony Xperia Z2 smartphones.
It will take in almost any video input, including uncompressed 8-, 10-, 12- and 16-bit video, XAVC and XAVCS used by Sony’s 4K cameras (the PMWF5, F55 and PXW-Z100; and the FDRAX100 Ultra HD consumer camcorder respectively). It also supports Panasonic’s AVC Intra, AVCHD Pro and many other formats. It will also work with Convergent Design’s Odyssey 4K Raw recorder.
V3.X also includes several new features for video processing. MPA (Motion Picture Adjustments) will allow you to adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation and gamma levels of videos, while a new dual preview monitor shows the original video on the left and the MPA-adjusted images on the right, so that users can preview motion picture levels before conversions in almost realtime.
Also new is the ability to create movies from a sequence of stills and 3.X now supports alpha channels to be able to create transparent videos with the new QuickTime Animation preset, ready to put in the NLE timeline.
Cinec 3.X comes with an H.265 second-generation encoder, that is faster and offers 40-50% space savings compared to previous versions. It “now supports encoding from Snapdragon 800-powered devices up to 4K, and has reduced twice the weight of the HEVC-H265 compressed videos compared to previous versions,” said Tony Hernandez, hardware and software technician, Cinemartin.
He claimed that the “results are simply amazing with superb details. As an example, a 4K video at 300MB recorded from a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 was converted to a HEVC video of 1.5MB with same duration and resolution, with unnoticeable differences. The size of the encoded videos, that now can be played on Android and iPhones, are from a 15% to 0.5% of the original video size.” It can also convert a 500MB video from ProRes 4:4:4 to 5MB, or an original 290MB video from the new Sony PXW-Z100 XAVC camcorder to just 1.6MB in H.265 (as it demonstrates in a YouTube video).
The Cinemartin Cinec website includes video samples ready for download (including the above original sources and HEVC/H.265 outputs), video tutorials, demonstrations, etc. Cinec 3.X costs €99 for the Standard version (which is limited to 1080p), €199 for the Pro version (which is necessary for 2K to 4K work and adds support for Raw DNG, Cinema DNG, Cineform, SI Cineform, and XAVC/XAVC-S, plus more encoding profiles, stills to video and dual-core processing) and €799 for the Gold version (which adds 6K, DPX and R3D support, plus six-core and Raw parallel processing). Cinemartin users includes REDucation (A Red cameras subsidiary), Swiss Canal 9 TV, and Panasonic.
By David Fox
