Gopro Cineform Codec Mac

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  3. Gopro Cineform Codec Mac

GoPro Studio is a post-production program developed by GoPro. You can use it to edit footage recorded by your GoPro and GoPro HERO camera. It is also compatible with other cameras that use Advanced Video Coding and High Efficiency VIdeo Coding Format with h.264 and h.265 codec. Their file extensions should also be MP4 or MOV. GoPro Cineform is a high-quality codec, similar to ProRes and DNxHD, in that it is optimized for high quality and efficient editing. Adobe uses it extensively as part of Premiere; especially on Windows. With the death of QuickTime on Windows, having a high-quality video codec for editing is essential.

GoPro Studio is a fantastic platform for creating and editing GoPro footages. It allows the user to export edited video footages in two ways. They are,

  1. H264 format
  2. GoPro CineForm format

The h264 format is a very good choice for sharing created GoPro videos on the web. But H264 format encompasses somewhat a whole heap of compression algorithm that results in loss of a lot of information. So, GoPro Studio users typically opt CineForm format (GoPro’s own codec) to export their edited video files.

The CineForm format results in video files that are of higher quality in comparison with the H264 algorithm. CineForm video files come packed with MOV container and when the user tries to play the exported video, they might feel difficulty in opening it. Typically, users can’t open the exported CineForm video footages and face error that states cannot play the CFHD codec.

But, this is not an unresolvable issue; in fact, it is very easy to fix. So, here it is explained how to play GoPro CineForm MOV video files without difficulty.

  1. Install GoPro CineForm Codecs

To play exported CineForm videos, you must have necessary codecs. And, there are two ways to install the required codecs on your computer to play GoPro CineForm video files.

Way 1: The foremost method is to install GoPro Studio software on your computer. GoPro Studio itself consists of necessary CineForm codec and makes it accessible to other applications installed on your system. So, it should work in resolving playback issues of exported CineForm videos.

In certain instances, this technique doesn’t help due to some or the other reasons. Since the GoPro Studio software might be a higher freight than you require if the goal is to play only the videos.

Way 2: The second technique is to just install the GoPro CineForm decoder. To do this, visit the GoPro CineForm decoder official page. There you will find different decoders for both Mac and Windows versions. Download the suitable decoder based on your OS and install them.

  1. Play GoPro CineForm MOV Videos in QuickTime Player

Once the CineForm codec is installed on your Mac system, it should be automatically accessible in QuickTime player.

According to research, QuickTime 7 works best in playing CineForm MOV files. Since QuickTime 7 involves a different structural design than the consequent editions of QuickTime. Thus, the videos play swiftly and evidently, like any other video files.

No issue even if you have other editions of QuickTime. If you play the GoPro CineForm videos in newer versions of QuickTime, it will play, but it slows things down as it needs to through a conversion process first. So, just give a try for your existing QuickTime player. In case, you face any issue then go for QuickTime 7.

If the CineForm MOV videos fail to play even in QuickTime 7, then make use of Remo Repair MOV tool and then try to play the videos.

In case, the video plays fine after fixing it then this verifies you were facing playback issues due to video file corruption. I suggested Remo Repair MOV because it is the efficient way to fix damaged MOV files as well corrupted.

  1. Play GoPro CineForm MOV Videos in VLC Player

VLC is a reliable and open-source application available to play any (a huge number of) video file formats. But VLC cannot play videos encoded in GoPro CineForm format since CineForm is the proprietary format.

But, GoPro might change this somewhere in future as GoPro announced that when the CineForm codec grow into SMPTE standard (in progress), it supports VLC player. At that time, you can enjoy the playback of CineForm MOV videos even in your VLC player.

Related posts:

This might be beating a dead horse, but QuickTime trulysucks.
For those using 16-bit (deep color) applications, always use the Force 16-bit encoding option, it is the highestquality and surprisingly, it is often the lowest data rate.
Codec

QuickTime loves 8-bit, it prefers it greatly, and supportfor deep color is difficult at best. Overthe years we tried to make the 16-bit the preferred mode for our codec within QuickTime, yet there are many video tools that broke when we did this. The compromise was to add the Force 16-bitinto the QuickTime compression option, to allow user to control the codecspixel type preference – applications that can handle 16-bit will benefit, andapplications that don’t, still work.
Using After Effects for my test environment (but the sameapplies to other QuickTime enabled deep color applications.) I created a smooth gradient 16-bit image, then encoded itat 8-bit using using a 8-bit composite, 16-bit using a 16-bit composite and 16-bit using a16-bit composite with Force mode enabled (pictured above.)
Without post color correction, all three encodes looked pretty much the same*, yet the data rates are very different.
* Note: QuickTime screws up the gamma for the middle option, so with the image gamma corrected to compensate, they looked the same.
The resulting file sizes for 1080p 4:4:4 CineForm encodes at Filmscan quality:
16-bit – 28.4Mbytes/s

Our instincts that higher bit-rate is higher quality will lead us astray in this case.
Under color correction you can see the difference, so I went extreme using this curve:
The result are beautiful, really a great demo forwavelets.

Zooming in the results are still great. Nothing was lost with the smallest of the output files.

Gopro Cineform Codec Mac Os


Of course we know 8-bit will be bad
We also seeing the subtle wavelet compression ringing atthe 8-bit contours enhanced by this extreme color correction. This is normal, yet it shows you somethingabout the CineForm codec, it always uses deep color precision. 8-bit looks better using more than 8-bits tostore it. That ringing mostly disappearsusing an 8-bit composite, an 8-bit DCT compressor could not do as well.

Gopro Cineform Codec Mac Download


Storing 8-bit values into a 12-bit encoder, steps of 1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2 (in 8-bit gradients are clipped producing these flat spots) are encoded as 16,16,16,16,32,32,32,32, the larger step does take more bits to encode – all with the aim to deliver higher quality. Most compression likes continuous tones and gradients, edges are harder. Here the 8-bit breaks the smooth gradients into contours which have edges. The clean 16-bit forced encode above is all gradients, no edges, result in a smaller, smooth, beautiful image.

Now for the QuickTime craziness, 16-bit without forcing16-bit.
The image is dithered. This is the “magic” of QuickTime, I didn’t ask for dithering, I didn’twant dithering. Dithering is why the file is so big when compressed. QuickTime is given a 16-bit format, to acodec that can do 16-bit, but sees it can also do 8-bit, so it dithers to8-bit, screws up the gamma, then gives that to the encoder. Now nearly every pixel has an edge, therefore a lot more information to encode. CineForm still successfully encodes dithered images with good results, yetthis is not want you expect. If you wanted noise, you can add that as need, you don't want your video interface (QuickTime) to add noise for you.
If anyone can explain why Quicktime does this, I would loveto not have users have to manually select “Force 16-bit encoding”.

P.S. real world deep 10/12-bit sources pretty much always produce smaller files than 8-bit. This was an extreme example to show way this is happening.

Gopro Cineform Codec Mac