Cineform to ProRes so I can export to Color

Both Media Manager and Batch export use Compressor, do they not?
Quicktime Export might be another route.
Unsupported formats of course are only rendered in either uncompressed or ProRes, (if they make the trip IN to COLOR in the first place, like HDV and XDCam), so they're going to be recompressed one way or another.

Cineform is pretty horrible to start with, or am I thinking of Cinepak? But no, there is no other way 'in' if the format is unsupported. It will always have to be converted to something recognizable.

If you were up for it, you could try it as a dpx sequence! Does a nice job.

jPo

Sorry for resurrecting a somewhat old thread. I've been on a forum hiatus for a while.

Cineform is a very high-quality codec, however, the workflow to properly transcode your source clips requires the use of Compressor.

There was a project at the university campus here a while back that encountered a similar issue. One of my co-workers works on a camera that uses the Cineform codec, and he confirmed this workflow. The idea here is to transcode your source media to ProRes, and "Reconnect" it in FCP.

You will need to do the following:

1. Locate your source media via the Finder.
2. Create a separate folder with a similar name to that of the folder which contains your source media.
3. Open Compressor.
4. Add your Cineform clips to the Job window, and apply the appropriate ProRes setting. Set your Destination to the secondary folder.
** I would recommend creating a "Custom Destination" for this. By using a Custom Destination, it will automatically strip away the preset info from the exported file name. The idea here is to create new source media using the same filenames as your Cineform media.
5. Submit your batch.
6. When the transcoding has completed, go back to your FCP project and DUPLICATE your sequence (for backup purposes).
7. Select the clips on your timeline and take that media offline.
8. With all of the clips still selected, reconnect them to the new ProRes clips. (This is why it's important to keep the filenames the same.)
9. You may need to change the Sequence settings to match your ProRes settings.
10. Send to Color.

Hope this helps.

When encoding to ProRes via Compressor, the audio is set to "multi-track passthrough". A bit more detailed information about your clips will help paint a better picture of what is going on here.

1. In FCP, select one of your ProRes clips and press Command 9, to open the Format info window. Make a note of the audio information and post it here.

2. Select your ProRes sequence and press Command 0 (zero), to open the Sequence Settings window. Make a note of the audio settings for your sequence and post that information here.