CineForm Intermediate

CineForm Intermediate is proprietary video codec

Video codec

A video codec is a device or software that enables video compression and/or decompression for digital video. The compression usually employs lossy data compression. Historically, video was stored as an analog signal on magnetic tape...

 developed for CineForm Inc http://www.cineform.com by David Newman and Brian Schunck. On March 30, 2011, the company was acquired by GoPro

GoPro

GoPro is the primary brand of the privately owned Half Moon Bay, California company Woodman Labs that features small "wearable" waterproof and shockproof camera/camcorders such as helmet cameras that are targeted at adventure photography and currently weigh 3.3 oz .According to the company, video...

 which in particular wanted to use the 3D film capabilities of the CineForm 444 Codec for its new 3D HERO® System.

The press release in the GoPro acquisition noted that CineForm's codec has been used in several major movies including Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008 British epic romantic drama adventure film directed by Danny Boyle, written by Simon Beaufoy, and co-directed in India by Loveleen Tandan. It is an adaptation of the novel Q & A by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup...

.

CineForm History

The CineForm Intermediate Codec was originally designed in 2002 for compressed Digital Intermediate

Digital intermediate

Digital intermediate is a motion picture finishing process which classically involves digitizing a motion picture and manipulating the color and other image characteristics. It often replaces or augments the photochemical timing process and is usually the final creative adjustment to a movie...

 workflows for film or television applications using HD or higher resolution media. The CineForm media is most commonly wrapped within AVI or MOV files types, using the 'CFHD' FOURCC code for all compressed media types.

Current implementations support image formatting for 10-bit 4:2:2 YUV, 12-bit 4:4:4 RGB and RGBA, and 12-bit CFA Bayer filter

Bayer filter

A Bayer filter mosaic is a color filter array for arranging RGB color filters on a square grid of photosensors. Its particular arrangement of color filters is used in most single-chip digital image sensors used in digital cameras, camcorders, and scanners to create a color image...

 RAW compression (as used with the Silicon Imaging SI-2K camera.)

All compression is based on an integer reversible wavelet compression kernel, with non-linear quantizer to achieve higher compression. Compression data-rates typically range from 10:1 to 3.5:1, based on quality settings.

The codec uses a constant quality design, such that the data rate will vary based on the source image data. It shares some properties with other wavelet codecs, like JPEG 2000

JPEG 2000

JPEG 2000 is an image compression standard and coding system. It was created by the Joint Photographic Experts Group committee in 2000 with the intention of superseding their original discrete cosine transform-based JPEG standard with a newly designed, wavelet-based method...

, yet it trades off some compression efficiency (larger file sizes) for greater decode and encode performance. Currently, CineForm is only available as software implementations on Mac OS

Mac OS

Mac OS is a series of graphical user interface-based operating systems developed by Apple Inc. for their Macintosh line of computer systems. The Macintosh user experience is credited with popularizing the graphical user interface...

 and Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

platforms.