CINEFORM and the Hacked GH2

[tiedtothe90s]

Any thoughts on this?  Is it worth transcoding to cineform?  If so why?  Wasn't sure if cineform discarded high bitrate data.

[Ernesto Mantaras]

Hi. I have the same concern as you do. With the Canon DSLRs' footage I've always transcoded to Cineform, and only recently I've started working with my new GH2, so I haven't been able to do much testing.
Still, a couple of days ago I transcoded some footage to be able to edit on multicamera (four h264 and AVCHD videos, including hacked GH2 footage, were choking my modest machine). I compared the original AVCHD video (recorded using the EOSHD Unified patch at 88Mbp/s) to the Cineform transcoded file (High quality, "I-frames only" unchecked) and didn't catch any difference with my eyes. Also, the clip size wasn't too different (1.81GB AVCHD vs. 2.11GB CF).
So visually there's no difference at first glance (perhaps with some heavy grading one could spot something) and the final file is 4:2:2, better than the 4:2:0 the GH2 offers, so I believe there's no color degradation either.

I don't really know, the extra conversion time and sizes are bothersome, but I have to say editing on CF is a hell of a lot faster, so maybe it's worth it some times. And in any case, it's cool for mastering.

Anyhow, it'd be great if someone with more technical info out there could shed some light to this!