Adobe offers CinemaDNG format for raw video

Adobe Systems on Thursday released a beta version of a file format called CinemaDNG the company hopes will simplify higher-end digital video processes and improve its quality.

The company behind Photoshop has developed a technology for still cameras called DNG, short for Digital Negative, and is trying to standardize it to encourage broader adoption. CinemaDNG takes the technology and applies it to video

For higher-end cameras such as SLRs, DNG records the raw data from the image sensor with no in-camera processing. That means there are no compression artifacts, no sharpening or contrast filters applied, no camera assumptions made about lighting conditions such as shady or sunny, and no discarding of richer 12-, 14-, or even 16-bit data in the conversion to 8-bit JPEG. The drawback to this flexibility and quality is that images require processing before they can be viewed.

CinemaDNG is comparable, according to the Adobe Labs description, including Adobe's hope to provide an alternative to proprietary raw formats.

"In many digital cinematography workflows, captured content is processed by software and hardware in the camera before it is saved to a storage device--and assumptions made during this processing could irrevocably damage the original imagery. Cinema DNG avoids these problems by capturing raw digital data directly from the camera's sensor, giving artists the power to make qualitative judgments after imagery has been saved to disk," Adobe said.

Other companies supporting CinemaDNG are Fraunhofer, Gamma & Density, Ikonoskop, Indiecam, Iridas, MXF4mac, RadiantGrid, Synthetic Aperture, The Foundry, Vision Research, and Weissc.

Adobe also released software to let its video-editing software import CinemaDNG files.

"Adobe and other industry participants have finalized the CinemaDNG specification and Adobe has made CinemaDNG plug-ins for Adobe After Effects CS4 and Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 software available online on Adobe Labs," the company said in a series of announcements at the 2009 IBC trade show in Amsterdam.

Adobe also announced beta testing of a new project, Adobe Story for writing scripts.

"Scriptwriting typically goes through several phases: initial outline, several drafts, final draft, shooting script and creation of a production shot list that accompanies the final script. Adobe Story is designed to help simplify and accelerate this process for virtually any creative endeavor," Adobe said. Scripts in a variety of other formats can be imported into the software.

And the San Jose, Calif.-based software company announced Flash Access 2.0, digital rights management technology that can control which individuals or devices are permitted to view online video. "Flash Access 2.0 now supports output protection, enabling content providers to specify requirements for protection of analog and digital outputs, providing additional safeguards against unauthorized recording," the company said.

[Police_States_of_America]

hmmm... wonder if it will be lossless

[Goodbye Helicopter]

no it will be a loss.
There's no point other than adobe wants to get vendor-lockin, too late....
Avid vs Final Cut = no room for adobeeeeeee

[bakedpatato]

Last time I checked only bit players like Sigma use DNG while NikCanon still uses their own raw formats. While we would all love to see one format to rule them all...with the REDOne using its own format and god knows what the Panavison/Sony cameras use; unless Adobe wants to bribe all the camera makers, CinemaDNG will be just like DNG: good idea, but not implemented

[Shankland]

Pentax uses DNG, and Hasselblad dallied with it. They're respectable.

I convert DNG after I shoot the originals in Canon CR2 proprietary raw format. There are some file portability issues that are nice, but one thing I *really* like is that metadata is handled much more gracefully. That helps with titles, captions, copyrights, geotags, and Lightroom nondestructive editing changes stored as data. I hate XMP sidecar files that are separate from the originals.

Adobe spends the money to write the converters to transform proprietary raw into DNG; I'm not sure what extent it will do this with video.

[bcriss1963]

I shoot my stills on my Pentax K20D in AdobeRGB color space and have them stored as DNG. The files are quite compact and Adobe's software for "developing" the shots is pretty flexible. You can adjust a shot in an extremely obvious manor or just do subtle changes that bring out the best. It reminds me of working with film in a lab. I get great shots with this workflow.

[ikramerica--2008]

Adobe Story? Good luck. Writers aren't going to switch, and I highly doubt that it will be able to open Final Draft and Screenwriter scripts with full formatting, and save them the same way, as the companies who make that software do NOT license their format for import/export in order to keep people locked in. It's quite frustrating, actually, but I'm not sure how Adobe thinks they can break that stalemate.

[ikramerica--2008]

Adobe Story? Good luck. Writers aren't going to switch, and I highly doubt that it will be able to open Final Draft and Screenwriter scripts with full formatting, and save them the same way, as the companies who make that software do NOT license their format for import/export in order to keep people locked in. It's quite frustrating, actually, but I'm not sure how Adobe thinks they can break that stalemate.

Oh, and if you go to Adobe's info page on this software, their export list includes "Movie Magic scheduler" which, well, doesn't exist. It never existed. The old program was called "Movie Magic Scheduling" and is discontinued, the new program, rebuilt from the ground up when purchased by Entertainment Partners, is "EP Scheduling". You'd think a company like Adobe, who wants to market itself to PROFESSIONALS in film and television, might at least try to get that right...

[jay-1234]

Perhaps with Adobe gets serious about supporting .DNG files on Windows (thumbnail previews on 64-bit Windows anyone?) the format will actually gain some momentum. I use DNGs for photo archiving, as proprietary formats like Canon, Nikon, etc use should make anyone a little nervous. Adobe's commitment to their own format however feels somewhat lacking.