Phantom Cine Toolkit for Final Cut Studio

Overview:
A Note about Demo mode:
(Color bars through the image)
If no license is purchased, the Phantom Cine Images are drawn with colored bars through the center of the image. When a license is purchased, the color bars will disappear. Time Code and “Advanced” abilities will be available for use as well.

Version 2.0:
The second generation Phantom Cine Toolkit for Final Cut Studio will perform all of the importing, playback, debayer, white balancing and color correction functions to the movie. All applications that use QuickTime can access all aspects of the Phantom Cine files. Applications including Final Cut Pro, Compressor and even iMovie, can import and play these files without any sort of conversion or preprocessing steps. For the ease of portability with other users, you can quickly and easily convert a Phantom Cine Movie to any other QuickTime movie format.

There are no direct “controls” or programs to launch in order to use these components. Your QuickTime enabled applications will simply “recognize” the Cine movie files as another movie format that can be used. Your Macintosh will also be “aware” of the files, much the same way QuickTime movies are already available to the system. Simply single-clicking on a Phantom Cine file in Finder, allows you to see a thumbnail of the image, for instance.

System Preferences:
The Glue Tools PhantomCine preference pane is where you pre-set all of the settings that the components use. These settings include white balance modes, debayer algorithms and color conversions. The panel also handles licensing information, time code support, and more.

User Adjustable Imagery:
The Phantom Cine Toolkit for Final Cut Studio provides the editor or artist with a wide array of settings. For editors that need raw speed, low quality debayer modes offer quick, yet efficient display modes, to let any application playback Phantom Cine movies. When high quality imagery is required, the artist can switch to a higher precision debayer mode, to extract great looking footage. Along with user selectable debayer modes, you can choose from different XYZ colorspaces, different display gamma modes, even choosing camera defaults for white-balancing. If that isn’t enough, you can provide your own white-balancing values, or your own XYZ color conversion matrix to adjust the colorspace of the footage. Also, new for v2.0 is the ability to change the image aspect ratio for Anamorphic footage.


Works with Final Cut Studio 2:
With the Glue Tools Components, productions can import Phantom Cine clips directly into Final Cut Pro. No additional processing is required. A timecode track can also be added to the clip, to improve the editorial process. Final Cut Pro, Compressor and Motion will work with these files, allowing you to work with the footage.

With Version 2.0, The Phantom Cine Toolkit now provides a new import plugin for Final Cut Studio. This allows Phantom Cine specific settings to be selected before the file is imported into the project. It also allows for the extraction of metadata from the file’s header, as well. Along with the plugin, Sequence Presets are also now available. You can choose from a number of commonly used preset settings. You also have the ability to create your own presets.

Time Code:
With these components, productions can import Phantom Cine clips directly into Final Cut Studio. No additional processing is required. Time code is now extracted from the embedded timestamps that have been generated by the camera. This now provides editors with a reliable Time Code source for all Phantom footage regardless of the source frame rate.

Playback with the AJA Kona 3 Card:
On capable systems with high speed storage, the Phantom Cine Toolkit can now playback HD sized footage out though AJA’s Kona 3 card. Now you will be able to preview your footage using Final Cut Pro, and assorted broadcast equipment.

Spotlight Plugins:
The Spotlight Plugins enable your system to see inside the Phantom Cine header. The Finder can extract specific information from the Phantom Cine files when it does a “Get Info.” You can search for camera models, encoding characteristics, or even “shot notes” from the user modifiable “description field” from the Finder’s Spotlight panel. Simple shell scripts can also take advantage of the spotlight services and sift through frames for specific data.

With Glue Tool’s Cineon/DPX Components:
Phantom Cine QuickTime Toolkit in conjunction with Glue Tool’s Cineon/DPX Pro Components, allows users to export a Phantom Cine movie as high quality dpx frames. The combination provides universal access of Phantom Cine footage to many industry-wide visual effects, editorial and color correction packages. In addition, all of the features of the Cineon/DPX Components will also be available such as adding Time Code, adding custom Metadata into the headers, Adjusting the Frame Rate and Exporting files out to film or have the footage color corrected at a DI faciity and then printed to film.

Important Notes about Phantom Cine File Format:
Vision Research has been in business for a number of years, building high speed digital cameras. As time has gone on, the camera capabilities have greatly improved. As a result, each generation of camera has required the Cine file format to expand and change. Vision Research’s more modern cameras create Cine movies that have a different image payload from the cameras that the company originally built several years ago. As a result, some legacy cameras create a movie file that is not supported with this software.

The Phantom Cine QuickTime Toolkit currently supports the following cameras: Phantom 65, Phantom HD, v10, v9x, Miro series, and v7x cameras. Earlier camera models are not supported. When the Phantom Cine QuickTime Toolkit is installed, you can do a “Get Info” on Cine file, and see which camera model created the Cine file.

The Phantom Cine QuickTime Toolkit will only open files with a “.cine” extension. Files with a “.cin” extension will be confused with the Cineon file format. If you can’t open your Phantom Cine files, check to see that the extension is set properly.

Exporting a New Movie from QuickTime Player:
For the ease of portability with other users, you can quickly and easily convert a Phantom Cine Movie to any other QuickTime Movie format. You can do this by opening a Phantom Cine Movie using QuickTime Player, and then selecting the “File->Export...”. Select your codec, location and filename as you would with any other movie, and start the export. It is that easy.

Importing a Sequence into Final Cut Pro:
Final Cut Pro will treat Phantom Cine Movies exactly the same way it treats other QuickTime Movies. To import a Phantom Cine Movie, select the “File->Import->Glue Tools Phantom Cine Import...” menu item, and locate and click on your movie. Your movie will now appear in the browser. If a Time Code track is enabled, it will be attached to the movie as well.

Additional Features

• Provides user customizable time code track


• Allows the user to choose from one of several debayer algorithms


• Allows the user to use ITU-R BT.709-5 gamma or LOG 90 gamma


• User can provide their own XYZ color transform matrix or use the built in ones

Controls Include:

• Can adjust white and black levels


• Time code burn in


• Auto-Detect presets for camera models


• Adjust Frame rate to several different popular frame rates


• Universal binaries for Intel and PowerPC

Customer Feedback
“Phantom Cine is awesome! Now with one touch playback of the .Cine files from the Vision Research Phantom, I have the ability to see and playback the camera native files directly within AfterEffects and Quicktime. Your tool has mind numbingly simplified the workflow for acquisition with this amazing addition to my Production tool kit.”
Gary Adcock, HD and Film Consultant
Studio 37, Chicago, IL