The 12 bit sensor data is effectively saved to the CineMag® in a 10 bit packed format. Since unpacking does not improve image quality (see Phantom® Flex4K® manual, page 35), PHANTOMfuse currently only processes .cine files in its packed file format.

12 bit / unpacked downloads are on the roadmap but we highly recommend to use the standard packed workflow. All we or every other software can do is to apply the inverse function of what was applied in the camera to reduce to 10bit. This will be done via a lookup table provided by Vision Research. Every software opening a packed .cine file will do exactly the same. It will even be faster to open and transcode because of the smaller file sizes. If we do it at download time you just have to handle bigger files with exactly zero added value. This will only slow down the transfer speeds and increase the needed storage space.

In the early days of Phantom cameras, downloading unpacked .cine files was the only way to fix dead pixels. This might be the reason why some post houses still demand the unpacked files. As PHANTOMfuse does fix them in the packed format too, this is not needed anymore.