Transcoding to Cineform seems to reduce quality

[Offbeat Bryce Productions]

If I maximize the preview window in premiere of the program window to 400 percent and have the transcoded clip above the native .mp4 clip the cineform clip is actually slightly reduced. Like the hand of someone will be more blurry than the native clip. I can notice this by using pressing the eye viewer button to bounce back and forth between the two video tracks. Is this normal? I have transcoded a .mp4 native clip to Cineform quality 4 which is filmscan21and it's slightly blurry if you zoom in at 400 percent compared the native clip. If I transcode to cineform 5 which is the highest quality and maximum setting it does not cause any form of blur.

Is this supposed to happen? If Cineform retains quality why would it be slightly reduced after transcoding?

my .mp4 native clips are in 1080p HD and my cineform settings are 10 bit at quality 4

If it's normal for the clips to be slightly reduced then why would I ever want to transcode?

[Jim_Simon]

My recommendation is to use Cineform proxies.  They will make editing a LOT smoother, but the originals will be used for final export.

Work offline using proxy media |

[Offbeat Bryce Productions]

good idea. I manged to just now create a SD cineform proxy that's really small files to put on a 1TB SSD

[Meg The Dog]

Remember my first question to you:

Are you confident that when you did the transcode you did not alter the pixel dimensions, pixel aspect ratio, field dominance or add frame blending or other modification to the transcode?

MtD