The future of post....

[Bruce Allen]

Yes, that would solve a lot of problems.

Hope they're listening to your post!

Agree it'd help if Cineform lowered their prices a bit... of course they'd have to crack the Avid ice cube too for me to get totally on board ;)

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Blair S. Paulsen]

We have solid examples of modern codecs for clip based work in ProRes, DNxHD and Cineform. Apple and Avid have kept theirs behind the wall and Cineform has to charge something since its not bundled into a profitable product. Uncompressed HD (let alone 4K) and the popular frame based options, DPX and TIFF all carry significant storage expense and require expensive hardware to manage in real time. I feel Jay's frustration, it shouldn't be this hard, not in 2008.

In addition to the desire for a commonly available production industry codec I want to add my fervent request for a delivery codec that would be readily accepted by the major networks. Archiving could still be done to DLT/LTO/etc data tape for bonding/security.

I am not sure RedUser is really the forum for this rant but SMPTE, MPEG, JPEG, NAB or whomever could really make a difference by propagating a universal codec topology as Jay suggests.

[Jay A. Kelley]

I like the title of your post Blair.. Very clever!

Jay

[Clint Johnson]

Adobe has been awfully quiet about cinemaDNG since they announced it last April (link to release PDF) but it would seem that they want an open standard for cine camera workflow and have already shown one that works for still cameras with DNG. While it works well and is an open standard, DNG hasn't taken the still photography world by storm, probably because most of the post work is done by an individual and there isn't a great need for the image to "travel" as it is processed. With cinema, the post workflow usually has to go through several systems, operators and institutions so here a standard is far more important and I cinemaDNG is aimed at being that standard.

The problem I see is that while I believe most software vendors, including AVID, would have no problem building in support for it, Apple is a closed off company that does not play well with others and would probably pretend it doesn't exist or, if marketing demands it, they will say that they are working on it and will support it "real soon now". Apple knows what is best for their customers and that is Apple Quicktime.

[Jay A. Kelley]

I agree Clint, but with the choices out there, Apple could find itself writing FCP for iphone only someday.

Avid once thought it knew what was best for it's customers as well.

And look now..

Jay

[Brent J. Craig]

One of the great advantages of Adobe DNG for still photography is that it is an open source format and Adobe has positioned it as a future-proof way to archive digital photos.

It's 20 years from now. Nikon has been assimilated by Google and they have gone through 20 different forms of Nikon Raw. You have upgraded your computer 10 times and your operating system the same number. Do you really think you will be able to open those proprietary, encrypted Nikon NEF files you made way back in 2008? Will Photoshop still have access to the magical software black-box that Nikon gave them in 2008 to turn Nikon Raw into images?

Transcoding proprietary closed formats to lossless, open ones makes sense from a future-access point of view.

So... What is the best future-proof format for moving images? Will cinemaDNG retain all of the information recorded by our 4K, 5K, xK cameras?

[Clint Johnson]

So... What is the best future-proof format for moving images? Will cinemaDNG retain all of the information recorded by our 4K, 5K, xK cameras?

The DNG format goes up to 32 bit and I would expect cinemaDNG to match that. They also allow metadata to be recorded in a few different standards as well as allowing for custom and proprietary (ick) metadata to be added using "private tags, private IFDs, and/or a private MakerNote".

Adobe looks to covering the bases. There's also word that Red was one of the companies asked in by Adobe so hopefully the guys will help ensure that is a forward looking standard that will play well with whatever is bubbling away in the Red Lab.

[Thor Wixom]

How many people have really switched to Adobe from FCP for this reason? 20? 50? 100? Even if it's 200 people (way more than the number of regular posters to this forum,) that leaves over 900,800 FCP users, maybe 5000 of whom care, who will most likely wait it out for Apple to increase their R3D support.

Cinewalt,

FCP has about a million users, but Premiere has about 2 million. My source is the copy of Post magazine that I pullled out of my mailbox today.

I don't think Adobe is working with Red because they need the numbers... they're doing it as part of a long-term investment in the future.

Back to your regularly scheduled thread...

-Thor

[Jay A. Kelley]

Cinewalt,

FCP has about a million users, but Premiere has about 2 million. My source is the copy of Post magazine that I pullled out of my mailbox today.

I don't think Adobe is working with Red because they need the numbers... they're doing it as part of a long-term investment in the future.

Back to your regularly scheduled thread...

-Thor

Hey Thor,

I think they are doing it because it's what they do. They are the "android" of editing platforms.

:)

Jay

[Christopher Grant Harvey]

Cinewalt,

FCP has about a million users, but Premiere has about 2 million. My source is the copy of Post magazine that I pullled out of my mailbox today.

-Thor

Yip a lot of "prosumers" use Premiere Pro...