Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Rumors that Apple will drop H.264 for wavelet based codec and will support 4K

ImMix

ImMix

Yes VideoCube was a very nice integrated workstation, and its wavelet video compression was very good.

Ex GVG engineers and sister company to Abekas, whom they later merged with to create Scitex Digital Video.
 
Stuart English said:
Yes VideoCube was a very nice integrated workstation, and its wavelet video compression was very good.

Ex GVG engineers and sister company to Abekas, whom they later merged with to create Scitex Digital Video.
Click to expand...

Feels good that more that I remember ouer tech history :)
 
This sound about right. Since Apple have so many iTunes installed world around (no need to sell blurayplayers) and needs to lower The bandwith on movierentals in iTunes to be able to stream them. If Red can do 4k at 10-12 mbit i bet Apple can do HD at 1/4th of that, so about 3mbit (streamable). Nice for HD 1920x1080p. Off course final cut and compressor will have this codec for export. But the main use for this is iTunes rentals on a grand scale.The licensecost of h264 is probably alot and bluray like Steve Jobs says is a bag of hurt. Cheaper to develop your own codec when so many users aready have your gear (iPhone, iPods, iPads, mac, itunes on pc...) for playback.
 
Forgot: adding to this the development of iTunes extra. Movies delivered as webpackages playable on all Apple devices. Apple is getting serious about this. Just getting all the technology ready before releasing it in full. I would like to see a future app like a combination of Dvd Studio pro and iweb where you can create menus, add Video och package everything in itunes extra format. Would be great for sending of to clients and just mit be playable in any webkit browser.
 
Christian Berg said:
This sound about right. Since Apple have so many iTunes installed world around (no need to sell blurayplayers) and needs to lower The bandwith on movierentals in iTunes to be able to stream them. If Red can do 4k at 10-12 mbit i bet Apple can do HD at 1/4th of that, so about 3mbit (streamable). Nice for HD 1920x1080p. Off course final cut and compressor will have this codec for export. But the main use for this is iTunes rentals on a grand scale.The licensecost of h264 is probably alot and bluray like Steve Jobs says is a bag of hurt. Cheaper to develop your own codec when so many users aready have your gear (iPhone, iPods, iPads, mac, itunes on pc...) for playback.
Click to expand...

That's the way I see it too. They clearly have a plan to move into movie/tv distribution in a big way with their new 500,000 sq. ft. data center in north carolina. and a more efficient/no license fee codec would make a lot of sense.
 
Jonathan Stevenson said:
Honestly, I just don't believe this. Apple clearly doesn't have much of an interest in the Pro market anymore, and H.264 has been their flagship codec since iPods could play video. They'd be silly to just dump it. I don't know, I hope that Apple will do something to restore my faith in them, but it's looking more unlikely every day.
Click to expand...

It is a curious and certainly arguable contention that "Apple clearly doesn't have much of an interest in the Pro market anymore...". I am as frustrated as anyone that they haven't updated their Mac Pros and Final Cut Studio as quickly as I'd like but I don't buy the idea that they will abandon either platform. Apple never telegraphs their moves which can be frustrating, but Final Cut is a market-leading application and an important strategic one. There is adequate information around to suggest they will continue to value it highly - and they should. It is popular to suggest that Apple only cares about "iToys" but I think it is short sighted to believe that they "can't walk and chew gum at the same time."

Generally, Apple and RED have different markets but there is one significant overlap - that of pro video. FCP is has 1.5 millions seats and counting, and they are the dominant platform for RED ONE post. I also happen to know (and I doubt it is a secret) that they use and love RED internally at Apple (last I knew, they owned two RED ONEs). It seems to me that a strategic partnership (or two) in this area would be a big win for both companies. And somehow, I see Jim and Steve as the kind of guys would are worthy of playing in the same sandbox. :thumbsup:
 
Christian Berg said:
If Red can do 4k at 10-12 mbit i bet Apple can do HD at 1/4th of that, so about 3mbit (streamable).
Click to expand...

In my experience codec efficiency isn't linear with resolution. The larger the resolution, the more efficient your codec becomes (per pixel), probably due to there being more similar pixels near each other. So if RED is doing 4K at 10-12 mbit (which isn't all that unreasonable since we do a lot of H.264 1080p stuff at 3-4 mbit), then dropping the total number of pixels by 4X doesn't directly mean to you can drop the bitrate by the same amount and get the same quality picture. More like half (around 6mbps) I'd say.

So a new codec doing 5-6mbps at 1080p at near lossless quality seems pretty realistic to me. However if this codec can do 1080p in the 2-3mbps range, at near lossless quality, then I'll be impressed.

Aren't ProRes & JPEG2000 wavelet based as well? My guess is that REDRAY REDCODE is basically just ProRes-like wavelets plus inter-frame compression.
 
Terry VerHaar said:
It is a curious and certainly arguable contention that "Apple clearly doesn't have much of an interest in the Pro market anymore...". I am as frustrated as anyone that they haven't updated their Mac Pros and Final Cut Studio as quickly as I'd like but I don't buy the idea that they will abandon either platform. Apple never telegraphs their moves which can be frustrating, but Final Cut is a market-leading application and an important strategic one. There is adequate information around to suggest they will continue to value it highly - and they should. It is popular to suggest that Apple only cares about "iToys" but I think it is short sighted to believe that they "can't walk and chew gum at the same time."

Generally, Apple and RED have different markets but there is one significant overlap - that of pro video. FCP is has 1.5 millions seats and counting, and they are the dominant platform for RED ONE post. I also happen to know (and I doubt it is a secret) that they use and love RED internally at Apple (last I knew, they owned two RED ONEs). It seems to me that a strategic partnership (or two) in this area would be a big win for both companies. And somehow, I see Jim and Steve as the kind of guys would are worthy of playing in the same sandbox. :thumbsup:
Click to expand...

Well said Terry.
 
AFAIK ProRes is not wavelet-based, but JPEG2000 is.
 
Jeremy Neish said:
In my experience codec efficiency isn't linear with resolution. The larger the resolution, the more efficient your codec becomes (per pixel), probably due to there being more similar pixels near each other. So if RED is doing 4K at 10-12 mbit (which isn't all that unreasonable since we do a lot of H.264 1080p stuff at 3-4 mbit), then dropping the total number of pixels by 4X doesn't directly mean to you can drop the bitrate by the same amount and get the same quality picture. More like half (around 6mbps) I'd say.

So a new codec doing 5-6mbps at 1080p at near lossless quality seems pretty realistic to me. However if this codec can do 1080p in the 2-3mbps range, at near lossless quality, then I'll be impressed.

Aren't ProRes & JPEG2000 wavelet based as well? My guess is that REDRAY REDCODE is basically just ProRes-like wavelets plus inter-frame compression.
Click to expand...

Comparing REDRAY to 4mbit H264 streaming is different universes, Redray is not a rehash of an existing codec, its mindblowing quality and scary bit rates.
Check out some of the redray posts and you'll get a better feel for it.
 
Emery Wells said:
The odds are in that favor but a RED/Apple partnership on something like this would be absolutely brilliant. The 4k REDRAY delivery codec that Graeme is working on is nothing short of magic. 4K Apple TV would really set it apart from the competition. You get Apple and Google onboard for something like that and you have near instant adoption overnight. It's sure as hell not going to be traditional media companies pushing 4K to the home. How long did it take to get decent HD content into homes? Oh yea, FOREVER.

RED has had a much broader plan for 4K in the home since the very beginning. The REDRAY consumer device seems to have been pushed to the back burner. Perhaps because it will show up in another form from another company.
Click to expand...

It would certainly make solid business sense - especially if Red got a licensing fee for every RedRay codec device sold! And Apple/Google get a great working scaleable codec.
 
ericyoung said:
And Apple/Google get a great working scaleable codec.
Click to expand...

Of course, there is one little issue. Apple and Google are somewhat at odds these days. And Google bought On2 to acquire their codec technology. Doesn't exactly win favors with Apple.

- Oliver
 
Personal grudges affect very little in the google vs apple world. If apple introduces a codec that is made common by sheer numbers and is efficient, google will take it up. Look at h.264, its not like google dropped them simply because they don't want it.
 
Hello,

I mentioned in it another thread, but this one is more active; when I worked at NeXT Computer (1991-1992) they introduced their own video player called NeXTime. The codec they created was based on wavelets.

I remember Steve showing it at the end of the keynote for NeXTWorld in 1993. He played an encoded death star trench sequence through a NeXTdimension and projected it onto the screen after the keynote (Concurrence! .. similar to Apple's Keynote.. miss that one).

I used it for a bit on a NeXTdimension I had at the time but I don't remember much because it was during the period that the black hardware was discontinued and in came NeXTstep-486. Sigh.

Maybe Apple has some stuff left over from the purchase of NeXT and dusted off some old work. Probably a few patents on something at least.

Interesting rumor!

ATF
 
Ian Laurie said:
If apple introduces a codec that is made common by sheer numbers and is efficient, google will take it up.
Click to expand...

Obviously, this depends primarily on the eventual iPhone vs. Droid market share numbers.

- Oliver
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top