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  • 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 :)

How long till ProRes dies?

Brian Merlen said:
Can macs without FCP installed still encode prores? Speaking of its lack of openness...
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Yes. You just need the codecs installed. To get the codecs without FCP, you must download them (L Langer offers up a link). Purchasing the latest version of Compressor from the app store (US $50) is another great way to accomplish this. It gives you full QT support, including all ProRes codecs, and also provides a great encoder that is superior to other options (including Adobe Media Encoder) for some tasks. Compressor is the only Apple "Pro App" I keep on all my Macs.
 
Sweet, thanks so much Jeff and Langer! I was somewhat apprehensive to get rid of FCP7 because I was concerned I would lose my prores encoding abilities. Now that I know I won't need it I think I am going to be Avid/Adobe only going forward on my new machine. Going to grab resolve lite and perhaps compressor at some point
 
Haha, the thought of prores dying anytime soon is hilarious. The RED community's hate for the codec is logical, but I can't wait until the prores dsmc module comes out and then you all will praise it as the greatest thing ever.
 
Whatever my personal take is on the utility of ProRes some of the folks I work with hate it, primarily due to cross platform hassles, so it is not the universal answer.

I have not seen a 4K DNxHD variant and a quick cruise through the AVID website came up empty so that's an Epic fail ;-)

If only CineForm were well supported...

Cheers - #19
 
there IS a 444 dnxhd codec with avid nowadays, but it's not very wide spread at the moment. something with conflicts with Avid's SDK for it, and mostly the fact that they aren't releasing it to all the third parties as quickly as they should have. it would a great contender with pro res 444. except dnx is still only a 1080 codec. but being able to deliver in a master quality codec in dnx would be a great option if they'd finally open it up to a lot of other pieces of software that can take it in, and write it.

dnx isn't without its faults, but i think once they open up the resolution and the 444, pro res will wain. there's no real alternative on the horizon. and i think it kind of hit a critical point where these two codecs look so good, people may not really be looking for a alternative anymore.

before either codec we had to resort to uncompressed and or animation codec to maintain quality across the board. this is really one of those cases where "good enough" is really enough for the vast majority. but to me, both codecs add noise, and reduce sharpness even at highest quality. cineform did have it right, but it wasn't as streamlined as people thought. I know it crashed out my fcp more than once awhile back. plus for the price of JUST the codec they were selling it at, it really hurt them. they really had nothing else going for them other than the codec, while apple could package it with their software, and avid could let it out for free cause they were selling hardware and software. it allowed ppl to openly adopt it on either side.

i remember when cineform first hit the market, depending on which package you got, it cost over 2500 dollars. that's more expensive than the FCP suite. it's all about how you get it integrated. for a new codec to dominate, I think it would have to be very open and freely, and easily applied in existing NLE's that works flawlessly. so far nothing has come out that has done that since those two primaries.
 
L. Langer said:
Apple will make ProRes available to any third-party product maker who agrees to their licensing terms and companies have been adding it to their products over the past two years, including Windows-based solutions.
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That's promising but I know someone who is sitting waiting on Apple to just respond with any information about licensing. And they aren't a small dev team.
 
Scott Crawley said:
Well that marginalizes a whole lot of people, but it does nothing to predict the life span of a codec. It may be good to remember that the lion's share of Kodak's revenues came from consumer film sales. It was consumer photography that kept film alive, not professional production. If the same holds true for digital (edit: snip acquisition) formats then the state of FCP is largely irrelevant.
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That's exactly right. I think FCP will evolve healthily into a very vibrant consumer application, but I can't see it being taken seriously professionally any more.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Yes. You just need the codecs installed. To get the codecs without FCP, you must download them (L Langer offers up a link). Purchasing the latest version of Compressor from the app store (US $50) is another great way to accomplish this. It gives you full QT support, including all ProRes codecs, and also provides a great encoder that is superior to other options (including Adobe Media Encoder) for some tasks. Compressor is the only Apple "Pro App" I keep on all my Macs.
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I'm curious, when do you find compressor superior to AME? I've aways found Compressor to be horrible: weird unintuitive interface, incredibly slow when importing and applying a setting to a large number of clips, terrible at estimating how long renders will take, crashes, have to use QMaster to get it to use all your processing power, etc. The one advantage I've found is all the filters, I sometimes want timecode or sharpening in a transcode and its annoying to have to go into a timeline just to set that up. Just wondering.
 
Sam, it's true that Compressor is all those horrible things you listed. ;) But it still does a better job at creating MPEG2 output for DVDs when you have the right settings dialed in. It was also superior to AME for creating H.264 and video clips for BluRay prior to Adobe releasing CS6.
 
Sam Eilertsen said:
I'm curious, when do you find compressor superior to AME? I've aways found Compressor to be horrible: weird unintuitive interface, incredibly slow when importing and applying a setting to a large number of clips, terrible at estimating how long renders will take, crashes, have to use QMaster to get it to use all your processing power, etc. The one advantage I've found is all the filters, I sometimes want timecode or sharpening in a transcode and its annoying to have to go into a timeline just to set that up. Just wondering.
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I've had my problems with compressor in the past, especially past versions were for whatever reason one day it will decide it's not going to work anymore but I've never had problems with compressor crashing.
 
As a pc user there are/were many times I wished I could access properly. I had to ultimately buy a Mac to achieve prores. I'm still pc but have a Mac in case I get some prores file I can't open on pc. I have prayed for many years that apple would make it cross platform but alas.

Dnxhd to the rescue. Great looking codec!
 
As more and more people move to PC and Adobe for editing, that will simply increase the speed at which Prores loses market share. No codec that ignores PCs will survive in any meaningful way.
 
Tom Lowe said:
As more and more people move to PC and Adobe for editing, that will simply increase the speed at which Prores loses market share. No codec that ignores PCs will survive in any meaningful way.
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That is particularly true now that interest in FCP has softened and you can acquire ProRes as a part of a $50. software package. With a sense of irony I liken it to QuickTime.

Just a few years ago, (Eeek it was more than 20, wasn't it?) making QT a standard tool across platforms was a priority for Apple, so they got as many codecs into it as possible, quickly. As a result it seemed a requirement of adoption that QT supported your codec. For $30, QT Pro got you access to a boat load of codecs for your desktop or the device you were building. Licensing was encouraged and facilitated. With ProRes the opposite seemed true, at least in the beginning.

As a marketing scheme for an exclusive production package coupled with a fairly robust platform and dedication to development it made some sense to keep ProRes Mac only. With their consumer products success and apparently waining interest in Pro hardware and software it only makes sense to open the codec up and license it, alla QuickTime. Making Compressor a stand alone and inexpensive app positions it in the marketplace in a similar way, but limited to desktop use. I just wonder if Apple has any real interest in doing it.

It almost looks like a plan B for capitalizing their assets when and if Pro video apps were dissolved. I only state that however with the caveat that I think Apple is still standing behind FCP, at least for now. I don't think there will be a lot of patience for things like the roll-out debacle though. They need to get right quickly, or die. That is my sense anyway, FWIW
 
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Terry VerHaar said:
How long 'til this thread dies? lol
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Haha

I love me my Apples too Terry but you have to admit that things have been better and currently they aren't looking too good so far as the marketplace is concerned. FCP's foundation is strong, they are hitting it hard, and features are coming fast. That is where our hopes are pinned. I just begin to wonder how long a pared down development team can keep up the pace they have been on since the X launch. They have to be getting worn down.
 
Scott - I feel like sort of an audience in all this rather than a participant. We seem to have a lot of people who WANT ProRes to "die"simply because they don't (or don't want to) use it, but probably more importantly, so they can "prove" they were right. The "evidence" that it is dying is simply "I don't use it anymore and none of my friends use it anymore and no one I know uses it anymore..." and "Apple pisses me of bacuase )insert reason) so I won't use their products." As if they are taking polls on a daily basis as to who uses/likes what. I don't buy it.

Apple does care, they just see the evolution of the market differently. What's funny is that Apple blindsided the traditional industry "big boys" when they originally came with a low cost, high capability application in FCP. The "purists" stuck with Avid until it almost sunk them before (many) finally "saw the light" (lol) and swicthed to FCP. Finally, when Apple was the industry standard and, after several years, everyone was finally about to catch up, the folks in Cupertino, in typically Apple fashion, decided things should change again. And, as usual, the die-hards refuse to change. We'll see. Change is hard. Maybe it'll be deja vu all over agian or maybe the "Hollywood Boys" will be right and Apple will fade into the sunset.

I "get" that a lot of post houses and such need collaborative workflow systems and such and FCP-X may not be for them. All I care about is that enough people use it so Apple keeps working on it and I can keep using it. I don't worry about that because, among all of us "non-pros," (whatever that actually means), I believe there will be a huge demand. Call it consumer grade if you want, but I believe that a whole lot more economic activity is going to occur at the web content/indie film/corporate video level in the future, than in all of blockbuster Hollywood and traditional television combined. And FCP-X is hugely powerful for getting from camera to a solid finished product quickly. If you aren't chained to "old methods" (i.e. "who moved my cheese?; now I can't function) then I think it is possible to become extraordinarily fluid in FCP-X.

I know I'll never work "in Hollywood," nor would I want to. I like small collaborative workgroups and a sense of ownership for my projects. My model is still evolving and I like that. I see myself as making "content" and I expect to have multiple levels of distribution depending on the specifics of the project. I see a variety of monetization models and flexibility in business models that Hollywood doesn't currently embrace.

One thing is sure: the future will be different than the past - and I think the evolution will more closely resemble a revolution. Why anyone thinks the tools and workflow will remain relatively static is beyond me. I like change. I like a fresh approach. I like to try new tools and refine the way things are done. I like to experiment. Not everyone likes that stuff; nor can everyone afford the time to work that way. I think everyone should use the tools that work best for them. Sometimes, it is too bad when one gets so enamored with "the way they do it" that they don't try new stuff. But that's OK if they are happy. Do they risk missing out? Sure. But they also don't lose time to failed attempts. It's a tradeoff.

I hope we all have the choice of many great NLE's and production/post production tools so we can all do thinks exactly the way we want. I don't want to see the demise of any viable, solid option that contributes to the mix. I could rant on but, you get the idea. Long live Lightworks? LOL :smiley:
 
Oh come on Terry/Scott, even if prores dies we'll still find something to be mad at Apple for! Back to "I want a new Mac Pro" anyone?
 
I tried the above link to download the ProRes codec package and it won't install.

Why?

Well, I don't have FCP, Motion or Compressor so 'see ya later'. Thanks for nuthin' Apple...

And therein lies the issue. I don't want/need prores to DIE but I would like it if I could use said codec on my Mac (and PC for that matter).

I chose to move from Avid to Adobe CS due to it's integration primarily with AE & Premiere (& Photoshop). The reason I did not choose FCP was two fold, one I owned PC's and two the integration of apps was not there. I would like the option to encode Prores but I'm not going to buy it. DNxHD is every bit as good and it's FREE. I don't hate Apple but I recognize where they are headed and it ain't so much in our direction, so as a pro I need to make sure I invest in something that, for the foreseeable future, will give me a positive ROI.
 
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