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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 :)

Life After ProRes?

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Ray Tragesser

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Since Final Cut has changed quite a bit with the new Final Cut X I thought it would be a good time to talk about life after ProRes. What does the Adobe Crystal ball see?

Here is what we know:

1) Arri Alexa is shooting straight to ProRes
2) AJA KI Pro and others are dedicated to ProRes
3) ProRes is only able to be written by MAC. Read only by PC
4) Cineform is an option. Not sure if the Mercury playback engine is fully compatible or benefits this work flow
5) Adobe CinemaDNG. Not really the same thing...but might spin off in some form that is Mercury playback engine compatible.

Any thoughts on a built in Adobe codec that is Read/Write across MAC and PC platforms that is in the same world as ProRes and Cineform?

Ray
 
Adobe Cinema DNG will become the standard format for RAW.
Aaton, Arri, Ikonscope and a very large Japanese company are onboard.
Not sure where that leaves RED.
 
DNxHD is free and cross-platform between Mac and Windows. It is fair to call it "Avid's ProRes".

There are some great lossless codecs on Windows, e.g. UT or Lagarith. Compression and speed similar to ProRes 4444, except there's no loss in quality. These codecs work on pretty much every software within Windows. Those are replacements for intermediates. For compressed deliverables, high bitrate X264 10-bit is the way to go. Using X264VfW, you can export X264 masters directly from Premiere Pro on Windows. Of course, X264 is compatible with virtually any OS.

Let's step back for a moment and consider why ProRes even exists - it is for proxies to enable editing on FCP for "uneditable" formats. In today's day and age, the whole concept of "transcoding" is obsolete, and hence, ProRes should be as well. How it has become a standard deliverable or a camera acquisition format endlessly baffles me.
 
Well I think there still is a need to transcode in certain situations. I have multiple systems that have Final Cut and Premiere Pro with and without hardware I/O cards. Premiere Pro works fantastic with all of the native workflow when there is no capture card. If I need a HD-SDI pipeline, then I can say that the performance I get running Premiere Pro through a capture card is vastly different. In that case I feel I get the best user performance transcoding into a common format. In fact sometimes that is the only way to get a job through. So I typically turn to ProRes.

Ideally what ever needs transcoded should be cross platform, MAC and PC. It would be very nice for Adobe to enter into this space and not have the end user install additional codecs for this purpose.
 
This is a critical area of need in the industry right now. File based deliverables may finally be palatable, especially after the SR tape scarcity wake up call.

Codec needs to be open source, high enough quality for deliverables at 1080P or i, manageable on most 2008 or newer computers, cross-platform, ...

The question is, who cares to develop such a thing for free?

Cheers - #19
 
This is a mess! All these acquisition tools using ProRes (KiPro, etc.) and here we all are talking about what to move to now!
 
Agree - Avid DNxHD seems pretty close. Also, it came before ProRes and was obviously the "inspiration" for ProRes...

- free Quicktime encoder & decoder for Win & Mac
- a SMPTE standard
- source code is available
- Sound Devices PIX can record to it (as well as ProRes - so maybe the other recorders can be re-configured for it)
- 10bit with alpha and (coming soon) 4:4:4 options
- compression ratios like ProRes
- no gamma issues

Only drawbacks are licensing fees if you want to write MXF files directly from commercial software. But what's wrong with DNxHD Quicktimes?

If anyone else wants to go and make a totally open-source one, great! Or Cineform could make their codecs cheaper, less confusing and better supported? But until then, Avid has the answer for me.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
DNxHD and with Media Composer 6 when it comes it's according to them resolution independent.
Plus you don't have to deal with gammashi(t)fts.

And it's open, not closed to one system like ProRes. Personally I have never understood why so many went ProRes when DNxHD is much better when speaking gamma and openness.
 
Christoffer Glans said:
And it's open, not closed to one system like ProRes. Personally I have never understood why so many went ProRes when DNxHD is much better when speaking gamma and openness.
Click to expand...

Well, one major reason is that to this point there is no DNxHD variant that is RGB (all DNx codecs are YUV, and therefore SMPTE scaled as well). Media Composer can work in RGB, but only by using uncompressed MXF. That's probably one of the main reasons Arri went the ProRes route.
 
Yes, there's no competition to ProRes 4444 on the DNxHD side. Also, it does not go beyond 1080p. Still, much of the standard deliverables has become ProRes 422 HQ - and that can easily be replaced with DNxHD 185.

It is still not clear off gamma shifts as it continues to use the MOV container.

Premiere Pro has a decent MPEG I-frame codec built-in. It is on par with DNxHD 36. Perhaps they could expand on this codec? AVC-Intra is also promising as a cross-platform standard. It was supposed to be expanded to 4:4:4 and 12-bit with AVC-Ultra. Whatever happened to that?
 
Subhadip Sen said:
DNxHD is free and cross-platform between Mac and Windows. It is fair to call it "Avid's ProRes".

There are some great lossless codecs on Windows, e.g. UT or Lagarith. Compression and speed similar to ProRes 4444, except there's no loss in quality. These codecs work on pretty much every software within Windows. Those are replacements for intermediates. For compressed deliverables, high bitrate X264 10-bit is the way to go. Using X264VfW, you can export X264 masters directly from Premiere Pro on Windows. Of course, X264 is compatible with virtually any OS.

Let's step back for a moment and consider why ProRes even exists - it is for proxies to enable editing on FCP for "uneditable" formats. In today's day and age, the whole concept of "transcoding" is obsolete, and hence, ProRes should be as well. How it has become a standard deliverable or a camera acquisition format endlessly baffles me.
Click to expand...

I would like to find an alternative to ProRes too. I tried to find an instal for Lagarith but only found windows installer. How do you istall lagarith on Mac ? Tht is the key : with ProRes, you don't even have to think at this kind of problem.


olivier
 
Subhadip Sen said:
Yes, there's no competition to ProRes 4444 on the DNxHD side. Also, it does not go beyond 1080p. Still, much of the standard deliverables has become ProRes 422 HQ - and that can easily be replaced with DNxHD 185.

It is still not clear off gamma shifts as it continues to use the MOV container.
Click to expand...

Only if you happen to put it in a Quicktime container, which is not its native wrapper in the first place. MXF files don't have that problem.

Going beyond 1920x1080 hasn't really been an issue, and if you consider that the primary purpose of ProRes direct recording is a quicker turnaround and simpler post path for television material (as it most definitely is for the Alexa) it's not something that's a pressing need. I have no doubt that Avid will become more resolution independent going forward (only the DS has that now), but for the moment, it's not really something that's held back acceptance of DNxHD.

As for standard deliverables, there are a few broadcast entities in the US that do take DNxHD MXF files as a deliverable. Not many at the moment, but there are a few. It should be kept in mind that the most common formats on broadcast servers (Omneon comes to mind) are GXF and MXF, GXF being a "subset" of MXF.
 
I think ProRes will be around a while yet. Id only think of it as one of the better codecs not the only codec.

Im more concerned about whats after QT containers, notwithstanding Apple sorting out Gamma shifts.

I like Cineform alot and wish there was much more uptake or it but that is not free or open either.
 
the mass use of codecs depends on a lot of factors. how many people have it readily accessible, ease of use, and of course quality. Pro res in my opinion became so popular because it looks good, any computer with quicktime installed can at least watch it (other codecs like xdcam, cineform, etc. you have d/l plugins or the codec itself, try telling a non computer savvy producer to do that, it can be pretty mind numbing sometimes) it encodes quickly and easily, it cuts like butter, for all intensive purposes it's very easy on your system requirements too. and other than the gamma issues, it can withstand generational loss pretty well, and yes the up to 4k resolution limit is nice too. and the advent of their 444 codec really sealed the deal.

i don't know about anybody else, but I've had really poor results bringing in a dnxhd quicktime into FCP, and now even Avid can take in pro res natively now, so we can really see who buckled and who won. I think Avid is gonna make some major headway the end of this year especially with coming out with a mastering codec. It's a lot of moving parts, and pro res was decided for a lot of reasons, and hell ppl still use dvcpro hd in broadcast. I think pro res is here to stay for awhile, and for all you know Apple may be expanding pro res even more, even though FCP-X is just imovie on a bad batch of steroids. Fact of the matter is nobody knows what Apple is gonna do, but they never sold their software to make a profit, they sold software to sell their hardware. If the new line of mac pro's turn out to be what I hear them rumored to be, Apple may just be gearing up for another tangent in their professional line, and maybe expanding pro res further with no resolution limits, up to 16 bit, and maybe even RAW support.

one can only hope. If I had it my way though, everybody and their mothers should be using cineform, it should be free open, and on every system...
 
M Most said:
Only if you happen to put it in a Quicktime container, which is not its native wrapper in the first place. MXF files don't have that problem.

Going beyond 1920x1080 hasn't really been an issue, and if you consider that the primary purpose of ProRes direct recording is a quicker turnaround and simpler post path for television material (as it most definitely is for the Alexa) it's not something that's a pressing need. I have no doubt that Avid will become more resolution independent going forward (only the DS has that now), but for the moment, it's not really something that's held back acceptance of DNxHD.

As for standard deliverables, there are a few broadcast entities in the US that do take DNxHD MXF files as a deliverable. Not many at the moment, but there are a few. It should be kept in mind that the most common formats on broadcast servers (Omneon comes to mind) are GXF and MXF, GXF being a "subset" of MXF.
Click to expand...

The problem with MXF and DNxHD is that only Avid MC can encode DNxHD MXFs, as far as I know. DNxHD that is interoperable between different platforms and software are Quicktime based. So, if I need to encode DNxHD from Premiere Pro, my only option is a MOV DNxHD. Of course, one could always extract the AVDn stream and re-mux into an MXF container, but that's an indirect method.

Which brings me onto why, oh why, is MOV a standard container????
 
Subhadip Sen said:
The problem with MXF and DNxHD is that only Avid MC can encode DNxHD MXFs, as far as I know. DNxHD that is interoperable between different platforms and software are Quicktime based. So, if I need to encode DNxHD from Premiere Pro, my only option is a MOV DNxHD. Of course, one could always extract the AVDn stream and re-mux into an MXF container, but that's an indirect method.

Which brings me onto why, oh why, is MOV a standard container????
Click to expand...

because pc's can open up .mov just fine, but mac's get weird when they try to open up avi's and other pc based containers? (pure conjecture)
 
Tom.Wong said:
because pc's can open up .mov just fine, but mac's get weird when they try to open up avi's and other pc based containers? (pure conjecture)
Click to expand...

.MOV doesn't work fine on any OS! Anyway, there are no shortage of containers - MXF, MCF, MKV, etc. etc.

But I suppose you have a point that the only container that works on FCP is MOV.
 
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