I'm wondering how long it will take to see this technology integrated into a consumer device such as the Apple TV. Live HD Recording and compression, seems good to me!
The point of this codec is for editing, it is not meant for Apple TV.
I think with some dedicated H.264 chips we could probably record that in real time, not quite sure on the cost of those right now though.
plus lossless is lossless. there isn't anything like "truly" lossless.
Is a Supersonic Jet truly Supersonic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by paprochy
Yes and Yes.
It means what it says. A supersonic jet, really is supersonic, in other words, it flies faster than the speed of sound.
Lossless compression is just that, something that compresses an image without destroying any image data. For example LZW compression in TIFF, it shrinks the filesize but no essential data about the image is lost leaving the image looking exactly as it did when it was RAW or Vector.
I'm not saying that ProRes422 is lossless. I just don't agree with your analogy. Makes no sense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chucker
The distinction between lossless compression and lossy compression is actually very clear, unambiguous and simple.
Apparently no one caught his original point, "lossless" is "lossless". The use of the word "truly" is completely unnecessary and unrequired. You can't say you're 'lossless' and then actually lose data, just like you can't be 'sort of' pregnant. So, to say "truly" lossless implies that it might be 'kind of' lossless, maybe just losing 'some' bits.
Apparently no one caught his original point, "lossless" is "lossless". The use of the word "truly" is completely unnecessary and unrequired. You can't say you're 'lossless' and then actually lose data, just like you can't be 'sort of' pregnant. So, to say "truly" lossless implies that it might be 'kind of' lossless, maybe just losing 'some' bits.
That's all he was saying.
Reminds me of the Apple Lossless audio codec.. that's a strange one. Is it lossless or is it not?
ProRes422 is 'visually lossless'. Which basically means you can't see any difference when using the HQ (10 bit) codec. It remains to be seen what this means in practice but there wouldn't be a lot of point if it didn't work. Its clear that it is to be used through the entire VFX and colour timing chain and then converted, if required, back to 10bit HD via software or hardware (AJA).
Apple mentioned 4k but didn't push it for a number of reasons. I suspect support at this time is minimal and that frankly nobody is actually asking for it. Its a necessary buzzword but its not a real requirement just yet. I know 'Color' doesn't support 4K and Motion 3 probably doesn't either.
There is a misconception about the RED compression. RED have achieved great compression ratios (Graham Natrass is a genius) because they are using wavelet compression on the RAW info from their Bayer style chip. This data is not usable in this form, it has to be converted to another format (any QT codec) using the software that they supply. Apple are going to be offering a native REDCODE codec (real time RED RAW Bayer de-mosaicing) for Final Cut Pro but it is not ready yet, and I suspect that this was the only justification the Apple had for mentioning 4k at all! There are no 4k monitors and only one projector (Sony).
When all those RED cameras hit the streets over the next year, 4k RAW compressed will be an ideal acquisition and archive format with 2k being an excellent and practical desktop workflow.
That's interesting. I thought about Pixlet when Apple presented ProRes 422 and I kept wondering why didn't Pixlet take off. When it was presented, Pixlet was supposed to be so promising... For some reason, it probably wasn't, but I don't have the expertise to understand why.
Would you care to expand on what made Pixlet so horrible ?
Personally I thought it was fine when used at 100%. It was never intended as an editing format and was never promoted as such. It was a wavelet based compression developed in house by Pixar (hence the name) and I think it was thrown into QT simply because they could. I don't know anybody that took any notice of it and I don't think it is related to ProRes422 in any way.
So, I take it this opens up some options for those working on external FW800 drives? Right now, I can edit up to XDCAMHD 35, and even uncompressed 10bit SD (though I'm sure I'd loose frames on a long tape output; but I don't master here at my office.). Looking at that chart, it looks like you could edit standard Prores 422 at up to 1280x720 29.97, but they're talking about not needing RAIDS anymore. Am I reading this right?
So, I take it this opens up some options for those working on external FW800 drives? Right now, I can edit up to XDCAMHD 35, and even uncompressed 10bit SD (though I'm sure I'd loose frames on a long tape output; but I don't master here at my office.). Looking at that chart, it looks like you could edit standard Prores 422 at up to 1280x720 29.97, but they're talking about not needing RAIDS anymore. Am I reading this right?
Over FW800 a single stream of PreRes422 at up to 1080 29.97 is no problem. You could probably get two streams. Certainly a viable capture and playback scenario. For editing several streams you would need to move to a simple raid of internal or external SATA drives. There are ExpressCard SATA interfaces that work extremely well with ProBooks.
Reminds me of the Apple Lossless audio codec.. that's a strange one. Is it lossless or is it not?
To truly be called "lossless" a codec needs to be able to compresses and then decompress back to the orginal state without losing bits. Apple Lossless Audio can compress a file and then decompress back to a bit-for-bit duplicate of the orginal file.
Pixlet was meant to view "Daylies" without showing compression artifacts in the frame. Think about it you need a codec that doesn't give you a false impression of what you've recorded and Pixlet is that codec. It's not meant for final distribution. Apple kind of misrepresented what Pixlet really is and does. ProRes 422 is an editing codec which means it's full of I frames that make frame accurate editing a joy. It doesn't mean that it's going to look any better than AVC/h.264 is once distributed as packaged media.
Over FW800 a single stream of PreRes422 at up to 1080 29.97 is no problem. You could probably get two streams. Certainly a viable capture and playback scenario. For editing several streams you would need to move to a simple raid of internal or external SATA drives. There are ExpressCard SATA interfaces that work extremely well with ProBooks.
Hold on. You mean the HQ setting? that's 220Mbps. I thought FW800 maxed out at around 90Mbps...
220 Mbps vs 90 MBps. That's an eightfold difference. 90MBps equals 720 Mbps. To put it another way, 220 Mbps equals 27.5 MBps.
You're mixing up Bytes with bits.
Son of a bitch. I'd mixed those up before. I'm very happy to be mistaken on this. So, basically the entire gammit of the Prores422 is open to Firewire800 users. That's pretty exciting, and I'd imagine at this kind of compression, one might even be able to work with 2K media, 4K would probably be pusing it.
Son of a bitch. I'd mixed those up before. I'm very happy to be mistaken on this. So, basically the entire gammit of the Prores422 is open to Firewire800 users. That's pretty exciting, and I'd imagine at this kind of compression, one might even be able to work with 2K media, 4K would probably be pusing it.
2K would be fine in theory, though Apple aren't saying that yet. 4K at 24fps might be doable but I think NAB 2008 will '4K workflow NAB'
2K would be fine in theory, though Apple aren't saying that yet. 4K at 24fps might be doable but I think NAB 2008 will '4K workflow NAB'
Yeah that sounds about right. I think next year we'll have 4k support and quite honestly I don't expect "good" support (meaning ..non whimpering computers when working on 4k) until some time in 2009 with the successor to Leopard. My hunch is that working on 4k is going to take something along the lines of a 16-core Nehalem system with a software engine to match.
Apple has really busted ass on QTKit which is now the way to deliver Quicktime functionality in 64-bit but you can only get so much done. The QTKit in 10.6 will have yet another couple of years of developmental maturation.
I'd love to see a roadmap of what Apple plans for Quicktime. Pretty soon blowing 4k video through the computer will be relatively easy but here are some big hurdles to jump before we get there. I guess PCI Express 2.0 an 600MBps SATA 3 should help along with a fast filesystem (ZFS perhaps).
ProRes was my favorite news of NAB, well, that, Color, Motion 3, and Final Cut Server. OK, so it was a good NAB.
But really, ProRes HQ in theory turns all of the SANs I've sold to my clients, that were engineered for a single stream of uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 HD, into 5-6 stream SANs. Instantly, with no re-engineering. And of course now they'll be able to hold 5-6 times as much footage. This is HUGE, and will make my clients very happy.
It also brings the price of doing very high-quality HD post waaaay down, to the point where I'd say this development will actually help more facilities offer HD post services, thus accelerating the adoption of HD in the broadcast industry.
Gosh, this kicks the crap out of posting "online" in DVCPROHD so much, it hurts. And don't even think about posting in HDV ever again. Or frankly any other format, for 95% of all users (assuming ProRes lives up tot he hype, which I assume it will.) FULL RASTER PEOPLE! 10-bit at ~220mbps?! 4:2:2 chroma sampling?! My gosh it's a good day for Final Cut users (and VARs, hah!)
Gosh, this kicks the crap out of posting "online" in DVCPROHD so much, it hurts. And don't even think about posting in HDV ever again. Or frankly any other format, for 95% of all users (assuming ProRes lives up tot he hype, which I assume it will.) FULL RASTER PEOPLE! 10-bit at ~220mbps?! 4:2:2 chroma sampling?! My gosh it's a good day for Final Cut users (and VARs, hah!)
Nicky..nice read.
Could you explain to me the benefits of full raster video. I can't get my head around the features/benefits of this. I'm glad to see ProRes supports square pixels and 422 color sampling but how does full raster improve my quality? Thanks in advance.
Could you explain to me the benefits of full raster video. I can't get my head around the features/benefits of this. I'm glad to see ProRes supports square pixels and 422 color sampling but how does full raster improve my quality? Thanks in advance.
I think full raster is as opposed to editing with a lower quality proxy (?) so the computer edits quicker. Once it is done, then you bring in the full size video to do a final render. I've never done that though.
Comments
I'm wondering how long it will take to see this technology integrated into a consumer device such as the Apple TV. Live HD Recording and compression, seems good to me!
The point of this codec is for editing, it is not meant for Apple TV.
I think with some dedicated H.264 chips we could probably record that in real time, not quite sure on the cost of those right now though.
Does it say anywhere thats its a lossless codec?
Why are people assuming thats its lossless
plus lossless is lossless. there isn't anything like "truly" lossless.
Is a Supersonic Jet truly Supersonic.
Yes and Yes.
It means what it says. A supersonic jet, really is supersonic, in other words, it flies faster than the speed of sound.
Lossless compression is just that, something that compresses an image without destroying any image data. For example LZW compression in TIFF, it shrinks the filesize but no essential data about the image is lost leaving the image looking exactly as it did when it was RAW or Vector.
I'm not saying that ProRes422 is lossless. I just don't agree with your analogy. Makes no sense.
The distinction between lossless compression and lossy compression is actually very clear, unambiguous and simple.
Apparently no one caught his original point, "lossless" is "lossless". The use of the word "truly" is completely unnecessary and unrequired. You can't say you're 'lossless' and then actually lose data, just like you can't be 'sort of' pregnant. So, to say "truly" lossless implies that it might be 'kind of' lossless, maybe just losing 'some' bits.
That's all he was saying.
Apparently no one caught his original point, "lossless" is "lossless". The use of the word "truly" is completely unnecessary and unrequired. You can't say you're 'lossless' and then actually lose data, just like you can't be 'sort of' pregnant. So, to say "truly" lossless implies that it might be 'kind of' lossless, maybe just losing 'some' bits.
That's all he was saying.
Reminds me of the Apple Lossless audio codec.. that's a strange one. Is it lossless or is it not?
ProRes422 is 'visually lossless'. Which basically means you can't see any difference when using the HQ (10 bit) codec. It remains to be seen what this means in practice but there wouldn't be a lot of point if it didn't work. Its clear that it is to be used through the entire VFX and colour timing chain and then converted, if required, back to 10bit HD via software or hardware (AJA).
Apple mentioned 4k but didn't push it for a number of reasons. I suspect support at this time is minimal and that frankly nobody is actually asking for it. Its a necessary buzzword but its not a real requirement just yet. I know 'Color' doesn't support 4K and Motion 3 probably doesn't either.
There is a misconception about the RED compression. RED have achieved great compression ratios (Graham Natrass is a genius) because they are using wavelet compression on the RAW info from their Bayer style chip. This data is not usable in this form, it has to be converted to another format (any QT codec) using the software that they supply. Apple are going to be offering a native REDCODE codec (real time RED RAW Bayer de-mosaicing) for Final Cut Pro but it is not ready yet, and I suspect that this was the only justification the Apple had for mentioning 4k at all! There are no 4k monitors and only one projector (Sony).
When all those RED cameras hit the streets over the next year, 4k RAW compressed will be an ideal acquisition and archive format with 2k being an excellent and practical desktop workflow.
Right.
Reminds me of the Apple Lossless audio codec.. that's a strange one. Is it lossless or is it not?
Yes, it is.
Lossles codec's can give about 50% compression, some a bit better, some a bit worse.
It's similar to what is done with Zip and Stuffit. Both are lossless, and both deliver about 50%.
That's interesting. I thought about Pixlet when Apple presented ProRes 422 and I kept wondering why didn't Pixlet take off. When it was presented, Pixlet was supposed to be so promising... For some reason, it probably wasn't, but I don't have the expertise to understand why.
Would you care to expand on what made Pixlet so horrible ?
Personally I thought it was fine when used at 100%. It was never intended as an editing format and was never promoted as such. It was a wavelet based compression developed in house by Pixar (hence the name) and I think it was thrown into QT simply because they could. I don't know anybody that took any notice of it and I don't think it is related to ProRes422 in any way.
So, I take it this opens up some options for those working on external FW800 drives? Right now, I can edit up to XDCAMHD 35, and even uncompressed 10bit SD (though I'm sure I'd loose frames on a long tape output; but I don't master here at my office.). Looking at that chart, it looks like you could edit standard Prores 422 at up to 1280x720 29.97, but they're talking about not needing RAIDS anymore. Am I reading this right?
Over FW800 a single stream of PreRes422 at up to 1080 29.97 is no problem. You could probably get two streams. Certainly a viable capture and playback scenario. For editing several streams you would need to move to a simple raid of internal or external SATA drives. There are ExpressCard SATA interfaces that work extremely well with ProBooks.
Reminds me of the Apple Lossless audio codec.. that's a strange one. Is it lossless or is it not?
To truly be called "lossless" a codec needs to be able to compresses and then decompress back to the orginal state without losing bits. Apple Lossless Audio can compress a file and then decompress back to a bit-for-bit duplicate of the orginal file.
Pixlet was meant to view "Daylies" without showing compression artifacts in the frame. Think about it you need a codec that doesn't give you a false impression of what you've recorded and Pixlet is that codec. It's not meant for final distribution. Apple kind of misrepresented what Pixlet really is and does. ProRes 422 is an editing codec which means it's full of I frames that make frame accurate editing a joy. It doesn't mean that it's going to look any better than AVC/h.264 is once distributed as packaged media.
Over FW800 a single stream of PreRes422 at up to 1080 29.97 is no problem. You could probably get two streams. Certainly a viable capture and playback scenario. For editing several streams you would need to move to a simple raid of internal or external SATA drives. There are ExpressCard SATA interfaces that work extremely well with ProBooks.
Hold on. You mean the HQ setting? that's 220Mbps. I thought FW800 maxed out at around 90Mbps...
Hold on. You mean the HQ setting? that's 220Mbps. I thought FW800 maxed out at around 90Mbps...
220 Mbps vs 90 MBps. That's an eightfold difference. 90MBps equals 720 Mbps. To put it another way, 220 Mbps equals 27.5 MBps.
You're mixing up Bytes with bits.
Is a Supersonic Jet truly Supersonic.
Yes, unless it is really Superdupersonic.
220 Mbps vs 90 MBps. That's an eightfold difference. 90MBps equals 720 Mbps. To put it another way, 220 Mbps equals 27.5 MBps.
You're mixing up Bytes with bits.
Son of a bitch. I'd mixed those up before. I'm very happy to be mistaken on this. So, basically the entire gammit of the Prores422 is open to Firewire800 users. That's pretty exciting, and I'd imagine at this kind of compression, one might even be able to work with 2K media, 4K would probably be pusing it.
Does it say anywhere thats its a lossless codec?
Why are people assuming thats its lossless
plus lossless is lossless. there isn't anything like "truly" lossless.
Is a Supersonic Jet truly Supersonic.
Zip is lossless.
Son of a bitch. I'd mixed those up before. I'm very happy to be mistaken on this. So, basically the entire gammit of the Prores422 is open to Firewire800 users. That's pretty exciting, and I'd imagine at this kind of compression, one might even be able to work with 2K media, 4K would probably be pusing it.
2K would be fine in theory, though Apple aren't saying that yet. 4K at 24fps might be doable but I think NAB 2008 will '4K workflow NAB'
2K would be fine in theory, though Apple aren't saying that yet. 4K at 24fps might be doable but I think NAB 2008 will '4K workflow NAB'
Yeah that sounds about right. I think next year we'll have 4k support and quite honestly I don't expect "good" support (meaning ..non whimpering computers when working on 4k) until some time in 2009 with the successor to Leopard. My hunch is that working on 4k is going to take something along the lines of a 16-core Nehalem system with a software engine to match.
Apple has really busted ass on QTKit which is now the way to deliver Quicktime functionality in 64-bit but you can only get so much done. The QTKit in 10.6 will have yet another couple of years of developmental maturation.
I'd love to see a roadmap of what Apple plans for Quicktime. Pretty soon blowing 4k video through the computer will be relatively easy but here are some big hurdles to jump before we get there. I guess PCI Express 2.0 an 600MBps SATA 3 should help along with a fast filesystem (ZFS perhaps).
Zip is lossless.
But is it "truely" lossless?
<ducks & runs away
But really, ProRes HQ in theory turns all of the SANs I've sold to my clients, that were engineered for a single stream of uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 HD, into 5-6 stream SANs. Instantly, with no re-engineering. And of course now they'll be able to hold 5-6 times as much footage. This is HUGE, and will make my clients very happy.
It also brings the price of doing very high-quality HD post waaaay down, to the point where I'd say this development will actually help more facilities offer HD post services, thus accelerating the adoption of HD in the broadcast industry.
Gosh, this kicks the crap out of posting "online" in DVCPROHD so much, it hurts. And don't even think about posting in HDV ever again. Or frankly any other format, for 95% of all users (assuming ProRes lives up tot he hype, which I assume it will.) FULL RASTER PEOPLE! 10-bit at ~220mbps?! 4:2:2 chroma sampling?! My gosh it's a good day for Final Cut users (and VARs, hah!)
Gosh, this kicks the crap out of posting "online" in DVCPROHD so much, it hurts. And don't even think about posting in HDV ever again. Or frankly any other format, for 95% of all users (assuming ProRes lives up tot he hype, which I assume it will.) FULL RASTER PEOPLE! 10-bit at ~220mbps?! 4:2:2 chroma sampling?! My gosh it's a good day for Final Cut users (and VARs, hah!)
Nicky..nice read.
Could you explain to me the benefits of full raster video. I can't get my head around the features/benefits of this. I'm glad to see ProRes supports square pixels and 422 color sampling but how does full raster improve my quality? Thanks in advance.
Nicky..nice read.
Could you explain to me the benefits of full raster video. I can't get my head around the features/benefits of this. I'm glad to see ProRes supports square pixels and 422 color sampling but how does full raster improve my quality? Thanks in advance.
I think full raster is as opposed to editing with a lower quality proxy (?) so the computer edits quicker. Once it is done, then you bring in the full size video to do a final render. I've never done that though.