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).
With all that, I'm just wondering when Apple will support Express 2. There are many more adavatages to that than just speed.
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.
Hah! You got me there. I didn't understand the post at all. It was structured in a wierd way though, so I don't feel too stupid.
The problem is that if you want to do color adjustments (levels, curves, contrast, color balance etc) on compressed material most of the time you will spot the compression straight away. Brightening up a dark area that is compressed surely brings up visible compression artefacts. But doing the same on uncompressed material could provide a good result, depending on the source of the footage. Of course the best would be to have RAW footage or 16 bit footage. I don't even know if that's available. But refining a RAW still photo is like magic compared to refining a high quality TIFF image.
I usually work with 95% compressed Photo JPEG codec though. I think it's good enough. The fixed bit rate codecs usually doesn't cut it for me since I'm most of the time working with drawn animation.. I'm excited that ProRes is VBR.
But people and insiders and sources.. WE NEED PICTURES OF PRORES, not specs.. Anyone could present specs, but if it doesn't look and perform good (like Pixlet.. horrible horrible Pixlet) then it's just bogus.
the whitepaper stuff is important, sure, but what it comes down to is what it looks like and how it stands up with re-compression (for example, multiple renders/re-renders) and i think anyone that was at NAB this year can attest that the demonstration of this codec was impressive. They took the video clip that is the standard test for a new codec (lots of motion and fine detail) ran it through pro-res 10times and then split the screen with half pro-res half uncompressed and no one in the audience could tell where one ended and one began. It's a truly "visually lossless" codec and to add to what someone else said it kicks the a@@ of DVCPROHD, XDCAM, HDV or any other "prosumer" type HD codec. If you don't have the budget for uncompressed, this is the best way to do HD
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.
The full raster is the total visible and non visible pixel count vertical and Horizontal. So 1920 x 1080 in the HD world not 1440 x 720 etc
I'm attempting to convert parts of a library into prores for exactly the reasons that one would want to do such a thing. We only have so many computers on the fiber optic network so only so many editors can work with our uncompressed footage at any given point in time. So before i go running around doing 5 day conversions with compressor- i ran some tests with different codecs. Nearly every "lossless" codec when converted to prores gave me a brightness change. Some more dramatic than others. the worst that i saw being the apple animation.
Does anyone know why this is? Any quick fix beyond creating droplets for every different codec to adjust for this shift? Thanks.
I'm attempting to convert parts of a library into prores for exactly the reasons that one would want to do such a thing. We only have so many computers on the fiber optic network so only so many editors can work with our uncompressed footage at any given point in time. So before i go running around doing 5 day conversions with compressor- i ran some tests with different codecs. Nearly every "lossless" codec when converted to prores gave me a brightness change. Some more dramatic than others. the worst that i saw being the apple animation.
Does anyone know why this is? Any quick fix beyond creating droplets for every different codec to adjust for this shift? Thanks.
Do not convert it in software with compressor - play it through the HD SDI and then capture in ProRes HQ under final cut pro .... this will fix your color problem.
Comments
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).
With all that, I'm just wondering when Apple will support Express 2. There are many more adavatages to that than just speed.
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.
Hah! You got me there. I didn't understand the post at all. It was structured in a wierd way though, so I don't feel too stupid.
And I thought I was so clever
The problem is that if you want to do color adjustments (levels, curves, contrast, color balance etc) on compressed material most of the time you will spot the compression straight away. Brightening up a dark area that is compressed surely brings up visible compression artefacts. But doing the same on uncompressed material could provide a good result, depending on the source of the footage. Of course the best would be to have RAW footage or 16 bit footage. I don't even know if that's available. But refining a RAW still photo is like magic compared to refining a high quality TIFF image.
I usually work with 95% compressed Photo JPEG codec though. I think it's good enough. The fixed bit rate codecs usually doesn't cut it for me since I'm most of the time working with drawn animation.. I'm excited that ProRes is VBR.
But people and insiders and sources.. WE NEED PICTURES OF PRORES, not specs.. Anyone could present specs, but if it doesn't look and perform good (like Pixlet.. horrible horrible Pixlet) then it's just bogus.
the whitepaper stuff is important, sure, but what it comes down to is what it looks like and how it stands up with re-compression (for example, multiple renders/re-renders) and i think anyone that was at NAB this year can attest that the demonstration of this codec was impressive. They took the video clip that is the standard test for a new codec (lots of motion and fine detail) ran it through pro-res 10times and then split the screen with half pro-res half uncompressed and no one in the audience could tell where one ended and one began. It's a truly "visually lossless" codec and to add to what someone else said it kicks the a@@ of DVCPROHD, XDCAM, HDV or any other "prosumer" type HD codec. If you don't have the budget for uncompressed, this is the best way to do HD
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.
The full raster is the total visible and non visible pixel count vertical and Horizontal. So 1920 x 1080 in the HD world not 1440 x 720 etc
Does anyone know why this is? Any quick fix beyond creating droplets for every different codec to adjust for this shift? Thanks.
I'm attempting to convert parts of a library into prores for exactly the reasons that one would want to do such a thing. We only have so many computers on the fiber optic network so only so many editors can work with our uncompressed footage at any given point in time. So before i go running around doing 5 day conversions with compressor- i ran some tests with different codecs. Nearly every "lossless" codec when converted to prores gave me a brightness change. Some more dramatic than others. the worst that i saw being the apple animation.
Does anyone know why this is? Any quick fix beyond creating droplets for every different codec to adjust for this shift? Thanks.
Do not convert it in software with compressor - play it through the HD SDI and then capture in ProRes HQ under final cut pro .... this will fix your color problem.