End of Discreet Cleaner on Mac

Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
According to this thread http://www.appleinsider.com/news.php?id=261, Discreet has halted the development of Discreet Cleaner for Macintosh.

Cleaner is an industry standard for compressing and converting video into a wide range of formats, and is widely used by video pro's.



What do you think ? Is this a great loss, or will other companies (Apple ?) jump into the gap and come up with a similar (and even better) program ?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 19
    der kopfder kopf Posts: 2,275member
    I don't see Apple jumping into this gap. They have never really shown much enthusiasm when it comes to supporting another's proprietary standards. No wma but m4a. No avi but mpeg4.
  • Reply 2 of 19
    giantgiant Posts: 6,041member
    You might want to check News Comments:



    http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...threadid=34811



    And discreet has been in flux for the past couple of years. They are becoming unpredictable on all platforms. Lucky for them that their products are still in high demand.
  • Reply 3 of 19
    wmfwmf Posts: 1,164member
    Apple already jumped into the gap: Compressor.
  • Reply 4 of 19
    leonisleonis Posts: 3,427member
    Compressor can't do Real Media, Windows Media....which many people find this the major drawback.



    To me, the lack of ability to export the sound file in MP3 is a big problem. In Cleaner I can choose to compress the file in Sorenson 3 for video and MP3 for audio tracks so that it's backward compatible with QuickTime 5 and keeping the file size small



    If using Compressor or QuickTime player to do the export I can do the same on video but not the audio. None of the audio compressor (execpt AAC) provided in Compressor and QTP can compress the audio track effectively so the final file size turns out to be super big because of the audio.
  • Reply 5 of 19
    We need Cleaner. Compressor is nice, but doesn't handle all the formats as already mentioned.



    If they stop producing Combustion for the Mac, we are in trouble. It is such a great program and it runs pretty well on even older Macs.



    My fear is that Adobe will quit making After Effects for the Mac, Discreet will quit making Combustion for the Mac, and all we will have is Shake for $5000.
  • Reply 6 of 19
    bigbluebigblue Posts: 341member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by buckeye

    We need Cleaner. Compressor is nice, but doesn't handle all the formats as already mentioned.



    If they stop producing Combustion for the Mac, we are in trouble. It is such a great program and it runs pretty well on even older Macs.



    My fear is that Adobe will quit making After Effects for the Mac, Discreet will quit making Combustion for the Mac, and all we will have is Shake for $5000.




    I don't think Adobe will end After Effects, it's still too popular on the Mac platform. It has a huge installer base and is still more 'accessable' (ie UI) than Combustion. I think that if Combustion ends, Apple will sell Shake a lot cheaper or will make a Shake Express for $999.



    Remains the issue of a Cleaner replacement. There's a fair demand, why wouldn't some firm make this kind of an app -no competition!- or - easy!- buy the source code from Discreet.

    Discreet makes good software, but is and always will be Windows-centric. It would be nice if (preferably) a Mac-centric company makes such an app (Bare Bones ? Alladin ? Apple ? ...)
  • Reply 7 of 19
    giantgiant Posts: 6,041member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by BigBlue

    Discreet makes good software, but is and always will be Windows-centric.



    Few of their products run on Windows.
  • Reply 8 of 19
    bigbluebigblue Posts: 341member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by giant

    Few of their products run on Windows.



    You got me on that one.

    Only about half of the products they make run on Windows. The high-end stuff runs on SGI.

    Remains the fact that they're not a Mac company. Only Cleaner and Combustion is Mac (and Windows).
  • Reply 9 of 19
    giantgiant Posts: 6,041member
    Discreet also recently phased out Edit, it's nice Windows based NLE that worked in conjuntion with Combustion. They have been having trouble for a while and always seems to be reorganizing. I think they will continue to sell cleaner so long as it is profitable, but with compressor out, they might decide to get off of the mac platform. I wouldn't worry about it too much, since it just means the Apple will have no choice but to expand Compressor to do everything Cleaner does. Apple might do that anyway if they believe the the loss of Cleaner on mac is imminent.



    It seems to me that Discreet is trying to stick to higher-end professional systems where they have a good customer base.
  • Reply 10 of 19
    bigbluebigblue Posts: 341member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by giant

    Discreet also recently phased out Edit, it's nice Windows based NLE that worked in conjuntion with Combustion. They have been having trouble for a while and always seems to be reorganizing. I think they will continue to sell cleaner so long as it is profitable, but with compressor out, they might decide to get off of the mac platform. I wouldn't worry about it too much, since it just means the Apple will have no choice but to expand Compressor to do everything Cleaner does. Apple might do that anyway if they believe the the loss of Cleaner on mac is imminent.



    It seems to me that Discreet is trying to stick to higher-end professional systems where they have a good customer base.




    Well, according to this rumor http://www.appleinsider.com/news.php?id=264, Apple is already in the talks with Autodesk, Discreets' parent company for Cleaner (Compressor), Combustion (Shake) and even 3DS MAX (???).

    Only the former two make sense, I doubt Apple will enter the 3D market and doubt if this rumor to be true. Besides, they have to rewrite the whole app, since it's Windows only.



    I think it's true that they will focus on their high-end software and dump the rest.
  • Reply 12 of 19
    spookyspooky Posts: 504member
    I'd love to see 3ds MAX on OSX!!!
  • Reply 13 of 19
    buckeyebuckeye Posts: 358member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by giant

    Discreet also recently phased out Edit, it's nice Windows based NLE that worked in conjuntion with Combustion.



    I think that is just because they have integrated a NLE timeline in to Combustion 3. Hopefully that and Back Burner will make it to the Mac platform before Discreet stops supporting the Mac, if these rumors are true.
  • Reply 14 of 19
    apple does the whole DV lifecycle. however, if there is NO solution for Mac DV people and content creators to deliver to Real, WMV and other popular cross platforms, content creators will have to go PC. they will be force to.



    either compressor needs to address its shortcomings, or apple decides to acquire cleaner or it faces a segment of creators move to PC. simple as that really.



    and compressor is still in early stages...no 2-pass VBR, no support for Sorenson 3 Pro (which is still tons better than mp4), etc etc.



    its workflow also needs improving for compressor which is only good for DVD compression right now IMHO.
  • Reply 15 of 19
    northgatenorthgate Posts: 4,461member
    After installing Compressor, I noticed that my Sorenson Pro codecs suddenly no longer work system wide. Cleaner and Quicktime no longer recognize the codec and ghost it out.



    Is this because of Compressor?
  • Reply 16 of 19
    tuttletuttle Posts: 301member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by spooky

    I'd love to see 3ds MAX on OSX!!!



    I assume the smiley was because you were joking.



    I hope.
  • Reply 17 of 19
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    He must be joking!
  • Reply 18 of 19
    leonisleonis Posts: 3,427member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Northgate

    After installing Compressor, I noticed that my Sorenson Pro codecs suddenly no longer work system wide. Cleaner and Quicktime no longer recognize the codec and ghost it out.



    Is this because of Compressor?




    it's QuickTime 6.4 and up has incompatibity with Sorenson. You need to download the v3.3 update from Sorenson's web site
  • Reply 19 of 19
    eat@meeat@me Posts: 321member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Leonis

    Compressor can't do Real Media, Windows Media....which many people find this the major drawback.



    To me, the lack of ability to export the sound file in MP3 is a big problem. In Cleaner I can choose to compress the file in Sorenson 3 for video and MP3 for audio tracks so that it's backward compatible with QuickTime 5 and keeping the file size small



    If using Compressor or QuickTime player to do the export I can do the same on video but not the audio. None of the audio compressor (execpt AAC) provided in Compressor and QTP can compress the audio track effectively so the final file size turns out to be super big because of the audio.




    Leonis,



    Still find Sorenson 3 Pro with 2-pass VBR produces the highest quality QT video hands down for any QT version incl 6.4-like you said. Compressor aint there yet and MPEG4 has no 2-pass/pre-process and you can notice results. Apple QT people even agree. It will get there but compressor is too early. Apple should acquire Cleaner for install base and then add Real to it or it should add the features in compressor soon. kind of limbo at the moment-neither here nor there.



    cleaner also has a nicer workflow but dont care for the UI that much. found compressor a little counter intutive but maybe that is beacuse i am used to cleaner batch workflow.



    having a dual 2ghz G5 with 2GB ram doesn't hurt either. :-) (it used to take all night to batch compress 4 years ago when G4 came out.
Sign In or Register to comment.