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Is ProRes the big victim of FCPX?
I heard that at NAB, one could hear ProRes everywhere. Even Alexa is using it. So, that brings me up to my original question, is ProRes, as a format, going to be hurt by FCPX? I know Premiere doesn’t have an internal codec, and avid prefers Dnx. If a lot of the post production houses and networks change to a different NLE, are we going to loose the only possible viable substitute to tape?
What do you think?
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31 Replies
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Big fear at our shop….I was hoping that ProRes would be developed to be written on a PC (not just read) and become a truly cross platform codec of choice for editing. Now? Unknown…
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com -
ProRes is FCPX’s preferred codec. It is what everything renders as and is the “optimized” and proxy media as well. FCPX doesn’t let you define HQ, LT, or 4444 for it’s optimized media, but it will work with those variants happily.
Best,
Andy -
Yep. That’s what I was hoping as well… and probably the whole industry. But if everyone moves away from FCP, it will be a much harder fight to get rid of tape. When you start convincing a company like ARRI about this.. it would eventually grow into others big profile companies and maybe even the networks.
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[Andrew Richards] “roRes is FCPX’s preferred codec. It is what everything renders as and is the “optimized” and proxy media as well. FCPX doesn’t let you define HQ, LT, or 4444 for it’s optimized media, but it will work with those variants happily.”
My question is more about the role of ProRes in the industry. It’s about the demise of FCP as an NLE at the moment. We are on the verge of becoming file-based in the delivery process to the final clients (meaning tv networks and studios), not only because of the advent of this codec and the market, but because of the shortage of HDCAM SR tapes due to Japan’s earthquake.
But even adding to your answer, not being able to define the form of ProRes you are working with in FCPX is one more major design flaw in the current state of FCPX.
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[Eduardo Serrano] “But even adding to your answer, not being able to define the form of ProRes you are working with in FCPX is one more major design flaw in the current state of FCPX.”
Completely agree.
[Eduardo Serrano] “My question is more about the role of ProRes in the industry. It’s about the demise of FCP as an NLE at the moment. We are on the verge of becoming file-based in the delivery process to the final clients (meaning tv networks and studios), not only because of the advent of this codec and the market, but because of the shortage of HDCAM SR tapes due to Japan’s earthquake.”
This is a larger problem than just ProRes. ProRes and DNxHD are both proprietary codecs, so they are not ideal for file-based mastering from a compatibility and risk perspective. The overarching problem is that there aren’t any equivalent open standard codecs. All the open standards are compromised in terms of quality or in terms of their structure (interframe compression being the big gotcha).
Maybe proprietary codecs like Pro Res or DNxHD are going to become like PDF is for documents, where they aren’t a true open standard but they are so ubiquitous and easily licensed it hardly matters. The jury is certainly still out on that one.
In practical terms, if your delivery specs call for ProRes, your decision is easy. If you are looking for a codec for your own archives, that carries some risk that whatever you choose will fall out of favor one way or another. No way around that. The safe thing to do there is to archive camera and/or NLE native codecs to maintain the highest possible quality that you can today, and along side that store a high bitrate full raster, full frame rate MPEG-2 or H.264 safety proxy that is more likely to be readable in a future that may have discarded whatever proprietary codecs may have been used for the original media.
Best,
Andy -
Works in Premiere, works in MediaComposer, Works in DaVinci……….
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Avid MC although supports ProRes via AMA. it’s not, by avid words, suitable for editing complex and large projects. Everything that comes via AMA, for that matter. They still want you to convert to dnxhd.
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“The overarching problem is that there aren’t any equivalent open standard codecs. All the open standards are compromised in terms of quality or in terms of their structure (interframe compression being the big gotcha).”
What about JPEG 2000? “High-quality frame-based video recording, editing and storage.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPEG_2000
“JPEG 2000 is by itself licensed, but the contributing companies and organizations agreed that licenses for its first part—the core coding system—can be obtained free of charge from all contributors.”
Best,
Park -
Good point. My FCP-centric experience is showing. JPEG2000 is a great codec for long term storage and compatibility.
Best,
Andy -
Hello,
the BBC has developed a professional codec and took care
that it’s components aren’t bound to licenses:Dirac Pro
It utilizes wavelet-compresson like JPEG2000 and Cineform
and was developed to be robust for post production.There is even hardware, ready to use:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/dirac/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/dirac/diracpro.shtmlI seems the development has been finished,
but I don’t know why it is not commonly used, e.g. by Adobe.What I very appreciate about ProRes is that it caused a paradigm shift
in who defines the recording codec in field.In my opinion, camera vendors should give up codec development at all!
In the 21st century there is simply no demand for e.g.
an overpriced format like HDCamSRLite inside a strange container
passed over an inpractical interface any more!Best regards,
Bernhard
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