codecs

[Michael Kammes]

https://www.avid.com/US/industries/workflow/DNxHD-Codec
leads to
https://avid.custkb.com/avid/app/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=372311

DNxHD codecs are free and are on both Mac and PC. Quicktime has been able to play ProRes by default for the past few years, and it’s on both Mac and PC. it’s pretty easy to play these “proprietary” codecs. Since Avid Media Composer and FCP are the top editing applications, both codecs are very common in the industry and are used in many houses when shuttling video files back and forth. Short of going to 100% uncompressed – which is very space consuming – I can’t think of another codec that would be more universal than one of these AND retain quality.

I personally love Cineform, but that is not free for the encode. /sidebar.

XDCAM SD/HD/EX, P2 (any flavor) and the like are more acquisition codecs and do not hold up in post as well as DNxHD and ProRes. Thus, I think you’d be fine with DNxHD or ProRes.

~Michael

.: michael kammes mpse
.: senior applications editor . post workflow consultant
.: audio specialist . act fcp . acsr
.: michaelkammes.com
.: twitter: @michaelkammes
.: facebook: /mkammes

Hear me pontificate: Speaking Schedule .

[David Johnson]

Thanks much, Michael. I understand your points, but we’re not just talking about the ability to play media … I understand that ProRes can be read on either platform, but it can’t be written on either platform so what I’m getting at is that we prefer to (and are often required to) eliminate the need for unnecessary transcoding. If we’re sending media to an Avid shop, we may want to or have to send it in an Avid codec, rather than require them to transcode our ProRes.

Thanks again.

[Michael Kammes]

That’s not *entirely* correct, but I do understand your concerns.

Apple has licensed very few on the PC side to create ProRes via software. But it is possible. Some also prefer to use hardware encoders like Telestream’s Pipeline to do a baseband encode, or, export a QT reference to a shared Mac CPU to do the ProRes encode.

Avid, for the past year or so, has been able to edit ProRes natively in a timeline. Once you dig into it, it’s not the best case scenario, but I know many, many projects that work this way.

It should also be noted that if you intend to generate DNxHD for a 3rd party who uses Avid, you need to encode the DNxHD correctly so Avid can do a Fast Import, otherwise they will have to do a transcode (again) as well.

~Michael

.: michael kammes mpse
.: senior applications editor . post workflow consultant
.: audio specialist . act fcp . acsr
.: michaelkammes.com
.: twitter: @michaelkammes
.: facebook: /mkammes

Hear me pontificate: Speaking Schedule .

[David Johnson]

Thank you for the excellent tips, Micheal. When we generate media in codecs that aren’t native to our facilities, we always make a point to discuss details directly with the recipient to avoid any gotchas like missing the mark for an Avid Fast Import as you mentioned.

We’re a fairly small shop so things like acquiring a software license from Apple or hardware encoders are more of a pipe dream than a pipeline for us right now (pun intended).

Thanks again and I hope you’ll make more of your speaking engagements available online in the future … CA is quite a trip from FL.

[Job Ter burg]

Simplest shortcut is https://www.avid.com/codec.