DVCPRO HD in QuickTime Pro on PC?

[Izoneguy]

Edius on the PC will read DVCPRO HD files but only through Edius,
I have not been able to preview full screen.

[Lars Wikstrom]

I hear you brother. I shot a job a while back and turned over the footage to a person who was on a PC and he could not view the footage. I had to transcode the footage an give it to him that way.

I thought for sure you could download the DVCPRO codec and drop it into Quuicktime. This is a pretty standard thing from compaines that have hardware encoding like BlackMagic. Go to their website and you can download a software codec that works with computers that don’t have a hardware card in thier machine.

Panasonic on the other hand does not release that codec to make life easier for people who do shot and release the footage to clients. I have complained about it before in other posts that they should release it. This was the first time I also had come accross it because companies have almost always been willing to offer software codecs to support their products. Even a read only codec would work to protect Panasonic from people writing to this codec if that is the problem. But only Pany knows why they made it this way.

Would you like a steering wheel with your car?

-Lars

[Izoneguy]

It is no different if you are editing on a MAC and someone comes in
with Matrox MJPEG .avi clips to edit??

[Barry Green]

Panasonic doesn’t make Quicktime, Apple does. Apple has the DVCPRO-HD codec installed on the Mac version of Quicktime, but not on the PC version.

Panasonic does distribute the codec freely if you install the P2 Viewer; programs like CineForm and Windows Media Player use it to play back DVCPRO-HD MXF files. But Apple doesn’t use it.

So it’s Apple’s problem to solve, they have to update Quicktime to support those files on the PC.

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[Lars Wikstrom]

Is there a reason why QT for windows can’t support the DVCpro Codec? Is that Apples problem?

-Lars

[Barry Green]

It’s entirely Apple’s problem. They make and distribute Quicktime, and for some reason they’ve decided to not offer that codec on the Windows version. It makes little sense to me, especially since there’s a free Windows codec already there waiting to be tapped into (if you’ve installed the free P2 Viewer). But Apple has to make it happen; so far they haven’t.

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[Noah Kadner]

I agree Barry- it is definitely a shame that the Windows platform doesn’t get full DVCPROHD support. But I’d argue the task is not Apple’s to solve. IMHO- this would be a bit like asking why Sony Blu-Ray players don’t also support HD-DVD- it doesn’t make much business sense.

Apple pays Panasonic to license DVCPROHD for use on the Mac. Why should they pay extra both in license and development to make it run on the the Windows platform too? Especially when they are not ever going to offer FCP for Windows. You don’t see Microsoft lifting much of a finger to make WMV work on the Mac as well as it does on a PC for example. So it cuts both ways.

And Apple’s doing nothing to stop MS from licensing the DVCPROHD codec from Panasonic to work better in Windows- like trying to get an exclusive for example. It seems that Apple’s made support for Panasonic’s codecs a high priority for their platform. While MS is apparently not nearly as interested in enabling the editing DVCPROHD on the Windows platform and has thus left it up to NLE makers to support.

Noah

[Barry Green]

[Noah Kadner] “But I’d argue the task is not Apple’s to solve.”
Respectfully disagree. It’s Quicktime. Who else can modify quicktime but Apple?

[Noah Kadner] “Why should they pay extra both in license and development to make it run on the the Windows platform too?”

They don’t have to pay a penny. Just have it tie into the free DVCPRO-HD codec that’s already installed on a PC whenever you install the free P2 Viewer. It’s already there in the OS. For example, if you install P2 Viewer, you can then play DVCPRO-HD MXF files in Windows Media Player, because the codec is registered with the OS. So surely Apple could just set up a pointer to point to the codec that’s already installed on the system. No royalties, no coding, no hassle.

And only Apple can do that. Nobody else can modify QuickTime.

[Noah Kadner] “While MS is apparently not nearly as interested in enabling the editing DVCPROHD on the Windows platform and has thus left it up to NLE makers to support.”

But MS doesn’t make the NLE’s, so how would it be MS’s problem to support NLE’s? I mean, let’s put it in perspective: MS’s file playback utility (Windows Media Player) DOES use the free DVCPRO-HD codec from Panasonic. So now it’s Apple’s job to make their file playback utility (QuickTime Player) use the same codec to allow playback of the content. Panasonic has delivered a free playback codec. It’s up to QuickTime to use it. How could it possibly be any other way?

Seems fairly open-and-shut…

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[Noah Kadner]

I totally hear what you’re saying but it just doesn’t seem like it’s in Apple’s interests to make their stuff work equally well on both platforms. Sure it may be a simple alteration from a tech pov but it’s not worthwhile from a business perspective. Apple wants you to buy Mac just like MS wants you to buy Windows. I don’t see how one is any more guilty of this than the other.

Noah

[Barry Green]

But Apple is the only one who can do anything about it. Nobody else can.

So if Apple won’t (even though it would cost them practically nothing to do so since the codec is freely available and they just have to hook into it) then I have no choice but to look at it as petty on their part. They have chosen to make Quicktime on the PC incompatible (to some degree) with Quicktime on the Mac.

Any way you slice it, the finger points at Apple. If they’re not doing it because they don’t know how, then I would use the index finger. If they’re not doing it solely for the purpose of making their product cross-platform incompatible, I might use a different finger.
🙂

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