Is Q-Rez Dead?

[David Battistella]

With DVC PRO100 as an offline HD resolution (14mb/second, which is a smaller file size than Uncompressed 10bit SD) I would have to say that Q-rez is most likely not a big priority now.

Apple also seems to be moving away from supporting cards with “additional” processing for FCP, preferring to keep everyting on the drive speed, cpu and hardware, so the cards seem to be becoming the pipeline.

David

[Jeff Lessard]

What is Q-Rez?

thx,

Jeff

[Marco Solorio]

[David Battistella] “Apple also seems to be moving away from supporting cards with “additional” processing for FCP, preferring to keep everyting on the drive speed, cpu and hardware, so the cards seem to be becoming the pipeline.”

On the contrary. Q-Rez isn’t your typical hardware accelerator. Unlike traditional capture cards that have built-in hardware acceleration, the Q-Rez hardware *helps* you gain more RT Extreme performance. How? By offloading decompression processing from host G5 CPUs to the Q-Rez hardware system, you free up more G5 CPU processing power to the system for RT Extreme.

So instead of having the G5 CPUs use valuable processing power for both decompression ***and*** RT Extreme, using Q-Rez leaves the CPUs open for JUST RT Extreme processing in its fullness.

I wish it did this for ALL the compressed codecs, like DV25 , DV50, etc. I look forward to seeing this hardware opened up in the drivers.

Marco Solorio  |  OneRiver Media

[Graeme Nattress]

Well, Q-rez has got to be dead though, hasn’t it? Announced over a year ago and still no sign of it other than in the banner adverts, and all mention removed from the AJA site? And even if it does magically appear, there needs to be a software equivalent or else media interoperability becomes a big issue.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Peter Mcauley]

I asked this exact question to Ted the Head guy at AJA when he was on the DV Guys live radio show during NAB. He said it was officially “Shelved”. Which in my book translate into “Dead”. Shame because I was looking dor a new offline format. I really like photo jpeg 75% but current;y there is 0 RT for that codec on the Kona 2.

Peter McAuley
Axyz Edit
Toronto
G5 dual 2.0
4 gigs ram
10.3.8
FCP 4.5 HD
QT 6.5.2
Kona 2 v1.1 with K Box
4 X 250 gig external F800 Lacie firewire drive
2 X 23″ Apple cinema display

[Graeme Nattress]

That PhotoJPEG is not RT in all it’s incarnations is a problem that Apple should fix as number 1 priority. It’s a fabulous codec, that Apple themselves use at low rez and size for “Offline RT” so there’s no reason at all why they shouldn’t make it work for full size and quality.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Bill Portune]

That is extremely disappointing to hear. Q-Rez was one of the “promised” features that influenced my decision to go with the Kona2 – I had planned to use it with my HD workflow since it’s compression is less heavy-handed than DVCPROHD.

[Paul Harb]

So is everyone just cutting DVCPROHD at full rez?

[Jean-yves Le moine]

i think Q-Rez have been sold tomicrosft for preprocessing for hd WM9

jean-yves le moine

temps r

[Bill Portune]

This is the response I received from AJA when I asked about Q-Rez:

“When we first introduced the idea of the Q-Rez codec we were not aware of the Panasonic HD-100 codec. Once that was introduced the need for another compressed codec diminished, i.e. Q-Rez. So we focused more on hardware support for the HD100 codec, which the Kona 2 does have.
As a result of this we have not abandoned the idea of the Q-Rez but have put it on hold pending the development of other features for the card. I don’t have a scheduled release date when we will have the Q-Rez codec available and if the specs will change due to the HD100, HDV and the new Panasonic format yet to come in the later part of the year. I hope this helps.”