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Is Q-Rez Dead?
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Even if Q-Rez was available, why would anyone want to use it? Given that you can get better quality and way lower data rate with the DVCPROHD codec?
Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
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Ten Final Cut Plug-ins for just $10 each -
It was my impression that using the same scaling process but not the DCT compression (scaled and uncompressed) that Q-Rez would present considerably less compression artifacting than the DVCPROHD codec.
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But as Qrez was never released, we have no idea how it would have worked at all!
But really, PhotoJPEG75% is more than awesome as a compressed codec for SD and HD with great quality, but Apple follishly leaves it unaccellerated for RT. Fix that, and our problems are gone.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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I have to agree with Graeme here. M-jpeg was a fantastic, customizable , nice looking solution. DV is a great offline codec and at a compact file size of 3.8MB/sec it does the tricka s well. It would be nice to see a draft DV resolution that would be about half the data rate of the existing DV so we could squeeze about out about an hour of footage onto 5 gig for large/multitape offline projects,
BUT
Drives are so inexpensive now, DV is a great resolution to work in as an offline. I can see why AJA would not be chasing after QRez, when nobody know what apple is going to do next. with DVCPRO100 as an offline HD resolution it is a mere 14mb/sec IN HD. What codec is going to top that! that is almost half the file size of 10-bit uncompressed SD.
AND
Would Apple back up Qrez in a future release of FCP? It’s a tough go. If I was AJA I am not sure I would waste many man hours developing Qrez because Apple can be so flakey about this stuff. It seems that Apple is looking at SONY and PANASONIC to develop “industry standards” and that is the thing they implement. So why bother with what AJA is thinking of doing with Qrez. It is a tough slog for third party FCP products right now as Apple is putting more and more under the hood in FCP to drive machine sales.
David
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Well…all the references to Q-Rez tout it as a 4:1 hardware compression technology – i.e. it just scaled the HD image to half size so a 1920×1080 image would end up being 960×540. Hence the name because the image becomes a quarter of the original frame size and 4:1 compression compared to the original.
Even though the frame size had been quartered though, that’s the only compression involved so you’d be looking at a data rate of around 25MBs for 1080HD. DVCPROHD has a datarate of less than half that AND is higher resolution. So which one would you have chosen for an offline codec?! Switch the RT popup in the timeline to “Medium” quality if you want to see how Q-Rez might have looked. 🙂
Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
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Ten Final Cut Plug-ins for just $10 each -
When you put it like that, Martin, it makes you wonder why they even bothered….
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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Marco,
I’ve always thought you were a proponent of the processing being done on te CPU. (remember the ICE cards?) Qrez is a great idea and if it was extended forward to the other codecs it could be very sweet. If AJA and Apple are working this out that would only benefit all of us.
I do not want to sound cynical but it does sort of seem like if apple could put everyting on Firewire 800 they would. Maybe on future Inel Macs, the raw processing power will render a perfectly good Kona 2’s hardware accelleration onto the back burner.
That’s sort of more of what I am saying. Maybe we haven’t seen Qrez, because of these types of scenarios.
David
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On one of the DV Guys radio shows from NAB this year, Ted Schilowitz from AJA was asked about Q-Rez and he confirmed that basically the feature is shelved because of the appearance of the DVCPROHD codec.
He also revealed that AJA are working with another company (could it be Bitjazz perhaps?…) to do capturing to a lossless codec for a future version…interesting huh?
Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
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Ten Final Cut Plug-ins for just $10 each -
That makes a lot more sense. The guru at Bitjazz knows more about codecs than practically anyone else I’ve met, so if anyone can do something utterly cool, he can. However, when we get proprietary, we start to get into issues of interoperability. That’s why just the simple act of Apple unlocking PhotoJPEG would be wonderful for everyone. Martin – ever looked at the code in the RT enablers? We’re just talking over on the FCP forum about hacking around with them to see if we can’t pursuade FCP to do real time with larger frame sizes and lower compressions. I’ve tried doing this before, but failed miserably. Any ideas??
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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I’m DV50 all the way so there’s no big incentive for me to use PhotoJPEG but I can see that it would be a good idea, especially as an offline codec.
Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
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Ten Final Cut Plug-ins for just $10 each
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