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Legacy Codecs
I work as a VJ (video jockey) which means Im mixing videos in realtime, outputting to several projectors. All my video content have alpha-channel, since Im doing multiple layers. I found that Planar RGB runs much smoother on my new macbook pro 8gb quadcore than PNG. But what does it mean that Planar RGB is a legacy codec? It wont be getting anymore updates? Will it be obsolete in not too long? Which implications are involved? Is it old-fashioned?
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5 Replies
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Hi Mads,
Planar really doesn’t need any kind of update.
Is an Compressed/lossless 8b RGB codec. Similar to Animation but with a different compression scheme.
Is in the list of Legacy codecs because people doesn’t use it much. People don’t know him and anyway there are better options.
You would go better with Animation.
Same quality, much smaller files (3 folds), Alpha and for many years, the almost only cross-platform codec.
rafael
PS: Don’t miss this: Is in the list of Legacy codecs because people
Look in the 444 codecs list.
rafael -
[Rafael Amador] “Is an Compressed/lossless 8b RGB codec. Similar to Animation but with a different compression scheme.”
Planar RGB is totally uncompressed. The red, green, and blue values of each pixel are saved in “planes”, three of which are combined to make a frame.
Animation (at 100%) is losslessly compressed (so the visual you get out is visually and mathematically the same as what went in). It uses run-length encoding, so you can substantially smaller file sizes if you have large fields of flat color.
PNG is also losslessly compressed, but its compression scheme is much more involved and takes a lot of computational power to play back in real time.
Planar RGB and Animation are both easier on the processors to play back in real time, but harder on the disk system, as the files (and therefore the data rate) are much higher.
“Legacy codecs” are enabled for decoding but disabled for encoding on modern QuickTime installs by default. If you want to write Planar RGB files, you can enter the following in Terminal to make the codec appear in QT:
qtdefaults write LegacyCodecsEnabled yesWalter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
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[Walter Soyka] “Planar RGB is totally uncompressed. The red, green, and blue values of each pixel are saved in “planes”, three of which are combined to make a frame.”
Hi Walter,
I had the idea that some kind of compression was going on just because Planar RGB makes files half the size of NONE. This one (Raw 8b RGB) makes some 30.MB/s for NTSC, while Planar RGB makes some 16.MB/s.[Walter Soyka] “”Legacy codecs” are enabled for decoding but disabled for encoding on modern QuickTime installs by default. If you want to write Planar RGB files, you can enter the following in Terminal to make the codec appear in QT: qtdefaults write LegacyCodecsEnabled yes”
Great info.
rafael -
[Rafael Amador] “Hi Walter, I had the idea that some kind of compression was going on just because Planar RGB makes files half the size of NONE. This one (Raw 8b RGB) makes some 30.MB/s for NTSC, while Planar RGB makes some 16.MB/s.”
I stand corrected. Planar RGB allows you to define the length of each line of each plane before filling pixel data. This suggests to me that it might not be lossless at all quality levels.
https://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=8BPS
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “This suggests to me that it might not be lossless at all quality levels.”
I understand that those lossless/compressed codecs, are lossless only when set at 100% quality.
rafael
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