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OT: CineForm now a SMPTE standard
“SMPTE, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, announced earlier this month that they have standardized GoPro’s CineForm codec, dubbing it ST 2073 VC-5, the new open standard for video acquisition and post production.”
https://nofilmschool.com/2015/06/gopros-cineform-now-industry-standard-codec
Might this become one widely used, cross platform, high quality codec to rule them all? ProRes is becoming ubiquitous but AFAIK it’s still not a smooth ride if you are running Windows, and Avid has been doing a lot with DNx but many (most?) people think it’s an Avid-only solution even though it’s less tied down than ProRes is.
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21 Replies
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[Andrew Kimery] “Might this become one widely used, cross platform, high quality codec to rule them all? ProRes is becoming ubiquitous but AFAIK it’s still not a smooth ride if you are running Windows, and Avid has been doing a lot with DNx but many (most?) people think it’s an Avid-only solution even though it’s less tied down than ProRes is.”
It’s great news. I’ve spent the past year working in Cineform for a stereo 3D short project. Image quality is outstanding and active metadata allows for very efficient workflows.
Unfortunately, with this news comes the EOL of the GoPro Studio Pro and Premium products:
The handwriting has been on the wall for some time since it’s been a while since the last upgrade and these products are still very buggy on the Mac. It’s unclear to me if Cineform active metadata is in the VC-5 spec and what tools will be available to manipulate it in the future. Hopefully it’s still supported.
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David Lawrence
art~media~design~research
propaganda.com
publicmattersgroup.com
https://lnkd.in/Cfz92F
facebook.com/dlawrence
twitter.com/dhl
vimeo.com/dlawrence/albums -
I’ve been a big CineForm fan for a while now, using it daily for years. Seeing it ratified as a standard is very gratifying.
(rant on)
Sadly, I don’t have a high degree of confidence that CineForm will unseat ProRes. Without starting a discussion with David of whether the project file is the true digital master, our industry as a whole has ceded control of our output files (what would have traditionally been called masters) to Apple.
It’s been the classic frog-boiling scenario, going back to FCP Legend where ProRes was the only way to work. Apple has been freely making hardware (camera/recorder) deals for ProRes, but selectively making software deals (niche Windows developers only). QuickTime has an uncertain future on Windows, and it has a very certainly dim future on Macs. AVFoundation has no support for third-party codecs. Apple apparently requires iTunes delivery to be True ProRes, and they also apparently have some way of detecting whether you’re using a licensed or unlicensed (ffmpeg) ProRes encoder.
Apple, like Microsoft in the 1990s, has built a product into an industry standard, and they are now leveraging it to force people to buy Macs [link] for interoperability.
Friends don’t let friends master to ProRes.
I’ve put my money where my mouth is, backing MOX [link], an open-source movie format for video and film production. It’s based on a collection of existing open-source technologies in our space, and I hope it ultimately follows the same trajectory that OpenEXR has. Once it’s released, I hope you’ll join me in adopting MOX where you can.
(rant off)
Getting back to CineForm, the two big advantages I think CineForm has over ProRes and DNxHX is a RAW encoding and direct Adobe support. If a few camera manufacturers start including CineForm RAW, and if Adobe pushes CineForm a little harder as a preferred format in the DVA set, maybe we’ll start to see a little movement. Wavelet encoding may be an advantage in some applications, but is probably not a broad advantage outside of RAW.
Big threats are a lack of support from other vendors. CineForm won’t go far without a desktop player, or without inclusion in open-source toolkits like ffmpeg. Speaking of the desktop, let’s not overlook the importance of QuickLook and FCPX, either. There’s a lot of infrastructure and workflow built around ProRes. ProRes is a good codec, and there’s not an overwhelming quality difference between them to drive a change.
I wish CineForm lots of luck.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Walter, you said:
“It’s been the classic frog-boiling scenario, going back to FCP Legend where ProRes was the only way to work.”
This is completely untrue. Prores was only introduced with Final Cut Studio 2 (FCP 6!!). You could before and after, work with DV, HDV, XDCAM, …
Prores was one of the first good alternatives to having a very high quality HD codec, not too taxing, without the rates of Uncompressed HD.
It was very far from ‘the only way to work’ … -
[Mathieu Ghekiere] “This is completely untrue. Prores was only introduced with Final Cut Studio 2 (FCP 6!!). You could before and after, work with DV, HDV, XDCAM, … Prores was one of the first good alternatives to having a very high quality HD codec, not too taxing, without the rates of Uncompressed HD. It was very far from ‘the only way to work’ …”
Mathieu, of course what you say above is correct. I should have said “essentially the only way to work” or “the preferred way to work” or the like. I did plenty of DVCPRO HD and XDCAM work back in the day myself.
But I don’t think this refutes the “ProRes, Stealth Assassin” idea. FCP used to have native camera support for popular formats alongside ProRes — but eventually FCP stopped directly supporting native formats. Instead, Log and Transfer workflows made transcoding to ProRes the best option by far for working in a modern tapeless world.
FCP made ProRes a de-facto standard, and now Apple, keeping ProRes proprietary, wields enormous power over the industry. It’s plunged us back into another format war: Apple with ProRes, Avid with DNxHx, maybe Adobe with CineForm… this is not a thing that users need. We should be pushing for open standards and documentation for the formats we rely on.
We’ll never have complete interoperability between applications; their differing feature sets ensure that. However, we can and should have basic interoperability on media essences.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “Friends don’t let friends master to ProRes.”
I would be giddy with joy if DNx or Cineform became an acceptable deliverable for PBS, but at the moment it’s still ProRes all the way. Which chains me to the Mac platform and OSX, exactly the way Apple envisioned. Were it not for that, I’d be spec’ing out my next PC workstation.
While ProRes is fine, Quicktime still blows – but until a sizable number of distributors are willing to see that the emperor has no clothes – what’s a mother to do?
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Herb Sevush] “I would be giddy with joy if DNx or Cineform became an acceptable deliverable for PBS, but at the moment it’s still ProRes all the way. Which chains me to the Mac platform and OSX, exactly the way Apple envisioned. Were it not for that, I’d be spec’ing out my next PC workstation.”
Sure, you have to deliver ProRes. But for the folks who do have a choice, I think pushing ProRes is a very bad decision for the industry in the longer term.
Wouldn’t it be nice if someone at PBS had a friend who didn’t let them master ProRes?
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Walter Soyka] “Wouldn’t it be nice if someone at PBS had a friend who didn’t let them master ProRes?”
It would just chain you to something else, like Avid, Adobe, Episode, or something.
So either way, you are chained to something be it a platform or NLE or codec.
The void that ProRes filled, was there for the taking. Camera codecs simply weren’t (and aren’t) good enough for post, or too computationally expensive, or stuck in 32bit, or thin raster, or proprietary, or whatever.
No one else stepped up. Avid could have made this really easy and released a version of DNxHD that made Avid mxf on a Mac really easy without having to buy an entire Avid suite to do it. Adobe seems like they could have been in a position to purchase/license/develop a mezz codec, but seemed against that nature very early on.
And now with this, and if it garners any sort of mass adoption, you will have to buy or subscribe to a piece of software that will allow you to make Cineform media despite it being ratified and open source.
I think camera makers could be the ones that would make this a reality. Someone like Blackmagic, or any RAW recorder could make Cineform a truly viable option.
You MOX link is busted, Walter.
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[Jeremy Garchow] “It would just chain you to something else, like Avid, Adobe, Episode, or something.”
I don’t see why a video codec needs to chain you to anything.
Apple and Avid (originally) wanted to chain you to something – software in Avid’s case, hardware in Apple’s. There’s no reason a video codec has to be more proprietary than a still’s codec – it just turned out that way historically.
DNx would work right now – cross platform, high quality, scalable, with fairly broad industry acceptance – but ProRes took the lead when Avid was being proprietary about DNx and the distributors don’t care that ProRes isn’t fully cross platform, that’s the producer’s problem so why should the distributor’s care.
Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
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nothin’ attached to nothin’
“Deciding the spine is the process of editing” F. Bieberkopf -
[Jeremy Garchow] “It would just chain you to something else, like Avid, Adobe, Episode, or something.”
Not if it were an open standard. Then Avid, Adobe, Episode and whatever else could all use the same thing.
[Jeremy Garchow] “I think camera makers could be the ones that would make this a reality. Someone like Blackmagic, or any RAW recorder could make Cineform a truly viable option.”
I’m of two minds. CineForm RAW is part of it — but CineForm RAW acquisition doesn’t necessarily lead to CineForm RGB/YUV post. Adobe pushing CineForm is possibly the best bet on the desktop, but only if other interoperability pieces fall in line.
[Jeremy Garchow] “You MOX link is busted, Walter.”
Thank you. I fixed it. And here it is for posterity:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mox-file-format#/story
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
[Herb Sevush] “don’t see why a video codec needs to chain you to anything.
“Because if you can’t use or create it easily in your programs of choice, you have to use another program to make your deliverable. If Smoke can’t export Cineform, you’ll have to export something out of Smoke to a program that can make a Cineform AVI, so you’ll be reliant on whatever that program is, just for example.
Open source and SMPTE ratified doesn’t automatically mean the world is suddenly going to be better.
[Herb Sevush] “that’s the producer’s problem so why should the distributor’s care.
“Because I still believe that there are people in this world who give a shit about other people in this world.
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