The death of QuickTime as we know it

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Michael Phillips] “It does not matter whether the codec is currently relevant 20-50 years down the road. What is relevant is whether the content owner can go back to the orignal sources if and when needed.”

I think this is the point I have been trying to make all along. If the tools aren’t around to access that material, then why worry about the codec we use today.

[John Davidson]

Apparently H265 is 99% the quality of ProRes with 1% the file size. Perhaps that will be the codec of choice in a few years.

John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.

[Dave Gage]

[Oliver Peters] “The codec component must also be installed in order to encode or play that file.”

Makes sense. I don’t leave it on all the time any more because of conflicts, but I still use Perian from time to time, mostly so I can play/convert .flv and .avi files which come from an older Canon camera that my family still uses. Although Perian is EOL’d, would we need a future Perian-type AVF component to allow backwards compatibility with older file types (assuming some company bothers to make it)?

Thanks,
Dave

[Walter Soyka]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I would encourage you to render out an 8b gradient and then a 16b gradient out of Ae in the Animation codec.”

When rendering a 16bpc project to an 8bpc format, Ae automatically applies dithering — that’s why the 16bpc project’s gradient looks better, not because it contains deeper color data.

I would encourage you to carefully evaluate that 16b gradient that you’ve rendered to 8b animation; you’ll see the quanitzation — that is, there will be no RGB values anywhere that cannot be expressed with only 8 bits of precision. It’s visually smoother (due to the dithering), but it’s not mathematically 16b.

[Jeremy Garchow] “But if you need proprietary tools to access open standards, isn’t it really six of one, and half dozen of the other?”

I don’t think so. The data is more important than the tool. Open standards increase choice, because they allow multiple proprietary tools to use the same data.

[Jeremy Garchow] “Everything I need to send video to a Beta tape is based on standards, but this doesn’t mean I will be able to play that beta tape forever because it was based on open standards.”

This shows a critical difference between hardware and software. There are a lot more people who could write a video decoder in 2013 from the spec and nothing else than could manufacture a new Beta deck.

The existence of open-source projects like ffmpeg/ffmbc and vlc is awesome and means that we don’t need to relying on Apple, Microsoft, or Adobe for access to old video.

[Jeremy Garchow] “This is really my only point. At some point, ProRes will be grandpa’s codec (probably when I’m a grandpa).”

I think there’s a lot more nuance to this than we’re discussing here. Animation may be old, but it’s lossless; I’d say that means it’s significantly more enduring, and thus qualifies less as Grandpa’s codec than Cinepak or Sorenson.

I think it’ll be like that with ProRes, too. You can get more efficient compression, but there are seriously diminishing returns on quality.

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

[Jeremy Garchow]

I hear what you’re saying, Walter.

Increasing the chances of being able to read media in the future is a valid point.

At least Apple automatically converts these “dead” codecs to either h264 or ProRes.

[Walter Soyka]

[Jeremy Garchow] “At least Apple automatically converts these “dead” codecs to either h264 or ProRes.”

For now — how long can we expect this to happen? Doesn’t this transcode ultimately rely on the old and deprecated QuickTime stuff that is being phased out?

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

[Dave Gage]

[John Davidson] ”
Apparently H265 is 99% the quality of ProRes with 1% the file size.”

John,

Do you or anyone else know how close we are to actually using H.265? Isn’t it still in testing/rollout stage or are there any apps using it now?

At least for me, this seems like the ideal format to go back and archive all my old lower quality files in (.dv, .avi, .flv, etc.).

Thanks,
Dave

[Oliver Peters]

This all brings us to a very interesting (in a bad way) state of affairs on the Mac. You have 4 viable current post container formats. These would be:

1) FCP X’s AVF implementation (opaque outside of FCP X)
2) QT MOV – in the process of being deprecated outside of H264 and ProRes codecs
3) Avid’s implementation of MXF
3a) Various camera manufacturers’ MXF implementations
4) Adobe’s internal implementation of I-frame MPEG2 (opaque outside of Premiere Pro)

– Oliver

Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com

[Dave Gage]

[Dave Gage] “Do you or anyone else know how close we are to actually using H.265? Isn’t it still in testing/rollout stage or are there any apps using it now?”

I just answered a portion of my questions via Wikipedia. Evidently, H.265 is available in:
FFmpeg- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFmpeg

…and I just read that although x264 is on it’s way out, x265 is on it’s way in-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X265

[Pat Horridge]

Last I heard H265 was expevted 2014.
The same quality as H264 but half tge fike size.
But 3 times tge encoding/ decoding effort.
Si that 2 hour H264 encide will now take 6 hours!
And its in an aging QT wrapper.

Pat Horridge
Technical Director, Trainer, Avid Certified Instructor
VET
Production Editing Digital Media Design DVD
T +44 (0)20 7505 4701 | F +44 (0)20 7505 4800 | E pat@vet.co.uk |
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