What is up with no Panasonic DV50 codec on Windows?

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

Have you heard of Avid? They have these codecs and they do work on the PC platform.

Can’t imagine who you talked to, but, hey maybe somebody in the company has been hiding under a rock somewhere. If you would contact me offline I would love to figure out who it was. crittendenj@us.panasonic.com

Thanks,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[Gavin Stokes]

Hi Jan. Thanks for your response. I’ll contact you off-line with details, but the problem is that the codecs you refer to are QuickTime codecs, not Windows Media. Furthermore, they are not even compatible with DV50 QuickTime files captured on Macs (using the Apple codecs that come with QuickTime under OS X), which eliminates a lot of material. And finally, people shouldn’t have to buy an Avid system to use a Panasonic camera, especially when they already have Vegas or Premiere or some other editing app. All they need is a codec.

Regards,
Gavin

[Noah Kadner]

Send a letter to Sony and to Adobe- it is up to them to support DVCPRO50.

[Gavin Stokes]

“Send a letter to Sony and to Adobe- it is up to them to support DVCPRO50.”

What? You couldn’t have picked two less likely candidates. Sony doesn’t offer a single product that uses DV50, since they have conspicuously failed to answer DVCPro50 even after all these years. Sony’s best DV cameras are still DV25! Sad.

And Adobe? Nope. Adobe has been trounced by FCP, and FCP comes with a DV50 codec. Why would they bother?

Panasonic is the vendor whose hardware makes the most use of these codecs. If people go out and buy an HVX200 and then have no way to get the footage into their computers, they’re going to blame Panasonic.

[Noah Kadner]

Hi Gavin-

I don’t quite follow your train of thought there. You acknowlege Adobe and Sony are the obstacles to their own NLEs working natively with the HVX200 and then you conclude buyers will blame Panasonic for this? I suspect it will be the opposite.

The Varicam has worked for years with Avid and now FCP and there seems to be little backlash over this. And up until last year’s FCP HD there was no such thing as native Firewire support of DVCPROHD. So suddenly expecting it across the board now is a little unrealistic. FCP and Avid support the DVCPRO50 and DVCPROHD codecs because they chose to work with Panasonic rather than ignoring their customers requests. Adobe has also started to support the DVX100 and work with Panasonic so while it may take them a while- I suspect they will eventually support DVCPROHD and DVCPRO50.

And don’t forget for those who insist on working with Vegas there will be always be workarounds- such as capturing uncompressed or via SDI or dubbing to another format. So to say there is no way of getting the footage into unsupporting NLEs like Vegas is not the whole picture. There is no ‘simple as Firewire over DV’ way as of this moment but that’s the responsibility of the NLE companies, not Panasonic.

The only way to change this is to let Sony and Adobe know what you want. It finally worked with Sony as they begrudgingly added support for the DVX100 to Vegas after overwhelming customer demand. They can’t listen if nothing’s being said to them…

Noah

[Gavin Stokes]

Hi Noah.

“You acknowlege Adobe and Sony are the obstacles to their own NLEs working natively with the HVX200 and then you conclude buyers will blame Panasonic for this? I suspect it will be the opposite.”

What a curious interpretation. I didn’t say that they’re the obstacles. I was saying that Sony doesn’t make a single camera that uses DV50, so why would they come out with a codec? If anything, I was saying that there are NO obstacles to current or even fairly old software working just fine with new image formats. All you need is one codec on the computer, and then any Windows Media client application can use it.

The major proponent of the format should be the one to release the codec; we only need one, and the hardware manufacturer or the operating-system vendor is the most logical choice to develop it. Why have all that redundant development work going on between different NLE vendors, who aren’t likely to share their work with each other?

You mention FCP, but the whole point of this thread is DV50 on Windows. Also, Apple is in a unique position as the OS vendor and a major supplier of the editing software. Apple wanted to hawk the Mac as this groundbreaking HD platform, so they made sure there were DV50 and DV100 codecs out there for all to use. And who knows, maybe Panasonic was involved. Third parties use Apple’s codec (that’s what Apple recommends), and in the one case where there’s redundancy (Blackmagic’s uncompressed and Apple’s uncompressed) there are conflicts and customers suffer. FCP is the major beneficiary of Apple’s work in this case, but everyone can use it and Apple still achieves the primary goal, which is selling computers.

To whom should we turn on Windows? Microsoft, unlike Apple, is not that focused on content creation, and is largely moribund these days anyway. So with Panasonic looking to lead a large segment of the video industry away from crummy DV25 (finally) and HDV, it is the logical source for a codec.

You also mention Avid, but they don’t provide a Windows Media codec either. Just QuickTime, and I’m not even sure that it’s supposed to be freely available. Furthermore, the Avid codec is incompatible with much of the DV50 footage out there, because it was released before Apple’s and therefore has a different codec-type code than Apple’s. Thus, any DV50 QuickTimes captured on a Mac (other than on a Mac Avid) will not play using Avid’s codec under Windows. Again, we see that a single source for a codec is preferable.

“And don’t forget for those who insist on working with Vegas there will be always be workarounds- such as capturing uncompressed or via SDI or dubbing to another format. So to say there is no way of getting the footage into unsupporting NLEs like Vegas is not the whole picture.”

Well, I disagree, because I don’t consider such a setup valid. You’re taking already compressed material and blowing it up to uncompressed size. You are then forever saddled with that bloated media size and its storage and drive-performance requirements unless you recompress it, suffering an unnecessary generation of loss. One of the best things about DV50, especially compared to DV25, is its reasonable quality at modest storage requirements. Altered frames should be stored uncompressed, but everything else can be kept in its native format. Sure, there are always “workarounds”, but not for those who care about maintaining all possible quality with compressed material.

When Epson releases a new printer, they don’t sit around and wait for Microsoft or Apple to write a driver for them. They give you a driver in the box with the printer. When you buy a Canon digital SLR, you get software that reads the proprietary raw format of the camera. For DV cameras, there’s built-in support in the OSs now, so companies like Sony don’t have to bother. But for DV50 and DV100 under Windows, we need software from the hardware manufacturer.

With just a little work from one vendor, everyone on the platform can gain access to this footage in its native form. The best candidate for that vendor is Panasonic.

[Peter Steinman]

This issue actually came up for me too. I wanted to send a friend using a PC some raw Varicam footage to play with. After capturing it in FCP thru firewire on my mac I failed at every attempt to get it to be usable on a PC even with Avid’s codec installed. Is there anyway to transfer DVCPRO footage from a mac to a PC without recompressing it or uncompressing it ?

[Noah Kadner]

I see your point. Perhaps you could also nudge JVC to hand out their HDV 720p 24p codec, because those .m2t files are quite a pain going cross-platform. And why hasn’t Sony provided open access to HDCAM? Come to think of it, Sony hasn’t allowed native HDCAM on anything outside of their own pricey XPRI system. Not exactly Epsonian behavior there.

[Tony]

Gavin,

You may not be aware of the close relationship Apple and Panasonic developed for FCP HD to incorporate dvcpro HD as well as dvcpro 50 for FCP. This relationship is responsible for putting the Varicam on the face of the earth as before this “arranged marriage” existed the major issue was “what the hell do you do with footage you cannot easily edit with?”

Sony is not going to offer a solution that takes away from their own NLE systems as well as formats. Adobe is a more likely candidate in my best guess but Panasonic already has a partnership with Apple.

Regarding the internal issue you had with the Panasonic rep please let us know who or what department you were speaking to. Not every department is up to speed with every product the company makes or develops nor are these individuals as wound up around the details we as end users are concerned about. The same issues you mentioned exist at Sony,JVC,Apple,Microsoft, Exxon,The White House, and FEMA also.

The company that I have found that I never have an issue with regarding knowledge, technical and customer support is AJA. However AJA is a rare jewel to be found in this industry of which no other company can match.

Tony Salgado

[Peter Steinman]

Seriously you think without the relationship between Apple and Pansonic the Varicam would never have happened ?

That’s all marketing good or bad. They decided to team up for an advantage in the marketplace. The both got a market boost on the Apple ‘hype’. FCP was hot so go with it.

Thats business as usual. Its nice FCP and Varicam play nice together. I bought a $3,000 mac just so they did. That is exactly what Apple wanted to happen.

People are dealing with 1,000 different formats without Microsoft or Apple involved. Panasonic just decided to play a little differently.