[Ryan Winters]

I lost access to the TIFF codec. Apple disabled it from installation.

To enable it I had to go to Applications>Utilities>Terminal, then type or copy/paste:
qtdefaults write LegacyCodecsEnabled yes

-AJA sales figured this out in https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/98/877912

This returns pristine lossless compression with 2:1 size reduction.

[Ryan Winters]

I work with a file-based workflow. I don’t have the resources to house all the decks that people use. My ingest is just to copy files over from a transfer drive.

Again, I’m looking for a non-destructive lossless workflow (after acquiring clips onto local drives) primarily centered around FCP and preserving quality exactly. I’m looking for a codec like Apple’s Uncompressed codec, but with lossless compression.

I can’t understand why the Final Cut world still accepts softening and gradient errors now that storage has hit rock bottom prices and lossless is a simple switch to crisper video. Professional AVID editors can easily deal with lossless video as the norm these days.

That’s all that I’m interested in. Compression downstream is something I can’t stop, but I can present clean images to the encoder(s).

I also roundtrip a lot between the various graphics packages as my secondary motivator. I don’t like artificially limiting the I/O cycles in the name of preventing generational errors when using ProRes or (to a lesser extent) JPEG. ProRes reacts like analog BetaSP at 7 generations. I would much rather use one quicktime format for everything, than a mix of TIF-sequences and lossy codecs.