[Walter Soyka]

You may need to hold the Fn button on your keyboard while pressing keys on the top row of your keyboard to get the function keys (F4, F9, etc.) instead of the macOS keys (brightness, volume, etc.).

If you’d like to toggle that behavior, so the function keys work “normally” for applications and you have to hold Fn to get the special macOS keys, see this article:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204436

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

That’s what I’m saying — use one of those apps to compress to true Apple ProRes right on the PC, no Mac required.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Steve Bentley] “Hey Thanks Walter, I didn’t realize there was a ProRes for FFMpeg. I’ll give that a whirl. That will allow us to cut out the middle man (er… middleMac?)”

ffmpeg uses reverse-engineered ProRes, not official, Apple-licensed ProRes.

If you’re just using the Mac to write ProRes, there are a few other options that do use an official Apple ProRes encoder. In cost order:

Assimilate SCRATCH Play Pro (subscription)
https://www.assimilateinc.com/products/scratch-play-pro/

Blackmagic Design Fusion Pro (perpetual license)
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/fusion/

Assimilate SCRATCH (either)
https://www.assimilateinc.com/products/

The Foundry NUKE (either)
https://www.foundry.com/products/nuke

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

Going cross-platform, using Mac OS X 10.6.8, and avoiding Avid codecs does make this a little harder…

AfterCodecs can use ffmpeg to write unlicensed ProRes on a PC:
https://aescripts.com/aftercodecs/

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Steve Bentley] “I saw the listing of supported codecs past 15.1 on Adobe’s info page (still including Animation) and just assumed (like so much of their color space info) it was just wrong since Animation vanished from our options. Are you saying that through some voodoo we can have Animation Best back again, post 15.1?”

It should just be there. Maybe it’s possible you’d need to rebuild any Animation codec output modules you were using from scratch so that it internally refers to Adobe’s encoder?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Steve Bentley] “As for some AE 2018 versions still supporting codecs like Animation: version <=15.03 (of 2018) still supports Qt but as soon as you let CC upgrade you to the 15.1 or higher, you’re done.”

This gets confusing fast. QuickTime is a file format, QuickTime is a library/API for programmers, and QuickTime is an application. Even though the QuickTime library and application are deprecated, Adobe still offers some support for QuickTime movies.

Animation codec in a QuickTime wrapper is natively supported by Adobe via MediaCore. Apple QuickTime is not required, and it works on 15.1 and up.

See here for a list of QuickTime formats supported in Ae v15.1 and beyond, without any reliance on Apple QuickTime:
https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/quicktime7-support-dropped.html

[Steve Bentley] ” I’m not a fan of the Avid one but I hadn’t thought of the Cineform one. We’ll give that whirl.”

CineForm is great. It has been a really nice cross-platform solution for our shop.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Adam Lewen] “Walter I think I got it ☺ Mercury Transmit will do OK but not accurate for a professional monitoring. (right?) Unprofessional in what way? sync delay? Color? Thank you! the web is filled with a lot of cross-info :)…”

Ae’s color management system makes the comp viewer color-accurate, if and only if you’re using a color-managed workflow and you have accurately profiled your monitor. I’m honestly not sure how Ae’s color management system works with Mercury Transmit; I’ve never tried.

If you have a calibrated broadcast monitor, you want to bypass the video card and color management system and use a video I/O card. You could also use video I/O to monitor interlacing if that’s important to you.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Adam Lewen] “So basically, GTX970 with 4 outputs might not help me, and a simple black-magic will do the trick? (GTX 970 is what I have now on this machine…)”

What are you trying to accomplish? What kind of display are you monitoring with?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Andrew Somers] “I have always hated the Animation codec. Uncompressed 8 bit is lower fidelity than a 10 bit compressed format like ProRes. “

Well… it’s worth noting that Animation can be encoded on any platform, and that depending on what you’re doing, an 8-bit RGB intermediate could be superior to a chroma-subsampled Y’CbCr intermediate like ProRes 422, even though it is 10-bit.

I strongly agree on rendering EXR out of C4D — we do the same as a matter of course. You get so much more flexibility in compositing with all that dynamic range conserved in a floating point format.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Adam Lewen] “I would like to have a final outcome of Dual monitor for work and a 3rd screen o show the video output preview. a pretty common setup.”

In Preferences > Video Preview, enable “Mercury Transmit,” then select one of the 3 monitors attached to your system as the output device. You can then use the forward slash on the numeric keypad to toggle Mercury Transmit on and off.

If you’re connecting to a professional video monitor and want to use it for accurate signal monitoring, you will need a video I/O card like Blackmagic or AJA.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]