Full Prores on Windows and Full DNxHD for everyone

cuervo

cuervo

Veteran
It would appear that for 50 bucks, we can now have prores encoding on a PC and/or full DNxHD, including 444, on any platform without Media Composer:
http://www.miraizon.com/products/codecsoverview.html

Time to sh_t-can prores guys.

edit: and I almost forgot, Apple continues to ignore the gamma shift problems in .mov Quicktimes. Just so so unprofessional and manipulative of Apple to keep this going.
 
I understand what it's supposed to do, but I don't understand how it's supposed to work

Will it allow you to work with ProRes files in your Windows based NLE? Does it require some sort of conversion first?
 
The way I understand it, their codec acts like any other Quicktime wrapped codec, whether you're on windoze or macs. That means you can endode/decode with whatever xcoder you like, AME, FCP, Media Composer, edius, etc., etc. Windoze can already read Prores without performing any kind of conversion. This simply adds the capability to write to a Prores format on a PC. And the complaint that users can't write to DNxHD 444 unless you own Media Composer is now a moot argument, regardless of the platform you edit on.
 
well, bullsh*t

"Sure, it was possible to play ProRes movies under Windows, but not to actually edit or modify those movies."

i'm editing prores on windows in adobe right now, all you need is to install quicktime...

if it adds the ability to export to prores, great, but it doesn't smell entirely of roses
 
I bought a copy after seeing this, though my reasons might be slightly different than most people. Under Windows, ProRes Quicktime inside After Effects CC (which is 64 bit) has real issues with multithreading. Mainly the RAM preview in AE when using ProRes footage would often return a test pattern color bar image rather than the frame for about 25% of the frames. If you turned off multithreading for the preview it would work fine. Or if you single stepped the frame it would work fine. And renders were always ok, but using the ram preview you would end up with "dropped" frames. It was very annoying. While this product seemed like a hack, it made some claims about true multithread support. So I decided to give it a try, since this has been driving me nuts for the last month or so.

I didn't get a serial number or key, but the download installs and works without that. Which seems kind of odd. But now inside AE (and I'd guess other apps) the codec list shows Miraizon ProRes rather than the plain ProRes that was there before. And my AE test project (a couple of ProRes Quicktime clips and some greenscreen effects) that would always mess up a RAM preview seems to RAM preview with all my cores active without dropping any frames. I rendered it out at ProRes 4444 and it made what looks like a valid file, that seems to work. I couldn't see what exactly it did for me with the Avid codecs, I already had them installed. But it's possible that more modes now work, I know there were issues with some of the in many modes it would offer before. I did test it with the highest settings for 1080p and it seemed to work. But I'm not sure what it would have done before, I don't really use DNxHD enough to know.

It appears to have solved my ProRes AE multithreaded RAM preview problem though.
 
msorrels said:
I bought a copy after seeing this, though my reasons might be slightly different than most people. Under Windows, ProRes Quicktime inside After Effects CC (which is 64 bit) has real issues with multithreading. Mainly the RAM preview in AE when using ProRes footage would often return a test pattern color bar image rather than the frame for about 25% of the frames. If you turned off multithreading for the preview it would work fine. Or if you single stepped the frame it would work fine. And renders were always ok, but using the ram preview you would end up with "dropped" frames. It was very annoying. While this product seemed like a hack, it made some claims about true multithread support. So I decided to give it a try, since this has been driving me nuts for the last month or so.

I didn't get a serial number or key, but the download installs and works without that. Which seems kind of odd. But now inside AE (and I'd guess other apps) the codec list shows Miraizon ProRes rather than the plain ProRes that was there before. And my AE test project (a couple of ProRes Quicktime clips and some greenscreen effects) that would always mess up a RAM preview seems to RAM preview with all my cores active without dropping any frames. I rendered it out at ProRes 4444 and it made what looks like a valid file, that seems to work. I couldn't see what exactly it did for me with the Avid codecs, I already had them installed. But it's possible that more modes now work, I know there were issues with some of the in many modes it would offer before. I did test it with the highest settings for 1080p and it seemed to work. But I'm not sure what it would have done before, I don't really use DNxHD enough to know.

It appears to have solved my ProRes AE multithreaded RAM preview problem though.
Click to expand...

Does it work like any other plugin from within AE or Premiere?
 
msorrels said:
I bought a copy after seeing this, though my reasons might be slightly different than most people. Under Windows, ProRes Quicktime inside After Effects CC (which is 64 bit) has real issues with multithreading. Mainly the RAM preview in AE when using ProRes footage would often return a test pattern color bar image rather than the frame for about 25% of the frames. If you turned off multithreading for the preview it would work fine. Or if you single stepped the frame it would work fine. And renders were always ok, but using the ram preview you would end up with "dropped" frames. It was very annoying. While this product seemed like a hack, it made some claims about true multithread support. So I decided to give it a try, since this has been driving me nuts for the last month or so.

I didn't get a serial number or key, but the download installs and works without that. Which seems kind of odd. But now inside AE (and I'd guess other apps) the codec list shows Miraizon ProRes rather than the plain ProRes that was there before. And my AE test project (a couple of ProRes Quicktime clips and some greenscreen effects) that would always mess up a RAM preview seems to RAM preview with all my cores active without dropping any frames. I rendered it out at ProRes 4444 and it made what looks like a valid file, that seems to work. I couldn't see what exactly it did for me with the Avid codecs, I already had them installed. But it's possible that more modes now work, I know there were issues with some of the in many modes it would offer before. I did test it with the highest settings for 1080p and it seemed to work. But I'm not sure what it would have done before, I don't really use DNxHD enough to know.

It appears to have solved my ProRes AE multithreaded RAM preview problem though.
Click to expand...

Damn, you just told me what Adobe support could not under a period of 2 weeks. I had the exact same issue and I had no clue what was going on. It made me believe the footage wasn't linked. Cheers for the heads up.
 
Looks like I spoke too soon, managed to get it to do the color bars. Damn it. Though sure it was fixed.

It's not a plugin. It's a Quicktime codec. A plugin for Quicktime. It appears to replace/overwrite the Apple ProRes codec with their own. It takes over reading and writing ProRes files. So any app that uses Quicktime can use this. If the application writes Quicktime files, in the codec list you can pick ProRes and it will make a Quicktime file in Prores format. If the app reads Quicktime, it will be able to read Prores Quicktime (which native Quicktime could do before so no real big win there).
 
I'm pretty sure the color bar frame in AE RAM Preview is a AE bug but only ProRes Quicktime files seem to set it off. Getting tech support from Adobe appears near impossible since you can't submit a ticket, the best you can do is babble on their forum and hope someone sees it.

This codec does seem better but you can still get AE to do the color bars with it. It's harder to make happen than with the native ProRes, but it will still happen. Which I think supports the idea it really is mostly Adobe's bug.

Not sure this is really worth it if it can't solve my AE problem (which I'm happy to pay $50 to solve). It does make it easy to write ProRes files though, which is kind of nice. Though there is a free plugin thing that will do that (though not as nice a workflow since it's not part of the render queue saving).
 
Great information, thanx Matt.
As far as DNxHD goes, if you have a license to Media Composer, you already have all the ANxHD codec variations installed. If you only have the public version, there are some higher functioning versions of the codec that you were blocked from. This aftermarket codec claims to fix that problem.
 
I don't have Media Composer but I did install the Avid codec support awhile back. But I'm not 100% sure what didn't work before vs what works now. The highest version of 1080p/23.976, is DNxHD 175 10-bit. For some reason I though this would add 220 10-bit. It also is still showing up as Avid DNxHD in the codec list (unlike Prores which now has thier name on it). Not 100% sure I'm getting their DNxHD codec.
 
At the bottom of the giant list of DNxHD formats there does seem to be some new/out-of-place entries. Including a 1080p/23.976 DNxHD 444 10-bit. Which I don't remember being there before. It's not grouped with all the other choices though, but it doesn't seem to make a playable file when I render to it.
 
1080p24 fps will render out as 175. 1080p29.97 will render out as 220. The 444 is new, and, won't play back because the MS players don't do 444 RGB. It works best as a transfer format from something like Resolve to an NLE.
 
Ok more mystery here. In my QTComponents dir I obviously had the huge pile of Avid codecs and after installing this I had two new files. But the DNxHD component wasn't showing up in Quicktime (I have a Pro license key) or After Effects. So on the off chance the problem was the already installed Avid codecs, I just moved them out of the QTComponents dir. Now my codec list is very different. All the Avid stuff is gone and in it's place is a new DNxHD (VC-3) codec. Which I'm guessing is this one. Only it has no option dialog (button is grey in After Effects). In Quicktime you can set the number of colors and the quality. In Adobe Media Encoder I could set those but it never seemed to make it into the file. With Quicktime though I could export with Millions+ color and it did produce a 10-bit file but with only 4:2:2 color sampling. Mediainfo claims the file is 176 Mbps. But I had that already with the plain Avid stuff installed. Maybe Avid codecs on the Mac are more locked down than on Windows?

Then it gets wierdier. I moved the Avid codecs back. And now the DNxHD (VC-3) codec shows up in the list (when it wasn't before) but it now shows as Miraizon DNxHD (VC-3). Which wasn't there before. And the Avid codec's also are there. Which is kind of what I thought things should be like in the first place.

Near as I can tell the only thing "good" about this on Windows is you can easily save in ProRes format. Which is a good thing. It doesn't fully fix the problems with Quicktime and 64 bit windows/After Effects CC, but it did seem to do "better".

On the Mac this might be more useful for DNxHD formats, not sure. On Windows I don't think it's a big win there.
 
yeah, which is why I hesitated to buy the codec. It's still in a QT wrapper which is all fubared for PC users. QT really makes a mess of the video levels and has done this for years. I can't beleive the programmers at Apple are so stupid as to not know what they're doing. So, the only logical conclusion is that they're out to intentionally screw with PC users. Like I said, such juvenile and reprehensible behavior, i really dislike anything Apple. Damn iPhones and iTunes wreaks havoc on my system.....
 
We've bought it yesterday. We can now go directly from a Windows video editor to the ProRes format that a youth film festival requested. So far, we've only tested it on Sony Vegas Pro and on one video, but it seems to work fine.

I exchanged email with the company. They gave me a coupon code and said I could share it (25% off until March 15): CODECS25
There is also a 30-day guarantee.

- Carl (tech advisor to http://benkadie.com)
 
There's a freeware ProRes compatible encoder for windows called cinec, running under ffmpeg. It produces good results (better than DNxHD in my tests). I've not looked at this yet, but i will, however DNxHD is a strange beast with many versions and sub versions out there. The public side doesn't do any more than 1080p. I do wonder where the code for these new codecs has come from, as ffmpeg and it's more video centric versions have had all of these encoders/decoders in for a while.

The biggest issue under windows is QuickTime itself, it was never designed to work with the kinds of files we use these days - greater than 8 bit etc,. The settings dialogue is an archaic nightmare. For example, we discovered recently that if you don't force 16 bit then the QT encoder will dither your colours to 8bit and 16bit giving larger file sizes. So counter intuitively the force 16bit produces cleaner smaller files. This is something David at cineform showed us, when we were working with them and the foundry on getting cineform fully working with Nuke (again windows QT being the issue). All sorted now.

Here's a wonderful breakdown of this issue: http://cineform.blogspot.com/2014/02/quicktime-16-bit.html

So my mezzanine codec of choice is still cineform, free to read and a reasonably priced encoder but very good quality (RGBA 12bit 4444) and cross platform.

(I have no connection to them other that a happy long term user, and very happy with the support as well)

But if someone is using these new codecs then i'm very interested. Of course there's a good chance if they are reverse engineered that they will read and write the files differently to ProRes. So to be honest if this was a ground up build i don't understand how the can use the ProRes name and in fact they appear to suggest it *is* ProRes until you read 'ProRes compatible' further in. Cue the iLawyers i think...

(Of course i wonder if they managed to get Apple ProRes certification.... :) )

cheers
Paul
 
I've used the freeware script/plugin for AE that will convert to ProRes using ffmpeg, it works ok. But it totally outside your normal workflow. This is a much better solution if you are writing to ProRes often.

I am pretty sure their ProRes reader is using the native/built-in Quicktime ProRes support for something, since if you remove the native system ProRes qtx file, AE stops being able to read ProRes files correctly. Their qtx file is also pretty small, too small to be a full version of ProRes I'd think.

Quicktime on Windows is pretty much a nightmare, I don't think this changes that. But it did seem to write out valid looking ProRes files from AE's own render and Media Encoder. The files appeared to have the settings requested. Not sure about the actual quality though.

I think Cineform is a better choice for Windows users but GoPro has kind of messed that up when they killed neoscene. In fact I'm not even sure what my options are for upgrading neoscene anymore.

There are other codecs now as well, including the UtVideo stuff and the Blackmagic 10-bit stuff. I haven't really looked at them that hard but there are a lot more options now than ever before.
 
I could be mistaken but dont you need QuickTime pro to access prores in premiere cc? I edit prores on my PC in premiere with no issues what so ever.

Edit:
Understood, we're talking about prores export from a PC. Like Paul my choice is cineform.
 
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msorrels said:
I've used the freeware script/plugin for AE that will convert to ProRes using ffmpeg, it works ok. But it totally outside your normal workflow. This is a much better solution if you are writing to ProRes often.

I am pretty sure their ProRes reader is using the native/built-in Quicktime ProRes support for something, since if you remove the native system ProRes qtx file, AE stops being able to read ProRes files correctly. Their qtx file is also pretty small, too small to be a full version of ProRes I'd think.

Quicktime on Windows is pretty much a nightmare, I don't think this changes that. But it did seem to write out valid looking ProRes files from AE's own render and Media Encoder. The files appeared to have the settings requested. Not sure about the actual quality though.

I think Cineform is a better choice for Windows users but GoPro has kind of messed that up when they killed neoscene. In fact I'm not even sure what my options are for upgrading neoscene anymore.

There are other codecs now as well, including the UtVideo stuff and the Blackmagic 10-bit stuff. I haven't really looked at them that hard but there are a lot more options now than ever before.
Click to expand...

The free go pro studio has the cineform codecs for playback, and on cineform.com the go pro studio premium, gives all the encoding versions of cineform for 299. There's a pro version but skewed towards doing stereo. I do think there's a massive marketing mistake here, i think cineform should continue to be called cineform and rolling it into go pro very much confuses the issue.

The BM 10bit is all uncompressed and, well, only 10bit. CF is 12bit. ProRes 4444 is also supposed to be 12 bit but no mention of that on their site. UtVideo is just 422 and seemingly not integrated into QT or cross platform.

If DNxHD was more solid and publicly did 4K then it might well be the right choice, but it's limitations are too restrictive for me.

Perhaps they're reading via the apple version and writing via ffmpeg?

cheers
Paul
 
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