This is why I don’t trust Apple

I know very few people that go out of their way to use Cineform or DnxHD on a Mac. Honestly Cineform would have died a long time ago if GoPro didn't buy it and force it to stay alive just so they could be different. As a FCPX and Mac user I honestly don't see this as a problem at all and fully embrace the decision to not focus energy on supporting old antiquated formats.

Besides I'm sure some 3rd party tool will pop up to add support be it commercial or open source. Just because Apple isn't going to spend the time or money providing support for formats that 1% of 1% of people actually use doesn't mean there will not be some kind of solutions in the future if the demand is there. Will be interesting to see if the demand really is there or if this is just another reason for people to bash Apple.

As for sharing material as a Mac user I honestly don't want anybody else to give me Cineform or DnxHD. You better find a way to hand me ProRes files or some other format or I don't want to do business with you. Even if you have to use an external recorder to feed a HDMI out from your system to record ProRes files. I want a format that works well with my systems and tools of choice. Handing me DnxHD or Cineform forces me to convert the material or deal with formats that are not well optimized and have limited support. Why should I have to suffer just because a PC person doesn't want to use a universal format.

The way I look at it the PC market has failed the community by not having a solid and well supported intermediate format like ProRes. Cineform had a ton of potential and honestly Adobe royally screwed up by not buying it and providing it for free with Premiere. DnxHD is an ok format but its owned by Avid and performs horribly for anybody not using Premiere or Avid. Its just not the flexible universal format people hoped it would be and we use it on the PC side because frankly there are no other choices.
 
Thomas Smet said:
As a FCPX and Mac user I honestly don't see this as a problem at all and fully embrace the decision to not focus energy on supporting old antiquated formats.
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I would not characterize it as a decision not to focus energy but rather a decision to be exclusionary for self interest.

You better find a way to hand me ProRes files or some other format or I don't want to do business with you. Even if you have to use an external recorder to feed a HDMI out from your system to record ProRes files. I want a format that works well with my systems and tools of choice. Handing me DnxHD or Cineform forces me to convert the material or deal with formats that are not well optimized and have limited support.
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That's exactly what you will get, no business from outside the exclusion zone. Isocentric culture is not a path to growing a business if you are not an oligopoly which Apple is but you are not.
 
So far I've never been asked for DNx. As far as ProRes, and I say this as a Mac person, but also a working cameraman, I was so sick of "we've gotta have ProRes" from some clients(we're talking BIG network). In this day and age(the last ~5 years), you should be able to accept any format handed to you. One of my friends used to quip, when we'd get the ProRes request from this client, "You want me to go over to the middle school next to my house and get some of the kids out of the video production class so they can show you how to edit?".

As a side not, when I bought my F55 I bought the $2k "ProRes/DNx" card and had it installed. I think I've shot ProRes with the camera maybe three times in the roughly 3 1/2 years since, because people are finally realizing they need to be able to accept more codecs. ProRes may be great on the computer side, but as an acquisition format/codec, I don't see any added visual benefit compared to XAVC on my F55 AND it takes up a lot more space(i.e: less record time).
 
I'm not so sure about that Cinema5D article.

Check out this one for what appears to be a cooler-headed analysis by an actual developer:

Thoughts on 32-bit codecs being phased out in macOS
https://www.digitalrebellion.com/blog/posts/thoughts_on_32_bit_codecs_being_phased_out_in_macos

A few excerpts:
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To be clear, it's not that 32-bit codecs are going away, it's that all 32-bit software is going away. But it affects video software the most because the only reason for an app to still be 32-bit in 2018 is because it uses QuickTime.
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But remember: this only affects macOS's native video frameworks. Developers don't have to use them and there's nothing to stop someone writing their own DNxHD parser. You don't need to worry about your files becoming unreadable because ffmpeg will always be there. (It still supports ancient long-dead codecs like Indeo!)
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This is unlikely to change much with Adobe or Blackmagic. They use their own parsers for a lot of formats so will be immune to this change. The people it affects the most are small developers, who now have to come up with solutions to problems that Apple was taking care of for them in the past.
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But Apple shouldn't postpone or cancel the death of QuickTime (it absolutely should die) - the solution is to allow third-party extensibility in the new frameworks. I'm not holding out hope that this will happen, and our ultimate goal is to be cross-platform so we'd probably go down the ffmpeg route regardless, however if enough people complain they may at least continue to support some additional codecs in FCPX.
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There's more; it's not too long and not too technical.

As for DNxHD, DNxHR, they're both quite nice editorial codecs. I'd be happy to have a good camera-to-delivery codec (like you can sometimes do with ProRes), but it's not really neccessary.

And as for trusting Apple or any company... I trust them as far as I can throw them. I mean, lots of companies make great stuff that makes my work better, easier, and less expensive. But they're constantly introducing changes thats make things trickier for me.

However: I don't need to buy tape and VTRs anymore!

Jim "loves and hates Windows, macOS, and Linux" Feeley
 
But Apple shouldn't postpone or cancel the death of QuickTime (it absolutely should die) - the solution is to allow third-party extensibility in the new frameworks. I'm not holding out hope that this will happen, and our ultimate goal is to be cross-platform so we'd probably go down the ffmpeg route regardless, however if enough people complain they may at least continue to support some additional codecs in FCPX.
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Jim, I agree with you but the cooler headed analysis by the actual developer is:

1.) appealing to Apple user base to complain in numbers in the hope of getting some unlikely third party extensibility support or additional codecs in FCPX;
2.) recognizing the value of cross platform support;
3.) stating he'd go down ffmpeg route regardless, i.e. with or without Apple's consent;

That's pretty accurate and also blunt. I ask you as a PC user, why would I want to discard legacy codec support when the only thing I would gain that I don't already have is FCPX? Does anybody really believe that Apple is going to be the only OS with 64 bit codecs when it's needed?
 
Tom, no worries... I think we're basically on the same page. I guess I think back the abandonment of Cinepak (OMG, was that painful).

And I hope our key NLE developers or smaller developers will fill our needs. Like the pretty interesting (but not necessarily perfect) AfterCodecs:

AfterCodecs brings you with consistency all the codecs and features you need
ProRes, yes even on Windows
H264 8K (not limited to 4K) and a fast YouTube export profile easy to use
All 4 HAP codecs with faster algorithms
Works without Quicktime !
https://aescripts.com/aftercodecs/

The politics, market wars, and marketing wars bug me too. I don't know if Apple's worse than other companies in this regard; I could argue both sides. Now, hopefully more people will realize that ProRes isn't the last (or best) word in codecs for our world. And maybe Apple will start to be clearer about what's going on with ProRes RAW and make a better argument for why we'd want to use it other than "Because it's GREAT... And we're Apple, man!" Their ProRes RAW whitepaper is fairly information free.

But thinking back to past Apple-imposed transitions, such as adding a discrete DSP chip to the 840av then abandoning that idea, 680x0 CPUs to PowerPC CPUs, PowerPC to Intel, old Mac operating system to unix-based Mac OS X, FCP 7 to FCPX.... Heck, IIRC when Apple transitioned to PowerPC FileMaker was incompatible for a long time, and that was because there wasn't a Pascal compiler that would compile to PowerPC, and Apple owned FileMaker. So this current imbroglio ain't a shocker.

But today, we finally have clear air here in Northern California, it's a beautiful day, and I'm about to take some pear-cranberry-walnut pies out of the oven. Hope you and everyone have a great Thanksgiving!
 
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Tom Roper said:
I would not characterize it as a decision not to focus energy but rather a decision to be exclusionary for self interest.



That's exactly what you will get, no business from outside the exclusion zone. Isocentric culture is not a path to growing a business if you are not an oligopoly which Apple is but you are not.
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It’s called respecting the needs of the other editor or client. If I was working with a PC user I needed to hand off to I wouldn’t give them ProRes and expect them to just deal with it. I would do the work to make sure the transition is smooth and not put that burden on somebody else. I would hope you as an editor would have the same level of respect for me.

It’s not easy crossing platforms and that is unfortunate that in 2018 we still face this problem. It’s not really an issue for most camera formats however so it’s not like we are hopelessly lost here. Most cameras that shoot ProRes also happen to shoot raw. Part of why the EVA1 and Varicam shoots 400mbps 10bit all-I is to get around the single platform issue as well. It really takes unique situations for a project to only have Dnxhd or Cineform material that needs to be shared. Basically any project that uses an external recorder to bypass a cameras format for dnxhd or the GoPro cameras which don’t have to use cineform either.

I only really see this as an issue for the extreme niche market that uses external recorders and decides dnxhd is the better choice even though they may know ahead of time that not all parties will be on PC.

What we really need is a better intermediate format that is universal. How one does that is more difficult but that’s where formats like 400mbps h264, BRAW and other modern non AVI/QuickTime formats are better choices for a cross platform environment.

Cineform can still be in the game if GoPro gets their act together and updates the codec to 64bits. Contact them and demand they update the format. Same goes for dnxhd and Avid. Why are people not more upset that those two great formats have been neglected for years? Apple is not excluding all alternative formats here like h264. Perhaps we should also be asking external recorders like BMD and Atomos to add a 3rd recording option like high bitrate 10 bit h264 instead of feeding into the cross platform divisiveness of ProRes and dnxhd. That way when there is collaboration a decision can be made to use that 3rd option. For projects where there is no collaboration needed then Mac users can choose ProRes and use a format that works best for them and PC users can continue to use dnxhd.
 
cyvideo said:
It's all on Apple's support site if you don't trust 5D:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209000

A bit more here:

https://www.digitalrebellion.com/bl...U5aK8y2BqPYLhi2hKgqxYNjEh0FFYWUmKmf2c0Hjy1Bgg

Chris Young
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We are well aware support is dropping. What we question is how many people treat it like the sky is falling situation. The second article you linked to even admits this only affects small developers that use QuickTime to support codecs. Programs like Adobe that build their own parsers will still support dnxhd on a Mac. From an Adobe perspective that’s the only way I would consider using dnxhd today anyway since the performance is vastly better than the open source codec. The same can apply to Cineform if a 3rd party or GoPro builds better support for the format in specific applications.

Not only do very few if any Mac users use dnxhd but those that do very likely are not using the horrendous free version of the codec. They are likely using either Avid MC, Resolve or Premiere that has their own support for the format. If one typically works in a collaborative environment they are likely using a NLE like Avid, Resolve or Premiere that actually you know works on a PC or Mac and not using FCPX.

Most cameras also don’t shoot to those formats or at least have alternative formats. Neither dnxhd or ProRes are really designed for cross platform use. They are formats designed for an optimized workflow on specific platforms or systems. Adobe had to invest a lot of time and energy to build their own support for dnxhd that didn’t suck. It would be nice if there was a way to share dnxhd in a way that ProRes can be shared with just about any Mac user and get 100% optimized performance but I’m not sure that will ever exist in the PC world. Apple May have more of a closed system but that also can come as an advantage. GoPro doesn’t need to use Cineform and in terms of file sizes it probably shouldn’t. The BMD cameras that can shoot to dnxhd also shoot to raw or ProRes. Again it’s cool for Adobe users to have the ability to use dnxhd in an optimized way but if you know you will be working with a FCPX user it’s important to understand what their needs are.

This is why we consider the shock and awe tactic of reporting on this to be bogus. It actually affects very few to no people outside of developers that want to build cost effective tools that are not plugins to one of the above NLEs or FCPX users that will have a harder time reading those formats. To be honest myself and most FCPX users cannot recall the last time somebody tried sharing a dnxhd or Cineform file with us so again not really a big deal at all.

In reporting there is stating the facts and then there is warping the facts around a massive pile of festering opinion. Cinema4D represents more of the fear mongering type of opinionated reporting that isn’t really helping the community.

I question the impact this actually has on most of our lives or if Apple haters are just using it as another opportunity to troll the web in some sort of religious crusade to convert the Mac heathens.
 
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