Apple Intermediate Codec?

[Benjamin Maas]

So I'm stuck here... I need to edit some video that was shot with a colleague's cameras (a Canon XH-A1 and a little Sony consumer one FWIW). I've gotten files from other FC users in the past, but it has been FCP where they've used Prores as their codec and all has been great in CS5.

now, this client only has Final Cut Express which only uses Apple Intermediate Codec. The files open beautifully in Quicktime on my Mac, but they do not open at all on the PC using any program. Are there any ways to convert them to some sort of codec on the PC that will work? This is rather frustrating and my client isn't terribly technically literate (at least with Video editing) so getting him to export something else is going to be tough.

I do have a Macbook Pro that I use for my Pro Tools setup, but it is running 10.4.10 right now so any mac-based solutions need to be able to work with an old OS.

Any ideas on how to get this to work so I can get this project edited up?

Thanks!

--Ben

[Perrone Ford]

PC's cannot read AIC. AT ALL. FCE can export to other formats. Or you can covert the stuff over on the Mac side with Mpeg Streamclip or similar. But AIC and PC is a no go.

[Benjamin Maas]

Do you have suggestions as to a format to export to? What programs on the Mac side can be used for that conversion and do they have a batch converter? I have a bunch of stuff that needs to be converted.

--Ben

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Benjamin Maas

Do you have suggestions as to a format to export to? What programs on the Mac side can be used for that conversion and do they have a batch converter? I have a bunch of stuff that needs to be converted.

--Ben

Personally, I do conversions with Mpeg Streamclip. And I prefer the Avid DNxHD codec (you can download it for free).

Other codecs that you have available are motion JPEG (MJpeg A/B, photo jpeg, uncompressed (large file sizes), and several others.

[Bart Walczak]

DVCPRO HD should do well as intermediary codec.

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Bart Walczak

DVCPRO HD should do well as intermediary codec.

Absolutely NO WAY I would use DVCProHD as an intermediate unless FORCED to.

[Mike McCarthy]

DVCProHD MOVs are not compatible with Windows without some strange workaround software, and even then it is flakey. Cineform offers a good cross platform codec, and for your purposes, using a trial of NeoScene on your mac should allow you to make the conversions, and once youare on the P, you can convert it to something else if you don't want to continue using Cineform's format.

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Mike McCarthy

Cineform offers a good cross platform codec, and for your purposes, using a trial of NeoScene on your mac should allow you to make the conversions, and once youare on the P, you can convert it to something else if you don't want to continue using Cineform's format.

Why convert it to a for-pay codec, when he can use a multitude of free ones to accomplish the same job? I could understand if he planned to make this a permanent workflow, but for a one off job?

[Mike McCarthy]

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

Why convert it to a for-pay codec, when he can use a multitude of free ones to accomplish the same job? I could understand if he planned to make this a permanent workflow, but for a one off job?

I was recommending that he use the free trial on his mac to create the Cineform files, and then only buy Cinefrom if he wanted to continue using that workflow on his PC. If not, the CF decoder is free, and the files would now be on his PC in a readable format, and ready to convert to any other codec, should he so desire.

Also, what free codec offers cross platform support at high quality with significant compression ratio? Uncompressed is clearly an option, but I assumed he had a lot of footage to deal with and storage space and transfer time become issues without reasonable compression. Plus getting the file from Mac to PC is an issue if they are over 4GB, unless the systems are on the same network, or your PC has Mac Drive. Matrox MPEG is my usually second choice, since it is free but not cross platform, same with BMD MotionJPEG at even lower quality.

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Mike McCarthy

Also, what free codec offers cross platform support at high quality with significant compression ratio?

I already mentioned this in my second post.

[Mike McCarthy]

I should have added, "and can be edited in realtime on PC" (Presumably in CS5 since this is the Adobe section of the forum) The only MOVs that CS5 will play back smoothly by default are Canon DSLR files and Cineform MOVs, since these have dedicated importers that bypass Quicktime entirely. Any other MOV format would require calling Quicktime to decode the file, which is only a 32bit program. Since CS5 is 64bit, it can't communicate with Quicktime directly, so it passes the request to a 32bit Adobe sub app, which calls Quicktime to decode and return the frame and pass it back to CS5. This is a slow and resource intensive process, which is why Quicktime files have such bad performance on the PC side in CS5.

While all of the formats you suggest would make the data accessible on the PC side, they would not be ready to edit in an efficient fashion. DNxHD is probably his best truly free option, and usually offers decent performance on a high end system, but it suffers from the same Quicktime slowdown in CS5.

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Mike McCarthy

I should have added, "and can be edited in realtime on PC"

Yep, that certainly does change things...

Originally Posted by Mike McCarthy

While all of the formats you suggest would make the data accessible on the PC side, they would not be ready to edit in an efficient fashion. DNxHD is probably his best truly free option, and usually offers decent performance on a high end system, but it suffers from the same Quicktime slowdown in CS5.

Sony Vegas has the same limitation and shows the same performance slowdown. To combat this, I settled on the free Matrox codecs. They are MPEG2 based, inside an AVI container. There are some framerate limitations, but outside of that, they performed BEAUTIFULLY. I gave them up when I went to Avid because with AMA, Avid really wants a ..MOV workflow which suits me just fine.

I'd have a look at those Matrox codecs, but because they are .AVI, you won't have any success with them cross platform. Cineform is really the only way around that I believe.

[Mike McCarthy]

I used Matrox's MPEG I-Frame HD AVI codec as the primary editing codec in my facility from 2006 to 2009, and still have tons of archival footage in that format, but eventually we had to discontinue use of it entirely. We switched to Cineform as our primary compressed format for four reasons:

Compatibility with Macintosh systems (Zero OSX support for Matrox's AVI files)
Support for 10bit color and RGB colorspace (As the level of aquisition systems matured)
Support for 64bit OSes (This is now fixed, but until this year, lack of M.Key drivers prevented the codec from being read at all on 64bit Windows systems.)
We needed to be able to easily import our footage into Avid systems (Even ingest to MXF was unsupported)

If you are PC only, and only need an 8bit 4:2:2 codec, (HDV, AVCHD, etc) then Matrox MPEG2 HD is the way to go. It plays back great full resolution, even on older systems, and renders at reasonable speeds.

[Perrone Ford]

Mike, looks like we took a similar path. If Matrox worked those codecs into a 10bit with full support across frame rates, they'd really have something.

But this is why I stick to SMPTE/ISO standards for my archival footage. So it's all now either DNxHD or Jpeg2000 in my archives. Works Mac or PC.