August 2009 - Pro-apps-dev - lists.apple.com

Re: Testing with lossless codecs
by Brian Gardner 10 Aug '09

10 Aug '09

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=dk20050327; d=earthlink.net; b=cw0B2LAY0i/B/gFNG4myeAqtoaKfPDZ0pu2Pl4zIq4+gjdgZBir0tyTSZTyQqUt+; h=Received:Message-Id:From:To:In-Reply-To:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:Subject:Mime-Version:Date:References:X-Mailer:X-ELNK-Trace:X-Originating-IP; Thanks, Darrin. There appears to be no way to test my plugins using a lossless QuickTime codec. -- Brian On Aug 10, 2009, at 10:08 AM, Darrin Cardani wrote: On Aug 3, 2009, at 9:38 AM, Dan DiPaola wrote: Darrin -- Darrin Cardani dcardani(a)apple.com _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/brianrg%40earthlink.net _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… I tried the Difference matte technique you suggested to test a number of QuickTime codecs, including the Animation codec. None of them were lossless. Actually, it's kind of scary that QuickTime does not have a single codec that is completely lossless... even the "uncompressed" were lossy. I used a 10 bit DPX 1920x1080p 24.0 fps sequence as source footage, which I've just received from a recent music video shoot, shot on a stage. The goal is to convert it into a single QuickTime ".mov" file, with lossless compression (or even no compression). I couldn't achieve that goal. Here are the codecs that I tested: Animation (at best setting) - truncates off the bottom 2 bits (10 bit - > 8 bit), which is lossy. None - Exact same results as Animation. 8-bit only. truncated bottom 2 bits. Lossy. (Differencing the Animation and None codecs to each other gives 0's-- exact match.) FCP Uncompressed 422 10 bit - differences at all edges (to be expected, 444->422 issue) DNxHD 10 bit 709 - Noisiest of these codecs. (Noisy into top 8 bits.) Blocking artifacts, especially in the vertically oriented direction. Lossy. Apple Pro Res HQ - slightly noisier than FCP Uncompressed 422, but similar 444->422 lossy results. Apple Pro Res 4444 codec - least lossy of the codecs I tested. Appears to have saved full 10 bits. (Did not just truncate down to 8. Possibly can do 16->16 bit?) Noisy in bottom bits, though. Lossy. NOTE: The Apple Pro Res 4444 codec has a bug, in that it does not appear to do the right thing if it is given an image that does not have an alpha channel. And there is no option in the codec UI to automatically add a fully opaque alpha channel. (It would be very nice to have that option.) When I layer two copies of the SAME resulting ProRes 4444 video on top of each other, and toggle visibility of the top layer On & Off -- they do not match! There is a brightness/contrast difference, which appears to be stemming from the alpha. For my 10 bit 444 source video, Pro Res 4444 was less lossy than "Uncompressed", "None", and "Animation". "Lossless" QT codecs appear to only be lossless for 8 bit video, not anything above 8 bits. Ditto for 444 video ... where even "Uncompressed" is quite lossy. Both were rather jarring surprises. II have found that "NONE" does a fairly good job of holding a color space. ... most of all no artifacts. If and when my gamma or saturation shifts I do a compensation pass on the front end. I need all the color gamut I can possibly get with ABSOLUTELY no artifacts. We encode for Blu-ray, any artifacting will make itself known on a 60' screen after we compress the HD down to 18Mbs. If there is even so much as a hint of color banding or posterization I will amplify it by a factor of two or more depending on the motion and colors used in the shot. I do not believe Animation is a truly and completely lossless codec. The Animation codec absolutely is a truly and completely lossless codec when set to Best temporal and spatial quality. If you find that not to be the case, it's a bug. You can do a simple test by compressing some footage with it, opening up the compressed footage and placing it over the original footage and setting the blend mode to Difference. If there are any pixels which are not 0, then it's not lossless. (And if that's the case and you're sure you've set it to Best quality, then it's a bug.) This email sent to brianrg(a)earthlink.net This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: [Q] How to retrieve FourCC code for a video track?
by JongAm Park 10 Aug '09

10 Aug '09

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com; h=Received:X-YMail-OSG:X-Yahoo-Newman-Property:Message-ID:Date:From:User-Agent:MIME-Version:To:CC:Subject:References:In-Reply-To:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding; b=Xgar8R3DsiNpVQUKUNq35qjy2J+AQAwGSHHqcSWwpMs9Osg/AkKuv0FXxkfhPCXsXgwdL/yN08mYzMPe+C9KIWr9I/99/RErCvSZ4jSBFOkj4fcYmbIQ9eqWy11wXKHx5Vj7SIya8aPpP2bx+ymRpMFLTfhNWciJrfszx33ZFuQ= ; User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.22 (Windows/20090605) Hello, :) Yes. I know that there is SIGGRAPH being held nowadays. :) You wrote in the NSCoder Night mailing list. :) By the way, fortunately, I solved the problem. :) :) Enjoy the SIGGRAPH! JongAm Park On Aug 7, 2009, at 10:55 AM, JongAm Park wrote: Darrin -- Darrin Cardani dcardani(a)apple.com _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… A few weeks ago, I visited the Panera on Santa Monica, but didn't see you there. :) ( Oh.. I have not bee in the CocoaHead meeting from last Oct. or Nov.. I have been very busy from that time.. ) But still have other problem which is more about QuickTime. So, it doesn't fit for pro-apps-dev mailing list. ( Hint : With Drop-Frame video, the returned current temporal position - by dragging the QuickTime movie controller's thumb, or pressing -> key, doesn't correspond to actual temporal position always. It feels like that the starting temporal position which FCP thinks and QuickTime player think are a little different sometimes, but.. anyway.. we noticed a small frame drop, but after a while it caught up with the correct temporal position.) Darrin Cardani wrote: Well.... I would answer to my own question.. Good detective work! :) Many of us have been at SIGGRAPH, and the internet connections there were terrible. Sorry we couldn't help you sooner. By the way, is there any safe way to remove the line where NewHandle() is called? Because it is not recommended to be used, I would like to remove it. However, GetMediaSampleDescription() call looks to ask an allocated new handle. This is a problem with using QuickTime. It requires that you use some older methods which are deprecated. I'm guessing that will not be the case with QuickTimeX in SnowLeopard, but in the meantime, the only way to get rid of the warning is to turn off warnings about deprecated functions, as far as I know. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: [Q] How to retrieve FourCC code for a video track?
by Darrin Cardani 10 Aug '09

10 Aug '09

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com On Aug 7, 2009, at 10:55 AM, JongAm Park wrote: Darrin -- Darrin Cardani dcardani(a)apple.com _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… Well.... I would answer to my own question.. Good detective work! :) Many of us have been at SIGGRAPH, and the internet connections there were terrible. Sorry we couldn't help you sooner. By the way, is there any safe way to remove the line where NewHandle() is called? Because it is not recommended to be used, I would like to remove it. However, GetMediaSampleDescription() call looks to ask an allocated new handle. This is a problem with using QuickTime. It requires that you use some older methods which are deprecated. I'm guessing that will not be the case with QuickTimeX in SnowLeopard, but in the meantime, the only way to get rid of the warning is to turn off warnings about deprecated functions, as far as I know. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: Testing with lossless codecs
by Pierre Jasmin 10 Aug '09

10 Aug '09

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Organization: RE:Vision Effects User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.22 (Windows/20090605) On Aug 3, 2009, at 9:38 AM, Dan DiPaola wrote: Darrin -- Darrin Cardani dcardani(a)apple.com This email sent to jasmin(a)revisionfx.com _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… Darrin Cardani wrote: II have found that "NONE" does a fairly good job of holding a color space. ... most of all no artifacts. If and when my gamma or saturation shifts I do a compensation pass on the front end. I need all the color gamut I can possibly get with ABSOLUTELY no artifacts. We encode for Blu-ray, any artifacting will make itself known on a 60' screen after we compress the HD down to 18Mbs. If there is even so much as a hint of color banding or posterization I will amplify it by a factor of two or more depending on the motion and colors used in the shot. I do not believe Animation is a truly and completely lossless codec. The Animation codec absolutely is a truly and completely lossless codec when set to Best temporal and spatial quality. If you find that not to be the case, it's a bug. You can do a simple test by compressing some footage with it, opening up the compressed footage and placing it over the original footage and setting the blend mode to Difference. If there are any pixels which are not 0, then it's not lossless. (And if that's the case and you're sure you've set it to Best quality, then it's a bug.) FYI: unless you have cartoons and text animation... (flat graphics), normally codecization of file lossless formats like PNG produce much smaller file size _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/jasmin%40revisionfx.com This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: Testing with lossless codecs
by Darrin Cardani 10 Aug '09

10 Aug '09

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com On Aug 3, 2009, at 9:38 AM, Dan DiPaola wrote: Darrin -- Darrin Cardani dcardani(a)apple.com _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… II have found that "NONE" does a fairly good job of holding a color space. ... most of all no artifacts. If and when my gamma or saturation shifts I do a compensation pass on the front end. I need all the color gamut I can possibly get with ABSOLUTELY no artifacts. We encode for Blu-ray, any artifacting will make itself known on a 60' screen after we compress the HD down to 18Mbs. If there is even so much as a hint of color banding or posterization I will amplify it by a factor of two or more depending on the motion and colors used in the shot. I do not believe Animation is a truly and completely lossless codec. The Animation codec absolutely is a truly and completely lossless codec when set to Best temporal and spatial quality. If you find that not to be the case, it's a bug. You can do a simple test by compressing some footage with it, opening up the compressed footage and placing it over the original footage and setting the blend mode to Difference. If there are any pixels which are not 0, then it's not lossless. (And if that's the case and you're sure you've set it to Best quality, then it's a bug.) This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: [Q] How to retrieve FourCC code for XDCam clips?
by JongAm Park 10 Aug '09

10 Aug '09

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com; h=Received:X-Yahoo-Newman-Property:Message-Id:From:To:Content-Type:Mime-Version:Subject:Date:X-Mailer; b=QqQXdyLP4RWu9umBTDkcw0NfN3uynp6xvktgQf/UGPJL9tcEUlMLJ6ghpevNEecoHs+Lg2yI7S8O5riZ7ie+UnbG9ksjmGkRsIYDKGstXj4qfARZpwZURlYC/Y8RG9my9PtR4VE31pwQMsBiuiwqfVIHFB6hR/HNMi4hjrVXTBg= ; _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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[Q] How to retrieve FourCC code for XDCam clips?
by JongAm Park 10 Aug '09

10 Aug '09

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com; h=Received:X-YMail-OSG:X-Yahoo-Newman-Property:Message-Id:From:To:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:Mime-Version:Subject:Date:X-Mailer; b=fn2qFwRM1P/iBQH9fB5+txIiOzSxn/2aJ6i4rY0arQuMg5JW0pxJTIVBC+/1w8j5r9jRYurYkfj3DMNJ/fiAPw8wHC/V1O/vg/bt3cnc4+HorUeZrCUAPX4HtNwO5AxCxRKF7EVMyRSFSZnwRlLL9HKPqfSGI1FibL6TLz2qgfY= ; Hello, Thank you. JongAm Park _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… Last week, I succeeded in retrieving FourCC code using ImageDescriptionHandle and GetMediaSampleDescription() function for DVCPro HD clips. With help of Dumpster, I found out that the FourCC information was stored in sample description portion of mov format. However, for XDCAM clip, it didn't work. dumpster shows correct width, height, fourCC codes and so on under its sample table, but when I did it with the GetMediaSampleDescription(), the returned address doesn't seem to mean a handle to a proper address location which contains the information. So, should I use different *DescriptionHandle for XDCAM? I looked up its raw content after dereferencing with * already. It seems to be not- expected memory content. Is the XDCAM case the only special case? Is there anything common way to retrieve the information no matter what codec a clip uses, if nay? This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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markers on nested sequences in XML import
by Rainer Standke 09 Aug '09

09 Aug '09

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Hello, To reproduce: Can't try this myself on FCP 7 - yet. Thanks, Rainer _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… can anyone confirm that markers on nested sequences get ignored when importing an XML file? This is what I am seeing in FCP 6.0.6. - nest a sequence in a sequence. - put a marker on that sequence (on the nested clip, not the mother sequence) - export mother sequence as XML - reimport XML This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: saving plugin internal state
by Steve Christensen 09 Aug '09

09 Aug '09

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com steve On Aug 8, 2009, at 4:47 PM, Brian wrote: Thanks for the tips, Steve. Actually, I am trying to save the state of a singleton object. (Neither per clip, nor global preference.) So, it's more like a 'project setting' type of thing. Or maybe even a 'sequence setting'. I'd certainly love it to be a 'sequence setting'. I'll definitely need to store the value inside the FCP (or Motion) project file, somehow. Any ideas? _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… If the state is something where you're using a snapshot of it at the time your effect is applied, you can certainly go the custom, hidden parameter route. Otherwise you might be able to embed something in the project or sequence by sending FCP some XML via AppleEvent but I haven't tried to do something that myself so it's just a guess. That won't work as well if there are unsaved projects, though, since they aren't terribly visible to the outside world (i.e., your plugin) until they're saved at least once. This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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Re: saving plugin internal state
by Brian 08 Aug '09

08 Aug '09

site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com Delivered-To: pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=dk20050327; d=earthlink.net; b=TW+y0Uk8gR6SjZH/JPQD1V1zm+gd7xyXtG5Q6VSB0+0lcWRiQLTQ0dGeIJmLSM4/; h=Message-ID:Date:From:Reply-To:To:Subject:Cc:Mime-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:X-Mailer:X-ELNK-Trace:X-Originating-IP; Thanks for the tips, Steve. Actually, I am trying to save the state of a singleton object. (Neither per clip, nor global preference.) So, it's more like a 'project setting' type of thing. Or maybe even a 'sequence setting'. I'd certainly love it to be a 'sequence setting'. I'll definitely need to store the value inside the FCP (or Motion) project file, somehow. Any ideas? -- Brian _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Pro-apps-dev mailing list (Pro-apps-dev(a)lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/pro-apps-dev/site_archiver%40lists.a… This email sent to site_archiver(a)lists.apple.com

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