Reports from the Field
Once again on the ProRes flavours

The open-source bubble is just as toxic as the rest of society.

This is a kind of sequel of A walk through ProRes flavours, but this time the meeting will be held in English.

Video codecs

The ProRes 422 family

It has 10 bit per channel and 4:2:2 subsampling.

• ProRes 422 HQ
• ProRes 422
• ProRes 422 LT
• ProRes 422 Proxy

The ProRes 4444 family

It has 10 or 12 bit per channel for 4:4:4 sampling and an additional alpha channel with up to 16 bit.

• ProRes 4444 XQ
• ProRes 4444

The ProRes RAW family

What do we know about the two Bayer-based formats presented by Apple six years ago and about the three formats not presented yet? How are the sensel values encoded into pixel values?

• [RAW XQ]
• RAW HQ
• RAW
• [RAW LT]
• [RAW Proxy]

Media containers

Today ProRes content can be wrapped into three different media containers, each of them having advantages and disadvantages.

QuickTime (.mov)

Apple’s own original proprietary container.

Material eXchange Format (.mxf)

The Library of Congress (Kate Murray) made this solution possible.

Matroska (.mkv)

The solution we currently prefer.

What and how

Short presentations on history, usage and challenges of these popular video codecs and media containers by Michal Cohen and Reto Kromer, followed by an informal Q&A session and light refreshments. The participants should be familiar with the basics of video file formats.

When and where

In-person at the EPFL Innovation Park with webcast on Friday the 19^th of April 2024, starting at 11 o’clock sharp here in Switzerland (that’s 09:00 UTC). We will use a Jitsi-based platform and the link will be provided in proper time.

As usual, the admission to our Reports from the Field is free, but a registration is required, as the seats are limited to a dozen or so, in order to enable in-depth technical discussions and the exchange of information.

Notes

• Reto Kromer was repeatedly bullied on social media by Paul B. Mahol because he was working with 12-bit ProRes content from Arri’s Alexa camera. The tweet published here is the most civilised one.
• We are very unhappy that our generosity is often betrayed, as many of our materials are distributed without naming their origin. Increasingly, others are even shamelessly claiming authorship of our work, which is just disgusting behaviour. And that’s the very reason why some resources are no longer freely available, but have been moved to password-protected parts of our website.

2024-02-14