Return-Path: Received: from spike.lmi.net ([66.117.140.17] verified) by media-motion.tv (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 4.2.10) with ESMTP id 4574769 for AE-List@media-motion.tv; Wed, 28 Dec 2011 03:03:58 +0100 Received: from [192.168.1.132] (c-71-198-249-239.hsd1.ca.comcast.net [71.198.249.239]) by spike.lmi.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 86C38154124 for ; Tue, 27 Dec 2011 18:10:20 -0800 (PST) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v1084) Subject: Re: [AE] best codec for cross platform sharing From: Brendan Bolles In-Reply-To: Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 18:10:19 -0800 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-Id: References: To: "After Effects Mail List" X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1084) On Dec 27, 2011, at 4:18 PM, Steve Oakley wrote: > Adobe is one of the few companies large enough to do this. I don't ask = them to do it for free.=20 I think it should/must be free. Software can be proprietary, but file = formats should be free and open. And because of that, I don't think it = should come from Adobe, although it would be great if they would sponsor = it. The model for creating a good, completely free compression format = already exists in the form of the PNG and OpenEXR still image formats. = PNG was made by a free-wheeling band of open source programmers on the = internet, while OpenEXR was made by a production studio. Both were = introduced with open source software libraries and have since become = widely adopted. What we need is a movie equivalent. I don't think it = should be another codec within QuickTime, but a new format that could be = used on computers that don't have QuickTime (i.e. Linux). If you really = don't want to create a whole new one, maybe an MXF wrapper would do. OpenEXR supports several different compression formats for different = purposes, and the new format could too. But the key is that every = OpenEXR application can read and write all the different codecs because = they're all included in the source distribution. For a movie format, = you could allow H.264 as an option using free encoders and decoders = which are already available. Of course, we'd also want lossless codecs = that supported higher bit depths like 16-bit integer and 16/32-bit = float.=20 Brendan