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Subject: Re: [AE] Lossless movie format
From: Jim Curtis <jpcurtis@me.com>
In-reply-to: <list-5472588@media-motion.tv>
Date: Tue, 13 May 2014 16:58:06 -0500
Message-id: <E2631BD2-855C-416E-93BD-1433739651DA@me.com>
References: <list-5472588@media-motion.tv>
To: After Effects Mail List <AE-List@media-motion.tv>

Any speculation of yours would likely be superior to mine.  At the time, Avid was still tying their codec to their overpriced hardware, which may have led some to doubt their sincerity.  It might have been that, and a lack of trust, not to mention Avid's historical fickleness and constant regrouping.  OMF was standard def at the time as well.  I'm not engineering inclined, but perhaps it wasn't built to scale up.  The existing DNxHD codecs have limitations on frame size and rates that make them unsuited for intermediates and pre-renders.  It may just be that "the Avid way" isn't for everybody.


On May 13, 2014, at 4:38 PM, Brendan Bolles <brendan@fnordware.com> wrote:

> On May 13, 2014, at 1:16 PM, Jim Curtis wrote:
> 
>> As I recall from many years ago, OMF was announced by Avid to be an Open (source) Media Framework that they hoped would be adopted by the world.  
>> 
>> That didn't happen.
>> 
>> http://www.edlmax.com/FormatOmf.htm
> 
> 
> Right.  Maybe you can fill me in on the history of OMF and we can use it as a cautionary tale.  There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of info about it.  Maybe that's part of the problem.
> 
> 

> Seems to me that OMF didn't have an open source library and probably used some sort of patent-encumbered video encoding.  All they had was a spec and then demanded that developers write their own software to deal with it.  OMF also tried to be a quasi-project file with transitions and such, forcing developers to handle that too.  No wonder it wasn't widely adopted.
>