multiplatform codec help

[CaedenVintori]

ok, so I am working on a project with a friend and we are having some technical difficulty with being able to use the same files.

What was done so far:
Using the "Everything AV" guide" (which is excellent by the way!) I had decided to encode using Lagarith so that my beautifully up-scaled progressive footage would remain untouched until our final export (which we are planning on some version of x264, likely the h.264, but unsure yet)
At any rate, we have this beautiful video footage that my computer uses quite naturally and quickly, but my friend's mac wont touch it! In fact there seems not to be a mac codec for Lagarith or Huffyuv which was our backup option (there is a Huff codec, but not for intel-macs). We even tried full uncompressed, but as our 12sec test file was over a Gig we determined that this is not practical (LOL, his poor laptop couldn't even play the file in real time it was so big!).

At any rate, the questions that remain are:
1) Is there a lossless compression out there that is fully keyframeable like Huff that will work on both my PC and his mac?
2) If not then what should we be using? DVCpro which can do HD? or something else entirely?
3) We did try DVCpro, and it works, but on the win7 system it was having ratio problems which created tall anemic looking characters. This problem did not happen on the mac. What would cause this?

[CaedenVintori]

Macbook:
Macbook Pro, core2duo, 2GB ram, 9400GTmobile graphics, 250GB internal, 300+GB external drive
Using the Adobe CS4 software suite, may be using CS5 by the time we actually get to editing.
mostly using this for After Effects as he is a design student and is using this as a primer before his AE class.

PC:
Win7 Home 64bit, core2duo 2.4Ghz, 4GB ram, 9800GT graphics, 80GB system drive, 1TB media drive, and a spare 160GB drive for kicks.
Using Adobe CS2 collection which is Premiere Pro1 and After Effects 6.5
Using this computer for all rendering, trans-coding, and editing with exception of AE

[mirkosp]

You can use lossless x264. In zarxgui set the constant quality to 0 and it will be lossless and, yes, fully keyframed.
Remember to pick fastdecode as the tune, instead of animation, so editing will be faster, too.

[Kionon]

At any rate, we have this beautiful video footage that my computer uses quite naturally and quickly, but my friend's mac wont touch it! In fact there seems not to be a mac codec for Lagarith or Huffyuv which was our backup option (there is a Huff codec, but not for intel-macs).

WUT? O_o

Yes there is. I talk about it all over the mac forum, and I use it on my intel macs every day.

Perian and Avidemux both can access it, as can the CSX suites in .MOV containers.

[post-it]

At any rate, we have this beautiful video footage that my computer uses quite naturally and quickly,
1) but my friend's mac wont touch it!
In fact there seems not to be a mac codec for Lagarith or Huffyuv
2) which was our backup option
(there is a Huff codec, but not for intel-macs).

WUT? O_o
Yes there is. I talk about it all over the mac forum, and I use it on my intel macs every day.
Perian and Avidemux both can access it, as can the CSX suites in .MOV containers.

Mac or PC is not the issue on this subject.

PC: when I got my System7 LapTop I loaded it with:
.Msscmc32.dll for frame-rate control.
.Radiummp3v2-552 for MP3 & M4A audio.
.CorePNG-VFW-v0.8.2 Codec for editing.
.CCCP codec set.
...... pulled-out three AMV's recorded within the past 3 months and they played/edited just fine.

MAC: when I got my OS/10 screen/computer I loaded it with:
.whatever I could find available for MAC's ... or so I thought!
...... there's a lot more available to MAC's than there are PC's; just install them and you'll be fine.

if something works on a PC and does not seem to work on another PC/MAC that's because
something is missing. I know what software I use in MAC, Lenix & PC. Make a list of everything
you put in your PC-- there has to be something which you missed when seting-up that MAC; now what is it?

[Kionon]

if something works on a PC and does not seem to work on another PC/MAC that's because
something is missing. I know what software I use in MAC, Lenix & PC. Make a list of everything
you put in your PC-- there has to be something which you missed when seting-up that MAC; now what is it?

This is simply not true. There are some programs and codecs that do not work on MacOS X. If what you say was true, I could run the .NET Framework on MacOS X and the same way I can on windows. But, at the moment, only limited use of MS .NET has been ported to Mac, basically silverlight in Safari, etc.

Also certain Mac versions of codecs, such as lagarith, simply are not stable enough to be useful, even if "technically" they exist.

The operating systems are not at all the same, and you cannot always get exactly the same functionality. You will have to change your workflow and your process, even if using an emulator like wine or crossover.

[Mister Hatt]

Huffy works in OSX perfectly well. You're doing it wrong.

[CaedenVintori]

Thanks Kionon, you are the only person here who seems to know what you are talking about! Ive been searching for "huffyuv for mac" and such for days and this never came up. We will give it a try and let you know if we need more help.

Also, can mac do huff in .avi container as well? Or should I stick with .mov only?

[CaedenVintori]

OK, so it ends up that he already had Perian, and huff is on the list of supported formats, but it did not work. Is this because it was an .avi? and what is the easiest way to switch to a .mov? just export from Premiere?

[Kionon]

EDIT: Mac CS4 can open Premiere Pro 1 projects, BUT NOT REVERSE. Mac CS4 will change the Pro 1 project file to CS4 project format. Both editors need CS4 to be compatible.

I just caught that. Should have made it really clear.

Thanks Kionon, you are the only person here who seems to know what you are talking about! Ive been searching for "huffyuv for mac" and such for days and this never came up. We will give it a try and let you know if we need more help.

Mister Hatt is a professional encoder. He knows what he's talking about, but he sometimes assumes everyone else does as well. He also can levy a bit too much brevity. We all can when dealing with subjects we know really well.

Mirkosp is a moderator, and while a fairly recent addition to the org family, a welcome one. He has learned a lot in a short time, and usually does indeed know what he is talking about. His knowledge of Mac is secondhand though, usually from me. I try to keep him abreast of developments and tests that I do. He can usually answer questions on the basis of what we discuss. Here he did not explain his advocacy of x264, but it will run on Mac as he suggests.

Post-it has largely been incoherent for years. His diatribes are usually completely meaningless, and you should take a large grain of salt with anything he tells you. He will, of course, argue this, and I have nothing personally against him, but he does do a rather good job of obfuscating the issue at hand in any given conversation he enters.

As for me, I am pretty much the Org's go-to-guy for Mac. I spend a fair portion of my time specifically running tests, checking new software, and reading/writing guides for editing on the Mac. I own three G4s and two Intels. I almost never boot into windows. I am pretty much entirely Mac based for everything. I run any needed programs, such as AviSynth, via wine-based derivative Crossover. There's still a lot about using AviSynth and encoding I don't know, but what I do know, I know the ins and outs of on Mac.

OK, so it ends up that he already had Perian, and huff is on the list of supported formats, but it did not work. Is this because it was an .avi? and what is the easiest way to switch to a .mov? just export from Premiere?

Mac in general can run HUFFYUV AVI files just fine, if you mean the OS. Once Perian is installed, you can run it in QuickTime or any QuickTime enabled product (with notable exceptions, which we will discuss). Of course, it will also show up in a host of other players with HUFFYUV internal support like MPlayerOSX or VLC.

I've brought this up repeatedly across the forums. Premiere and Final Cut, for whatever reason, seem to once in a while take AVI files. Most of the time, they look at you and say, "Uh, no. I don't think so." In that case, you do need to use the MOV container. Since using AVI files is so rarely a winning prospect, I don't even argue with the editors anymore, and use MOV automatically. I believe it has something to do with the way the suites read the codec/container combination that differs from what it expects via the Perian QuickTime component, and so they refuse to run HUFFYUV in AVI because they can't understand how that combination can be used to edit with. But this is pure speculation based on the fact that AMV editors are NOT the intended demographic for the editing suites, and professional or prosumer users of the suites are expected to use their own footage and stick to the formats offered by their platform, AVI or MOV, and with the codecs usually associated with those containers. AMV editors just, bluntly put, do things that the products are not marketed for, and we are certainly not catered to by Apple or Adobe like professionals or prosumers are.

Use MPEGStreamClip for changing containers. Use the Save As function. Do not export (that reencodes). You want to simply move the HUFFYUV stream into a MOV container.

Assuming that Premiere Pro can use HUFFYUV in MOV on windows, if you are sharing a joint project, stick to that. Because if you edit in windows with avi files, and then bring the project over to Mac, you're going to run into errors, and the bait and switch method may not work because Premiere will yell at you about the switched out MOV not being the same format as the AVI it replaced on the timeline.

If Premiere Pro on windows can't handle MOV (and I don't see why it shouldn't) or has trouble with the MOVs you produce in MPEGStreamClip, get back to me, and we'll try to figure something out. I'll go into BootCamp and try to find out a crossplatform FORMAT (as opposed to a crossplatform CODEC, which is not your issue here). In the end, Mirko may be right, and the only crossplatform CODEC/CONTAINER combo might be lossless x264/MP4.

We'll cross that bridge if and/or when we get there.