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Is there no ProRes 4444 with Alpha alternative?

PostPosted: Fri Dec 13, 2019 12:14 pm
by Filmond
Hi,

I probably would not have started this topic if it was possible to encode ProRes in DaVinci Resolve on other-than-mac hardware.

I just started using DaVinci Resolve for editing projects. Now, after being quite impressed with its capabilities, it has become quite interesting to ask if it wasn't reasonable to switch to other-than-mac hardware. However, we still use three Macs, we use After Effects a lot (although Fusion is awesome and we used it already for one motion-design project) and we do quite a lot of motion-design and animation projects. There are some flaws with using Windows, especially when it comes to intermediate codecs.
The question is: Is ProRes the one codec to rule them all?
What type of intermediate files do you use at the final stage of motion-design and compositing projects, especially when you need an alpha channel and full software compatibility?
Can you avoid using image sequences in editing programs, looking at the speed and versatility of ProRes 4444?
Who can provide us with an all working alternative?

I made this comparison of the most popular intermediate codecs to show you why I like to use ProRes so much.

Re: Is there no ProRes 4444 with Alpha alternative?

PostPosted: Fri Dec 13, 2019 4:15 pm
by Andrew Kolakowski
ProRes uses lossless compression for alpha, so this is why in case of plain textures you get smaller size for alpha data. It's like ZIP.
There is really no other alternative, except image sequences.

Re: Is there no ProRes 4444 with Alpha alternative?

PostPosted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 6:44 pm
by Filmond
Thats is interesting to know and explains the small file size. I think there are a lot of windows users out there, while we are still on macs. Im asking myself: How come no company ever delivered an alternative to ProRes?

Re: Is there no ProRes 4444 with Alpha alternative?

PostPosted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 6:54 pm
by Frank Engel
Filmond wrote:How come no company ever delivered an alternative to ProRes?


There are several alternatives out there - look at the table in the OP - but they are not commonly used and are thus not as well supported.

Re: Is there no ProRes 4444 with Alpha alternative?

PostPosted: Mon Jan 13, 2020 7:02 pm
by Andrew Kolakowski
DNxHR and Cineform are alternatives, but there is no one to keep an eye on their implementation, so not everything works well in different apps.
What people don't like about Apple (fact that they control everything) is from other point Apple's big advantage.
It's hard to find poor implementation of ProRes and this is because Apple keeps an eye on it.

Not sure why you say Premiere/AE can't encode alpha in DNxHR? It should work. Don't use MXF, but MOV.

Re: Is there no ProRes 4444 with Alpha alternative?

PostPosted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 1:14 am
by antoine
VP8 and VP9 are like H264 with an alpha channel and could probably be used with high quality settings, unfortunately support is lacking for encoding and decoding in most NLEs :(

Re: Is there no ProRes 4444 with Alpha alternative?

PostPosted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 1:20 am
by Uli Plank
Even if VP9 is offered in Delivery, I never succeeded to get any results out of it. Just hangs.

Re: Is there no ProRes 4444 with Alpha alternative?

PostPosted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 1:21 am
by antoine
Never succeeded in importing it in which software or player ? Or you mean encode with it ?

Re: Is there no ProRes 4444 with Alpha alternative?

PostPosted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 1:25 am
by Uli Plank
I mean encode in DR, since this thread was about encoding.