Render to Prores from WIndows

Hello. i Saw in youtube manual what i can render into prores files directly from Davinci. But i have no option to render via Apple codec. See the screenshot.
I have installed Quicktime codec.
How can i render to prores via davinci? or i should use some decoder for change a codec of my video?

You can't render Prores in Windows, only import it.

You can't render Prores in Windows, only import it.

oooh. whats bad

This is a licensing decision by Apple. For reasons known only to them, they won't allow Windows Resolve to render ProRes. You can read ProRes (though not ProRes Raw). Mac Resolve and Resolve Advanced Studio Linux can render ProRes.

This is a licensing decision by Apple. For reasons known only to them, they won't allow Windows Resolve to render Prores

Where do you get this info? It is repeated time and again with no plausible source. People who do have licensed prores for their software instead argue that it is free of charge to use prores encoder, one must simply comply with specific licence agreement. And this is up to other party, not Apple. Otherwise I could say that me not buying Photoshop is a decision of Adobe or someone not buying Resolve is the decision of BMD. Makes little sense to me.

This could be easily verified. Say that you are a software developer and ask Apple what you need to do to integrate ProRes encoding.

To the TO: Fusion Studio can encode ProRes on the PC. If you want a free solution, ffmpeg can do it too, but it's not Apple-blessed. Some clients may not accept such footage.

This is a licensing decision by Apple. For reasons known only to them, they won't allow Windows Resolve to render Prores

Where do you get this info? It is repeated time and again with no plausible source. People who do have licensed prores for their software instead argue that it is free of charge to use prores encoder, one must simply comply with specific licence agreement. And this is up to other party, not Apple. Otherwise I could say that me not buying Photoshop is a decision of Adobe or someone not buying Resolve is the decision of BMD. Makes little sense to me.

In the past to was crazy hard to get license for ProRes on Windows (for start it had to be only Windows Server). It's a verified fact.

It's not true anymore, but Apple still may have a say depending on your application usage.
ProRes on Windows may never come to free Resolve, I don't see any reason why it can't be in paid version. It's a business decision (may reduce sales of Linux top version), but I think we will see ProRes export in Studio soon. Hard to ignore this option if now all major NLEs have it.

Since Apple is the owner of ProRes they can do whatever they want with it (and they act alike).

Some pay to have it, some get paid by apple to use it, some have to sing a song, etc...

Best solution is to switch to a better free alternative.

Not so easy. Just working on 1000+ master project and 80% are ProRes. 80% work done to them will end up as ProRes as well. There is nothing wrong with it as it's good codec and most important all official implementations are solid. You can't necessarily say the same about eg. DNxHR or Cineform as no one controls it.

[Apple] won't allow Windows Resolve to render ProRes.

To the best of my knowledge, Apple has only licensed ProRes encoding for Windows twice - Fusion and the Adobe suite. Every other program that claims to have the capability doesn't seem to last very long.

Not so easy. Just working on 1000+ master project and 80% are ProRes. 80% work done to them will end up as ProRes as well. There is nothing wrong with it as it's good codec and most important all official implementations are solid. You can't necessarily say the same about eg. DNxHR or Cineform as no one controls it.

ProRes as an input codec is fine (heavy on compute resources but who cares when you can pay $50k for a MacPro), just don't use it as a delivery codec.
DNx is controlled by AVID (heavy on compute resources but who cares when you can pay $10-15k for a 3990x workstation+some RTX cards) and Cineform (runs on your grandma's laptop) is controlled by GoPro (SMPTE ST 2073 VC-5 video compression standard)

[Apple] won't allow Windows Resolve to render ProRes.

To the best of my knowledge, Apple has only licensed ProRes encoding for two Windows programs, Fusion and Premiere Pro. Every other program that claims to have the capability doesn't seem to last very long.

And quite a few others. Official licensee list is on apple website, no need to guess: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT200321

Which of them are doing it on windows isn't obvious from there but for example whole Nuke family has been writing prores on win for ages. Personally I have tested Mistika workflows (which is a new soft) writing prores and other Mistika versions do it to afaik.

Not so easy. Just working on 1000+ master project and 80% are ProRes. 80% work done to them will end up as ProRes as well. There is nothing wrong with it as it's good codec and most important all official implementations are solid. You can't necessarily say the same about eg. DNxHR or Cineform as no one controls it.

ProRes as an input codec is fine (heavy on compute resources but who cares when you can pay $50k for a MacPro), just don't use it as a delivery codec.
DNx is controlled by AVID (heavy on compute resources but who cares when you can pay $10-15k for a 3990x workstation+some RTX cards) and Cineform (runs on your grandma's laptop) is controlled by GoPro (SMPTE ST 2073 VC-5 video compression standard)

AVID doesn't give a crap how you implement DNxHD/R in your app.
Cineform is controlled by no-one. GoPro has not much to do with it anymore (never really did). David doesn't really care either how you implement it in your app.
This is why ProRes is actually good, as Apple at least has some impact on the way how you implement it in your app. Results are clearly visible- every official implementation is quite good. There are way less issues with ProRes than any other codec when you start moving some files between big chains of different tools.

First time I hear that ProRes is heavy on the resources.
Cineform can be decoded at fractional resolutions so this is why it's easy. At full quality it's not that much easier than ProRes or DNxHR. In the same time Cineform has slightly worse quality at given bitrate. ProRes has also 1/2 resolution decoding mode, just no one implemented it (except FCPX).

[Apple] won't allow Windows Resolve to render ProRes.

To the best of my knowledge, Apple has only licensed ProRes encoding for two Windows programs, Fusion and Premiere Pro. Every other program that claims to have the capability doesn't seem to last very long.

Hmmm? You must be really not up to date on this.
All major tools have ProRes export now (Premiere, AVID, Edius, Mistika, Nucoda, Scratch, Cortex, Marquise, Clipster, ContentAgent, Nuke, Vantage...). List is quite long, when you add transcoding, ingest and other tools.

Yes, but all come at a price. Cheap or free products are based on ffmpeg and it's reverse engineered ProRes. While Apple didn't (yet?) stop that, other programs offered for a few bucks disappeared quickly, Apple has good lawyers.

Where do you get this info? It is repeated time and again with no plausible source.

Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies. But I have good reason to believe it's true. I know some low people in high places who tell me that that's the deal. It's Apple's bat and their ball, so they control the rules for the game. If it were just a matter money, I'm sure BMD could hand Apple X dollars and then charge an extra $99 for this feature in Resolve Windows and then it'd be done. But I don't think it's just a question of money.

To the best of my knowledge, Apple has only licensed ProRes encoding for two Windows programs, Fusion and Premiere Pro. Every other program that claims to have the capability doesn't seem to last very long.

Oh, there's a ton of Windows and Linux programs that can render ProRes and they're licensed by Apple. Heck, even Fusion Studio can render ProRes (to a point). After Effects can render ProRes as well. What the exact sticking points are only known to Apple and BMD.

Yes, but all come at a price. Cheap or free products are based on ffmpeg and it's reverse engineered ProRes. While Apple didn't (yet?) stop that, other programs offered for a few bucks disappeared quickly, Apple has good lawyers.

Because ffmpeg by its pure existence does not break any law.
When you use it at home you may break it but Apple is not going to chase individual people. If you create a product based on this code and try to sell they will. This is why BM can't add it. But they can leave a ability for user to 'link' to ffmpeg and pass legal responsibility this way. This would most likely upset Apple anhway so they are not going to do it either.

All major tools have ProRes export now

Thanks for the heads up.

Apple owns all parts of ProRes. Encoding and decoding.

The decoding portion is easily accessible using the Quicktime engine on Windows or AVFoundation (Quicktime X) on OSX.

The encoding part is not quite easy. It is NOT automatic part of OSX. You need an Apple ProApp (FCPX, Compressor, Motion) to access the encoding portion of ProRes if you want to encode using AVFoundation libraries.

Some apps have internal native support for it, but that is a licensed part - Adobe as an obvious example. However, installing Adobe CC does not mean you can encode ProRes outside of the Adobe CC apps. It is true of any ProRes 3rd party encoding deployment AFAIK.

On Windows, there are a handful of ProRes encoders. It was only Telestream's encoding server, but that was expensive. Now you have Adobe, Fusion, and other software - some offer it as a PAID option.

Avid's implementation is different. They use ProRes in MXF container internally in Media Composer. On Windows, Avid cannot (yet) generate NEW ProRes media (no export, transcode, render, etc.). It can export ProRes Quicktime (.mov) if the original media is already in ProRes using the "Same as Source" option. It is a container rewrap instead of an actual new encoding. Both Apple and Avid did announce that ProRes native support (in a MOV container) will be coming soon to Media Composer and DNx will be native to FCPX.

How much the devs have to pay to use ProRes encoder? I don't know. I'm sure it depends on the product, the duration, etc. - like any licensed IP.

Avid DNx codecs are not free either. From what I have heard, it is more money in the long term than ProRes. Apple seems to have a more hands-on approach to what apps can support ProRes.


FFMPEG is an open-source implementation of ProRes. It works, though some apps sometimes will flag it as not true ProRes or have a hard time reading the metadata/header portion of the codec. I'm not sure if that is by design by the apps or bug on FFMPEG. We stay away from it because it is quite costly to fail QC and looks terrible for in a client services perspective. But I do know some that swear by it and are successfully running their business with it.

The decoding portion is easily accessible using the Quicktime engine on Windows or AVFoundation (Quicktime X) on OSX.

Everyone has moved on from the QuickTime engine on Windows. I can't think of a single current application that uses it instead of a direct implementation.

Avid's implementation is different. They use ProRes in MXF container internally in Media Composer.

Man, I wish that were true everywhere. I'd love to see QuickTime die already.

Avid's implementation is different. They use ProRes in MXF container internally in Media Composer. On Windows, Avid cannot (yet) generate NEW ProRes media (no export, transcode, render, etc.). It can export ProRes Quicktime (.mov) if the original media is already in ProRes using the "Same as Source" option. It is a container rewrap instead of an actual new encoding. Both Apple and Avid did announce that ProRes native support (in a MOV container) will be coming soon to Media Composer and DNx will be native to FCPX.

How much the devs have to pay to use ProRes encoder? I don't know. I'm sure it depends on the product, the duration, etc. - like any licensed IP.

Avid DNx codecs are not free either. From what I have heard, it is more money in the long term than ProRes. Apple seems to have a more hands-on approach to what apps can support ProRes.
.

This is of course political decision. MXF or MOV doesn't matter- encoder is the same as well as ProRes elemental essence inside.
There are other tools which write ProRes in MXF- Edius does it (and other more specialised tools).

DNxHD/R is not free when wrapped to MXF as far as I understand. In other containers, eg. MOV it's free.

Avid's implementation is different. They use ProRes in MXF container internally in Media Composer. On Windows, Avid cannot (yet) generate NEW ProRes media (no export, transcode, render, etc.). It can export ProRes Quicktime (.mov) if the original media is already in ProRes using the "Same as Source" option. It is a container rewrap instead of an actual new encoding. Both Apple and Avid did announce that ProRes native support (in a MOV container) will be coming soon to Media Composer and DNx will be native to FCPX.

How much the devs have to pay to use ProRes encoder? I don't know. I'm sure it depends on the product, the duration, etc. - like any licensed IP.

Avid DNx codecs are not free either. From what I have heard, it is more money in the long term than ProRes. Apple seems to have a more hands-on approach to what apps can support ProRes.
.

This is of course political decision. MXF or MOV doesn't matter- encoder is the same as well as ProRes elemental essence inside.
There are other tools which write ProRes in MXF- Edius does it (and other more specialised tools).

DNxHD/R is not free when wrapped to MXF as far as I understand. In other containers, eg. MOV it's free.

Avid writes a slightly different MXF from everyone else. Everyone uses OP1A, which is MXF that contains metadata, video AND audio. Avid Use OpAtom, which separates audio and video. This makes sense for NLE since often you need to deal with audio and video separately.

I don't think it was political since Avid MC has always been MXF since the deprecation of OMF - before ProRes existed. In order to access MOV internally in its native form in MC, Avid had to implement AMA.

That makes sense about DNxHR. I'm not a dev so I cannot say for sure.

The decoding portion is easily accessible using the Quicktime engine on Windows or AVFoundation (Quicktime X) on OSX.

Everyone has moved on from the QuickTime engine on Windows. I can't think of a single current application that uses it instead of a direct implementation.

I didn't say otherwise. My point was, decoding was accessible to everyone on Windows for no cost.

Media Composer on Windows still depends on Quicktime libraries for some of its import and export tasks.

Avid's implementation is different. They use ProRes in MXF container internally in Media Composer. On Windows, Avid cannot (yet) generate NEW ProRes media (no export, transcode, render, etc.). It can export ProRes Quicktime (.mov) if the original media is already in ProRes using the "Same as Source" option. It is a container rewrap instead of an actual new encoding. Both Apple and Avid did announce that ProRes native support (in a MOV container) will be coming soon to Media Composer and DNx will be native to FCPX.

How much the devs have to pay to use ProRes encoder? I don't know. I'm sure it depends on the product, the duration, etc. - like any licensed IP.

Avid DNx codecs are not free either. From what I have heard, it is more money in the long term than ProRes. Apple seems to have a more hands-on approach to what apps can support ProRes.
.

This is of course political decision. MXF or MOV doesn't matter- encoder is the same as well as ProRes elemental essence inside.
There are other tools which write ProRes in MXF- Edius does it (and other more specialised tools).

DNxHD/R is not free when wrapped to MXF as far as I understand. In other containers, eg. MOV it's free.

Avid writes a slightly different MXF from everyone else. Everyone uses OP1A, which is MXF that contains metadata, video AND audio. Avid Use OpAtom, which separates audio and video. This makes sense for NLE since often you need to deal with audio and video separately.

I don't think it was political since Avid MC has always been MXF since the deprecation of OMF - before ProRes existed. In order to access MOV internally in its native form in MC, Avid had to implement AMA.

That makes sense about DNxHR. I'm not a dev so I cannot say for sure.

Yes, but why they would not have MOV ProRes export? People export masters for deliveries not just to pass to other AVID. OpAtom is not delivery friendly and no one uses it. It all smells politically driven decisions- Apple will do native DNxHD/R handling and AVID will use ProRes and MOV
AMA is just a massive patch on old AVID core (actual whole AVID is outdated technology).

Yes, but why they would not have MOV ProRes export? People export masters for deliveries not just to pass to other AVID. OpAtom is not delivery friendly and no one uses it. It all smells politically driven decisions- Apple will do native DNxHD/R handling and AVID will use ProRes and MOV
AMA is just a massive patch on old AVID core (actual whole AVID is outdated technology).

You can export ProRes from Avid in OSX. In the Windows side, it was never implemented I assume because of cost. Even the first implementation of Windows ProRes export, Telestream server, was incredibly expensive.
Yes OpAtom is not practical transferring and delivering master files, but it was not supposed to be. Avid uses it because it makes sense in a collaborative environment. Moving audio and video files everytime to other parts of the collaborative chain is extremely inefficient if they just need audio OR video. VFX may not want all 120 tracks of audio. Sound mix unlikely wants that 4444 video file.

Avid being outdated? Hardly! Adobe is copying their project sharing method (bin locking) in the UPCOMING release of Premiere. DR seems to be adding a lot of the OLDER features of NLE
Bin locking is still a better implementation than BM PostgreSQL method. MC's multicam is better than most. Even the concept of a bin file is better than DR's DRP. Its Interplay Media Indexer is far better than any NLE or DR for large collaborative environment. The PMR/MDB indexer is also something I wish Adobe, Apple and BM copy.

Yes, it is not sexy like FCPX or DR, but Avid MC is still the best tool in a collaborative editing environment.

Cost of Telestream FLIP Factory now Vantage has not much to do with ProRes. It was and still lis very expensive app as it's an enterprise tool with many special features. It's not that great for its cost though.

It was long time ago. Today ProRes export support on PC is 1000x better.

AVID has its unique features, but its core is very outdated and this is what I'm talking about (not usability etc.). They just don't want to take risk and task to re-write it, but ideally this what should be done.

Cost of Telestream FLIP Factory now Vantage has not much to do with ProRes. It was and still lis very expensive app as it's an enterprise tool with many special features. It's not that great for its cost though.

It was long time ago. Today ProRes export support on PC is 1000x better.

AVID has its unique features, but its core is very outdated and this is what I'm talking about (not usability etc.). They just don't want to take risk and task to re-write it, but ideally this what should be done.

Correct, the cost of Telestream server was not because of ProRes but for a long time that was the ONLY option for ProRes on Windows. So effectively, it was an expensive ProRes solution.

ProRes export on PC is better. But do you know which ones are using ffmpeg and which are using Apple's? Because I'm pretty sure many of the PC solutions are ffmpeg based.

I agree that Avid should have done a wholesale rewrite of the code. They are doing it in pieces (playback engine, render engine, I/O module, etc.). Many have been updated. They now support 32-bit float for their playback engine. But FX system needs an overhaul. I wish it was node based my DR but I doubt that will happen.

All major apps use licensed implementation (Premiere, AVID, Edius, Mistika, Nucoda, Scratch, Cortex, Marquise, Clipster, ContentAgent, Nuke, Vantage).
It's mainly free tools which uses ffmpeg.
List is quite big now:
https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT200321

Looks like Lightworks, Vagas and Resolve are left.

Looks like Lightworks, Vagas and Resolve are left.

Resolve IS in the list now... But where is our ProRes?

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The list is not differentiating between MacOS and Windows, so I'm afraid it's still only the Mac version.
I'd like to recommend Kyno, which is doing Apple-blessed ProRes and is quite useful for preparing media in general.

Apps which are not on the list are ffmpeg based.

Wow.
Some light at the end of the tunnel!

So with all this in mind…

PC Resolve users:

Curious to know everyone’s ProRes delivery workflow. Since we can’t export ProRes how do you go about delivering ProRes? Most of our master deliverables are ProRes so I usually export out of Resolve (uncompressed 10-Bit RGB) and then use Adobe media encoder to make my final ProRes deliverables. Any other better work flows? Or is going uncompressed out of resolve and then converting to ProRes the least lossy workflow?

Uncompressed out of Resolve > Shutter Encoder

So with all this in mind…

PC Resolve users:

Curious to know everyone’s ProRes delivery workflow. Since we can’t export ProRes how do you go about delivering ProRes? Most of our master deliverables are ProRes so I usually export out of Resolve (uncompressed 10-Bit RGB) and then use Adobe media encoder to make my final ProRes deliverables. Any other better work flows? Or is going uncompressed out of resolve and then converting to ProRes the least lossy workflow?

About best you can do now if you have Adobe license.
You can export v210 (10bit YUV) to save bandwidth (unless you want ProRes444).

Other way is using ffmpeg based solution or other licensed implementation (Scratch, etc).

Voukoder made available DaVinci export plugin which includes ProRes.

It works pretty well, ProRes is passing Getty's quality control which is strict.

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Doesn’t Voukoder just use ffmpeg under the hood?

So does shutterencoder.

As I wrote above: every encoder that's not on Apple's list.
And they better be free or Apple will be doing to them what happened to Cinemartin.

Since we can’t export ProRes how do you go about delivering ProRes?

I tell my clients I can't deliver anything QuickTime. They need to choose something else.

They always have.

Doesn’t Voukoder just use ffmpeg under the hood?

Is it matters as soon as it works without vessels and passing quality control? And Getty has it, and it is very strict. No one of the free converters (and most of the paid ones) I tried did not pass except Acrovid, and now, Voucoder.


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It doesn’t matter, question is rather, how do you know when it doesn’t at one point if it uses the same underlying libav based encoder as the ones that don’t pass. It might be some combination of settings that triggers a no-go encode and you can’t tell. If it does pass reliably all is fine, official prores doesn’t have ”magic keys” in it or rounder zeroes and pointier ones.

You can always tell that encode is not from an official encoder as none of the free ones uses proper (eg. close by +-5% to official) data rate control.
In most cases rejection has nothing to do with ProRes data itself actually, but bits around MOV container (but this is just a matter of proper cmd for ffmpeg).

i use Resolve -> DNxHR uncompressed -> Scratch
pretty simple and straightforward

from a document sitting in my inbox today:

4K UHD HDR
Specifications change based on the type of HDR submitted (HDR10 vs Dolby® Vision) Please follow the applicable spec below for what you are submitting.
Approved formats: Apple ProRes 4444, Apple ProRes 4444 (XQ).
Dimensions: 3840 x 2160 (UHD) or 4096 x 2160 (DCI 4k).
Bitrates: Apple ProRes 4444 ~1320 Mbps; Apple ProRes 4444 (XQ) ~2000 Mbps
Framerate: 23.976
See below for color space information.
For both Dolby® Vision and HDR10

on and on, it's a tiny part of a 16 page document, but yea, read "Apple ProRes" and understand that is excatly what it means, not "FFmpeg ProRez" or "some random ProRez"

Voukoder made available DaVinci export plugin which includes ProRes.

It works pretty well, ProRes is passing Getty's quality control which is strict.

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Directions at developer site and also in this video (

)
don't work for me with latest Resolve 17.2.1 Build 12

Have the DaVinci guidelines / support for codec plugins changed? The docs still match the instructions.
Help>Developer>DaVinci Resolve IO Encode Plugin SDK

You need Resolve Studio.

i gave Voukoder another try
installed easly, ran perfectly

on the same machine (2x Xeon / 2x RTX2080 / 128g / SAS arrays)

in Resolve i ran out a 60 sec clip to Voukoder's ProRezHQ in 26 seconds
ran out the same clip to DNxHR 422HQ in 11 seconds
in Scratch i ran out the same clips to ProRexHQ 10 seconds

the Voukoder ProRez opens and report as a ProRezHQ on the desktop. MC, Nucoda, Scratch and Resolve
opened up the three Qt's an did not have an issues with any of them

in Drastic's Video_QC, and the Voukoder was an instant fail.... the other two were golden

so as long as i did not need to go near QC, like making dalies or screeners maybe, maybe Voukoder could be an option to look at
but at 2.5x slower than DNxHR export it does not take a long before it makes more sense to run out a DNx mezanine and then let Scratch run with the ProRez?

Dermot, what was the reason for QC fail, could you show a report?

I had some issues with audio running voucoder.
Haven’t seen pcm options.

What codec did you use for 24 bit depth?


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i gave Voukoder another try
installed easly, ran perfectly

on the same machine (2x Xeon / 2x RTX2080 / 128g / SAS arrays)

in Resolve i ran out a 60 sec clip to Voukoder's ProRezHQ in 26 seconds
ran out the same clip to DNxHR 422HQ in 11 seconds
in Scratch i ran out the same clips to ProRexHQ 10 seconds

the Voukoder ProRez opens and report as a ProRezHQ on the desktop. MC, Nucoda, Scratch and Resolve
opened up the three Qt's an did not have an issues with any of them

in Drastic's Video_QC, and the Voukoder was an instant fail.... the other two were golden

so as long as i did not need to go near QC, like making dalies or screeners maybe, maybe Voukoder could be an option to look at
but at 2.5x slower than DNxHR export it does not take a long before it makes more sense to run out a DNx mezanine and then let Scratch run with the ProRez?

There is no problem with ProRes out of ffmpeg when it comes to codec syntax itself. I have not seen a single file which would note decode properly in any software (this was never an issue). Remaining and real issues are related to data rate not been as reference encoder (average/peak etc) and MOV headers (which is just a matter of correct command- not most basic ffmpeg one quoted by everyone). Depending who does QC and what they expect you may get fail or pass. ffmpeg prores produces data rate bigger than reference encoder with quality about the same, where prores_ks produces file closer to reference (still overshoots if I remember well), but quality is slightly lower. For dailies etc. there is 0 issue using any ffmpeg based solution as long as command is correct.