The PIXLET codec

Beamtracer · 06-26-2003, 12:05 AM

A new video codec has been introduced to Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther). The Pixar Wavelet codec, otherwise known as Pixlet. It's a 16bpc codec, meaning there are more shades of light and dark than regular 8bpc codecs.

When you create a Quicktime video with the Panther OS, you'll be able to select the Pixlet option. It is a lossless codec (no quality loss) but will still be able to make the Quicktime movie a fraction of the size of what it was before. It's intended for animators and professional users, rather than for web use.

Quote from Steve Jobs:
"We've never seen a codec like Pixlet on a personal computer," says Jobs. "Pixar requested this."

Just how Pixar makes such a request to Apple via Steve Jobs makes the mind boggle. Maybe he was talking to himself!

Quote from Apple's website:
Pixlet is the first studio-grade codec for filmmakers. Pixlet provides 20-25:1 compression, allowing a 75MB/sec series of frames to be delivered in a 3MB/sec movie, similar to DV data rates. Or a series of frames that are over 6GB in size can be contained within a 250MB movie. Pixlet lets high-end digital film frames play in real time with any Panther Mac, without investing in costly, proprietary playback hardware.

Some of us are familiar with the Microcosm Quicktime codec which produces similar file sizes, and has been out for a couple of years.
http://www.digitalanarchy.com/product_micro.html

toby · 06-26-2003, 03:14 AM

I was just thinking about micro-cosm, great compression, but horrible playback/scrubbing - when they say Pixlet can "play in real time with any Panther Mac" does that mean even just QT player? or does it assume FCP?

Can't wait to try it, sounds cool, and free??

Beamtracer · 06-26-2003, 05:16 AM

It means it plays back in full motion on any Panther Mac. It's a pretty amazing achievement. This is not web video. This is lossless 16bpc master quality video playing in real time of a standard hard drive. The catch? You have to upgrade to Panther.

Red_Oddity · 06-26-2003, 06:03 AM

Small price to pay in my opinion (it even means you finally have a decent file requester...woot...)

Beamtracer · 06-26-2003, 07:53 AM

Well, I previously paid the full price to purchase the Microcosm codec. It had much better quality than Apple's standard Animation codec and the file sizes were a fraction of the size of Animation. The playback wasn't very smooth, but Microcosm was a great way to render and store things. You could spend less money on blank CDs and DVD-R disks to store your animations.

Well, goodbye Microcosm. I can't see anyone in their right mind purchasing Microcosm now. You may as well put your money towards the Apple's Panther OS, and get the Pixlet codec with it.

Microcosm was, however, cross-platform. They had a Windows version. Knowing the history of Steve Jobs, I can't see him giving his new Pixlet codec to Windows users.

The Pixlet codec will be another step in reducing the price of making broadcast quality video. The other broadcast codecs require arrays of very fast hard drives raided together to handle the huge amount of data that broadcast quality video requires.

The Pixlet codec can do it in full motion off a single standard ATA drive.

mbaldwin · 06-26-2003, 08:45 AM

the other question this begs, is: if Pixlet is a mac-only codec made as requested by Pixar, what type of Mac saturation will we see at Pixar in the coming year? What parts of the company will have the most use for this?

just curious.

mlinde · 06-26-2003, 09:54 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Beamtracer
[IMG]Quote from Steve Jobs:
"We've never seen a codec like Pixlet on a personal computer," says Jobs. "Pixar requested this."

Just how Pixar makes such a request to Apple via Steve Jobs makes the mind boggle. Maybe he was talking to himself!

Even though Stevey is the CEO of both, he's got a guy a Pixar (or a few of them) who deal with technical development. These people don't always have the CEO on speed-dial, so they have to work though channels like any other company. His guy gets an ADC membership, starts communicating with the QT team, and voila! Pixar requests... of course it sure helps a lot that it's Pixar, not Core pictures, or Blue Sky, but that's using your network...

theosmekhanes · 06-26-2003, 05:39 PM

Pixlet_Rocks!!!

Yeah Beam, the only problem with microcosm was the playback speed.

It's worth the price of Panther alone.

This means that a standard 120 min movie @2k that take over 5 terabytes to store will now be less than 1 terabyte.

This is a HUGE deal !!!

Beamtracer · 06-26-2003, 08:03 PM

And remember you can say goodbye to those old 8bpc image formats (like standard tif, targa, or the Animation QT codec) and up things to 16bpc without getting huge file sizes.

The real-time playback of Pixlet movies is very significant.

There's a company called Medéa that specializes in making boxes that contain arrays of RAIDed hard drives. Up until now solutions like this were necessary to play back lossless video at full size without stuttery playback. It was a great expense for anyone dealing with full quality animations or video. The Pixlet codec eliminates that expense.

I'm not sure if I'd want to own shares in the Medéa company right now.

Beamtracer · 06-26-2003, 08:19 PM

It's interesting to watch the ascendancy of Apple in the video world. They are decimating their competition with products like Final Cut Pro.

Competing video applications are running for cover. Media 100 just about wiped out since the introduction of FCP. Avid is struggling and making losses selling US$100,000+ systems to broadcasters. Adobe has stepped out of the ring and withdrawn Premiere from the Mac platform.

Even Newtek must have one eye on the Apple juggernaut, even though they are competing (with Toaster) on a different platform.

Some competitors may be forced to look for niche markets, though that may be no place to hide. Avid (owners of Softimage) is using the profits of its audio division (Digidesign/Protools) to subsidize the rest and keep itself afloat.

The Pixlet codec will add to Apple's dominance, as they'll be able to offer "uncompressed quality" (lossless) with Final Cut Pro, without hardware add-ons. None of the others can match it.

archiea · 06-27-2003, 06:33 PM

Still, there is alot lacking in QT for production.....

QT is designed for streaming off the net, not evaluating renders. its lacks the ability to swap between color spaces, apply log-luts, apply realtime color correction (ironic considering Apple has FCP), do speed changes, comparison buffers with wipes, pixel inspectors, etc... When I heard that QTpro was comming out a few years back, I thought thats what they meant. Instead it only enabled you to save and cut and paste. great for consolidating porn downloads, but thats it.

While pixlet as a codec is a milestone, its QT that the bottleneck here.

Consider the cinema playback product from Iridas.com. The framecycler is inexpensive and play back from RAM. With the 8gb ability of the mac, that like a match made in heaven. Too bad no OS-X support.

Aside from it being an 8bit format, these are the specs that apple should air for a REAL Quicktime pro.. (from web page
http://ddsweb.iridas.com/intro/Playback)
Playback

Sophisticated playback controls allow the user to set in and out points, slowdown or speed up playback in 1fps increments, reverse playback, zoom, crop, mirror and resample on the fly. It is also easy to check for artifacts or defects in sequences using special analysis tools including a color picker and unique color modes.

The user interface with waveform display and a powerful sequence browser as well as the Windows user interface can be completely hidden by the click of a button - to hide all distracting elements for "director's mode" viewing sessions.

toby · 06-27-2003, 07:15 PM

If you have the Pixelet codec in QT that generally means that you can use it in AE, FCP, Premiere, LW, since QT is integrated in the system - that and the fact that it's a good viewer is, I think, all they want it to do. I don't think there's any point to trying to make it competitive with fcp, or even fce

Beamtracer · 06-27-2003, 08:24 PM

Arthur, some corrections from your post...

"QT is designed for streaming off the net"

Quicktime was designed long before streaming ever happened.

"its lacks the ability to swap between color spaces"

You can have RGB or Y-UV. If you're referring to 10-bit Cineon, the standard for production is fast becomming 16-bit RGB, which can be translated to 10-bit Cineon or 10-bit Y-UV.

"its lacks the ability to.. ..apply realtime color correction

Final Cut Pro does real time color correction with Quicktime.

"its lacks the ability to.. ..do speed changes"

Any compositing app can change the framerate of a Quicktime.

"Aside from it being an 8bit format..."

Quicktime supports 16 bit-per-channel movies. Some apps (like After Effects) support 16bpc Quicktime. There's currently no 32bpc Quicktime format. Final Cut Pro 4 now supports 32bpc (HDRI), but I think it must use a LogLuv image sequence to do this.

Arthur, I'm not sure whether you were referring to Quicktime in general, or the QT pro application. If you were referring to QT pro, you couldn't expect real time color correction in a package that costs US$29.95.

The Iridas system you mention is probably very useful to preview feature film content, however it requires either a RAM cache, or a RAID array of fast hard drives all pulling together.

The significance of the Pixlet codec is that it plays lossless "D1" spec video off any standard ATA hard drive. No RAM cache, no RAID. It also supports 16bpc RGB plus alpha.

archiea · 06-27-2003, 09:51 PM

Actually, there are no corrections, Beam...

I said QT "is" designed for streaming, not that it was originally designed for it. Currently, as it stands, QT is mainly for streaming and a standard for a sequence of frames or animation codec. its no flipbook in the tradition of flipbooks in the film industry.

10 bit cienons are logarithmic, while 16 bit are typcially linear or monitor space. A log curve can keep float values intact as they never quite reach 1 or zero. Also, I'm talking about converting between colorspaces too....

FCP may do realtime color correction, but I'm taling about QT. If youa re showing an HD pixlet movie in QT and they ask you how it would look darker and more magenta, you'd have to load up FCP. I'm talking having FCP's color corrector embedded withing QT, do changes on the fly with a client, then save the color correction in the FCP format and/or Shake color corrector for later inclusion with the shot. This is how the flipbooks in many studio's work.

As far as frame rate, you mention compositing aps. I'm talking about a client saying they want to see the animation at 1.5 speed. Try doing that on the fly in AT. I many flipbook software you can....

As far as the 8 bit format, I was refering to the Playback software, not QT

And if you want to talk color depth and precision, thee's no reason to not use cineons (or ILM's new format) to REALLY preserve your color info in log space. You could then aplly color correction on the fly and never truncate your data.

And, again, I was commenting on QT as an playback software, not the pixlet codec. I think that the concept of pixlet is great. Its just that QT Pro ain't not flipbook software.... And I'd gladly pay $200 for a REAL QT pro with the features that I requested

fxgeek · 06-29-2003, 11:45 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by archiea
Actually, there are no corrections, Beam...

I said QT "is" designed for streaming, not that it was originally designed for it. Currently, as it stands, QT is mainly for streaming and a standard for a sequence of frames or animation codec. its no flipbook in the tradition of flipbooks in the film industry.

10 bit cienons are logarithmic, while 16 bit are typcially linear or monitor space. A log curve can keep float values intact as they never quite reach 1 or zero. Also, I'm talking about converting between colorspaces too....

FCP may do realtime color correction, but I'm taling about QT. If youa re showing an HD pixlet movie in QT and they ask you how it would look darker and more magenta, you'd have to load up FCP. I'm talking having FCP's color corrector embedded withing QT, do changes on the fly with a client, then save the color correction in the FCP format and/or Shake color corrector for later inclusion with the shot. This is how the flipbooks in many studio's work.

As far as frame rate, you mention compositing aps. I'm talking about a client saying they want to see the animation at 1.5 speed. Try doing that on the fly in AT. I many flipbook software you can....

As far as the 8 bit format, I was refering to the Playback software, not QT

And if you want to talk color depth and precision, thee's no reason to not use cineons (or ILM's new format) to REALLY preserve your color info in log space. You could then aplly color correction on the fly and never truncate your data.

And, again, I was commenting on QT as an playback software, not the pixlet codec. I think that the concept of pixlet is great. Its just that QT Pro ain't not flipbook software.... And I'd gladly pay $200 for a REAL QT pro with the features that I requested

I think you are getting confused with the quicktime player and quicktime itself. Not many people realise the full potential of quicktime or even fully what it is, and I have no intention of going into that here. (Go and read some of Apple's developer documentation on Quicktime to get a better understanding of what Quicktime is - and it's primary purpose is far from being a streaming format) The flipbook players that you refger to commonly work by loading data into ram. It's a shame Newtek didn't include such software with Lightwave, but both Shake and Maya come with powerfull flipbook software the likes of what you want. I suggest that Final Cut Pro or Even express would suit your needs.