Apple QuickTime on Windows: Update
Recent security issues related to Apple’s QuickTime 7 on Windows have been of concern to users of Adobe’s products on that platform. It’s always been Adobe’s opinion that as a company we want to provide high performance native support for as many formats as possible. Native support means that our software is able to access the media essence in a wrapper without relying on third party technology, such as QuickTime. Adobe’s view has been informed by an understanding of end-to-end workflows, which means that we want to be able to import / decode as many formats as possible and to export to as many industry standard formats as possible.
Today we’re pleased to announce that Adobe has been able to accelerate work that was already in progress to support native reading of ProRes. This new capability is fully licensed and certified by Apple, and barring any unforeseen issues during pre-release, these fixes will be included into an update to the relevant products in Creative Cloud shortly.
Additionally, we are planning on adding native export support to .mov wrapped files of DNxHD and DNxHR. This shows our commitment to the DNxHD/DNxHR codecs. This support augments our currently supported import of DNxHD and DNxHR in .mov and .mxf and native export in .mxf. Similarly, in an effort to allow as many legacy files to be supported as possible we will also be supporting the reading of AAC Audio and PNG Compressed frames and the reading/writing of Animation frames.
When these fixes are released most Windows users will have a seamless workflow for virtually all popular codecs even with QuickTime removed from the computer; however, we do anticipate that some older, less used legacy formats may not be directly supported and therefore no longer be accessible. Users may need to find a method of transcoding their legacy media.
Adobe thanks Apple for their support and timely certification of our new native technology for our Creative Cloud applications. We’d also like to thank our users for their support in helping us test our work as we have accelerated release of our native media support plans.
Background
Two security issues have emerged related to QuickTime on Windows, as a result Apple is recommending removal of QuickTime 7 for Windows: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201175
Adobe issued a blog post to outline status on this issue on April 16, 2016:
http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/quicktime-on-windows/?segment=dva
David McGavran
David McGavran is the Director of Engineering for Adobe Pro Audio and Video. He has been at Adobe longer than he can remember. Dave has worked on many of the video apps at Adobe and is known for his work on Dynamic Link. Unfortunately, as an engineer, Dave isn't clever enough to write a funny bio so this will have to do.
Why will you not add the ability to export Prores on Windows? That would be ideal 🙂
That’s not up to Adobe. Apple allows Windows users to read Prores codecs with the Quicktime codec package. Exporting Prores requires your computer to have the ability to export the codec which Apple doesn’t allow on Windows, you can substitute with DNXHD/HR. Even with 3rd party workarounds to export Prores on Windows the files don’t have an official tag from Apple and can be denied QC from a broadcast distribution house or other networks.
The QT player itself was a separate piece of software which is now unsupported. You can uninstall it without damaging your codec library.
There’s also Cineform, which I’d say is a better format than DNX and much closer/equal to ProRes. Can export out of Adobe products to Cineform no problem.
Cineform is even superior to ProRes.
Cineform is currently supported through… QuickTime.
Apple does allow ProRes encoding on Windows:
http://www.liftgammagain.com/forum/index.php?threads/scratch-8-windows-prores-writing.2580/
Assimilate Scratch has licensed that from Apple. And I hope Adobe will do that too.
Will native ProRes support include ProRes XQ? Read/playback support was lacking for Windows and it’s starting to pop up as a native format for some cameras.
Yes this includes ProRes XQ Decode.
Will this include support for ProRes XQ?
Yes this will include ProRes XQ Decode.
Will this be a update in the next big release or just a smaller one happening sooner? In other words when can we get it?
Come on Apple, let us have ProRes export.
Thank you for addressing this Adobe.
However, I’m of the mindset to simply abandon the ProRes CODEC and .mov container file altogether. Years of QuickTime CODEC contentions and Apple’s tactics with ProRes, combined with things like FCPX and their handling of the QuickTime security issue, has led me to conclude that Apple has absolutely no interest in our industry. Period.
They want to make consumer toys and that’s fine.
I will be rapidly removing anything Apple related from my workflow.
I totally understand that, but the problem is, that many customers want ProRes or just .mov files to be delivered. I’m afraid that you can’t explain everyone why you find some other container or codec better. For them it’s just “ok, he can’t deliver what I need”.
Not to mention, for some reason I get sync slipping issues when exporting quicktime mov files. If sync is important on a project(most as we work in animation), we need to export avi then compress to mpg.
This is a great move from Adobe. It allows for a smoother transition away from ProRes.
Many companies may be use to ProRes as a deliverable but that is GOING TO CHANGE.
And the lack of support for a Windows Encoder encourages the industry to move onto better standards.
For example, IMF(application 2, JPEG2000 as requested by Netflix and others today) is going to be “the way” to do deliverables. I would expect high traction in two years.
In terms of a mezzanine codec, yes cineform IS better than ProRes. VC5 is the SMPTE incarnation of CineForm. AND it can also compress bayer straight of the cameras. That is the perfect way to go in this new era of HDR.
It is a challenge to predict what will be the dominant codec and there’s a wide range of workflows. Fortunately, if one’s workflow is heavily ProRes based, there should be minimal disruption thanks to Adobe’s support. ProRes is also one of the two codecs supported for both compression and decompression by AV Foundation Frameworks. Apple’s deprecated QuickTime in favor of that for time based media on the Mac OS and iOS. Being that AV Foundation Frameworks is at the core of time based media on iOS, ProRes may not go away any time soon.
Of course, MPEG1 had it’s day. MPEG2 enjoyed a good run with DVD-Video. Sorrenson 3 was a star in the early days of 320×240 web video.
And Animation: personally, I’m not ready to give that one up just yet. As the default codec for Lossless output from After Effects, it’s severed my workflow very, very well for two decades and still extremely useful. So, thank you again, Adobe, for native support of MOV files with the Animation codec!
Will this update available to older versions like CS6? It is essential for people using prores on windows platform.
So should I remove Quicktime 7 from my Windows machines now? Or should I wait until this new content is released?
Any answer to this? How critical is this issue?
Will this be included in ANYWHERE?
Concurrency on ANYWHERE when using ProRes has always been an issue with the render nodes having to work harder,(32bit QT limitation?) Would this be rectified with native support?
Thank you for addressing this Adobe.
thank god this has been addresses. very tired of dealing with QuickTime issues
You can encode proRes on windows using ffmpeg, and have been able to since about 2012 or so. How is it that the ffmpeg people can write a ProRes encoder without having to do a licensing deal with Apple and yet Adobe can’t? Why not use the ffmpeg / libav code – it’s open source after all.