Dirac is an advanced royalty-free video compression format designed for a wide range of uses, from delivering low-resolution web content to broadcasting HD and beyond, to near-lossless studio editing. The v1.0.0 version was released yesterday, and the new VLC version supports playback of .ts/.drc Dirac files.
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Member since:2005-06-28
>probably uses TIFF, Cineon/DPX or OpenEXR sequence files
In today's workflows, unless you do VFX where frame-by-frame lossless images are read/generated by these tools, that is not needed. There are good digital intermediate formats for editing/archiving, like Cineform.
Member since:2005-06-29
These are not that common in workflows for cinema... Not only to editing frame by frame (like VFX), but for standard color correction tools like Autodesk Lustre (quite popular), cleaning tools, and similar ones... this kind of application is necessary when you target projection quality and dynamic range... The industry usually uses sequence files (be it DPX/Cineon or OpenEXR or even TIFFs...) to these tasks... (with several limitations... TIFFs are usually uncompressed, metadata--like keycodes-- is very important to keep, and several other limitation depending of your workflow, printing machine, delivery LUTs or even projector type.)
Also, there's nothing wrong in generating standard video files from PNG sequences... it's a well supported format, lossless (8bit per channel only, but lossless...) and easy to deliver to encoding facilities via internet or optical media... some other format or solution may depend proprietary software, incompatible versions or may limit who can encode your work to the delivery format... You may prefer your workflow, but there's nothing wrong in this PNG one... it may have advantages depending of your needs...
Member since:2006-11-12
He, and other professional cinematographers... "
Last time I checked, Spielberg was a producer and a director -- not a cinematographer. Huge difference between those three positions.
Edited 2008-09-18 06:38 UTC
Member since:2005-06-28
We are not new to the concept, thanks. My comment was sarcastic, so there was no reason for you to "explain" to us the differences. We know them.
In the indie world though, a director is usually the person for all jobs though. For example, my online friend Blake shoots, directs and edits his work by himself. And he's using semi-known actors too, not completely unknowns, and has even two big films on his back. His latest project: http://www.hulu.com/watch/34577/pink-the-series-no-good-deed
Some people like to be involved in the process.
Edited 2008-09-18 06:57 UTC
Member since:
2005-06-29
He, and other professional cinematographers, probably uses TIFF, Cineon/DPX or OpenEXR sequence files... true standards instead of other formats usually more adopted by the television market... where speed and costs are more important than absolute quality...
Dirac may be useful in the TV market, but hardly on cinema...
But we are some years away from a (real) useful workflow and application compatibility... I hope Dirac will be delivered as a standard codec in desktops by then and maybe a good alternative too the h264 codec in the web.
...but I hope some good, and competitive, performance binaries are available soon... if so and Dirac gets popular soon, maybe hardware acceleration aren't too far away...