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  1. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    Been reading up on the new-ish developments at Apple (edit: ok, I know this went out to Apple devs in Nov, but I'm just now getting around to it), where they've pretty much completed the transition of their media engine (away from Quicktime/QTkit to AVFoundation/AVkit).

    I understand there has been a longstanding need to migrate to more optimized code, use 64bit clean through-and-through, take advantage of newer technologies (multi-threading, hardware acceleration, etc), but they've also thrown the compatibility baby out with the bathwater.

    2 links you may want to review:
    http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/335/61363
    and
    http://docs.huihoo.com/apple/wwdc/2013/session_606__moving_to_av_kit_and_av_foundation.pdf

    The way I see it, things are going to get:
    1. Easier
    2. More difficult
    3. Crazier

    That wasn't an either/or, it was an ALL of the above!

    They're keeping the MOV format, but severely limiting codec options, with 3rd party enhancement not even being specified as an option. They're defaulting to live converting every input codec to ProRes/PCM or h264/aac. And that doesn't seem to clear up the craziness with Gamma and aspect ratios, the MOV format being inherently 32bit,...the list goes on and on.

    I know there are many of you who would say "good riddance", but Apple is still a major media player and this will change the game, so that kind of brush-off is unwise. What do you guys think?

    Scott
    Last edited by Cornucopia; 3rd Sep 2014 at 22:57.
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  2. I'm a Super Moderator johns0's Avatar
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    I think they will lose a lot of business with people just getting used to quicktime and those who use it regularly.
    I think,therefore i am a hamster.
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  3. Banned
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    I work with Apple fanboys and I'm writing this on an iMac, truth be told. The fact is that Apple fanboys will probably not care or be bothered by this at all. Hell, I know one who my other co-workers think is some kind of hard core video expert simply because he knows how to run Handbrake. I kid you not.

    Now having said that, while I most assuredly do not consider myself to be a Mac fanboy as I do ALL of my video and audio work on a true Win 7 PC, I took a look at the PDF and I don't think it's as bad as you do. Basically they deprecating the old QuickTime APIs. QuickTime will still work and be supported in Apple. Old apps will STILL continue to work. Going forward they want people to switch to a new API, namely AVKit. I'm not seeing it as a big deal, more of a way to force people to use the new tools.
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  4. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    But what about cross-platform portability and compatibility? Deprecation of the API will just make bidirectional development that much more of a hassle.
    Won't that make the different camps even more polarized and siloed?

    Scott

    <edit>Oh, yeah, and it doesn't even support MIDI tracks anymore! Or SMIL. What's up with that!!??</edit>
    Last edited by Cornucopia; 3rd Sep 2014 at 22:48.
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