Hi,
I do undertsand the points Markus is pointing out, anyhow some of them are not true or do not apply to the given situation.
In the real world out there for all people working with Pandoras Box on a daily show base, dealing with all the things around it, the content questions is still the biggest thing to talk about. It is, and always will be the main key to get in or out a show with a system. And despite all great features Pandoras Box does or does not offer, the most important and most critical thing is the content format and the content quality. Second to that we need to look at the performance of the provided hardware and need to ask the question wether the hardware is prforming well or not.
But the really very most important questions is alsways: what file type can you play back?
And in my very personal and own opinion this is the holy grale of media servers and this will be the final decision on which system woll do the job.
As Florian pointed out, Hap did go high in trust and love for a lot of content creators. So despite all discussions about its up or downsides a lot of content people like Hap and they also want to deliver Hap as they do have a working workflow with it. They dont want to change that workflow. They would rather spec a differnt server, than changing their workflow. So please add Hap to the build in codecs as soon as possible, as a lot of people are asking for it.
And please dont get me wrong here, but as someone who knows both worlds, the inside Coolux world, and the daily work on shows, I must say it that way: get the support people out on the road more often to work with the system. And I'm not talking about the Coolux/Christie trade shows. Go out and talk to customers planing shows. Go out and talk to the conten people. Get on hour long telephone conferences to discuss the coneten to be used on a show. Go out and answer the simple question "what codec would you like for this show" on a daily base.
If you do that you will understand very fast why this topic came up that powerfull and you will understand what the operators are talking about. This is our daily business, and this is before we talk about any features like tracking, Video Export or whatsoever. The very simple question at the very beginning is usually about the file type to be played back in Pandoras Box.
Let me put out a few quotes from the last month to get you a better understanding:
"Oh, we do not like Pandoras Box as it cannot play back any video files without converting them"
"Why does it always take so long to get content into PB? Other systems can do that much faster"
"Pandoras Box is outdated as it can only playback mpeg2"
"I don't like PB as you need to reencode all files before playback with 3rd party tools"
Wether this is true or not, this what content people say about Pandoras Box and this soemthing which should ne changed very soon. I know that I'm pushing the content discussion since a while, but I do this with a very good reason.
I'm trying to get a reliable answer to the question "what codec works best with PB" since a couple of month, but unfortunately I do not get a good answer to that.
And to be honest the post from Daniel goes into the same direction. Why are you asking for this? Does it make any difference if you know how many shows are done whith which resolution and file type? Customers are asking for a simple thing, include Hap into the codes to be played back natively in PB.
I know that there is not the perfect codec for everything, and I do know that you need to make a decision based individually on each show. But this decision needs to be a simple one. And it also need a simpel answer.
A simple, but straight forward answer, could be:
Low quality, small file size, many videos a the same time: use mpeg2
Medium quality, good perfomance, simple workflow: use Hap
High quality, good perfromance with custom bild hardware, large file size: use bmp.mov snappy
This is what I tell my clients at the moment, and this what works quite well for now. Except the fact that Hap is not build in nativly in PB, so the performance could be better.
Beside that I would also like to comment a few thing to the points Markus did make:
1.) Image sequence:
I do recommend NOT to use image sequences at all any more. Yes replacing single files is a plus, but at the end the PB Operators put himself imto more work to fix content issues. And since the image sequence workflow in PB is very painfull I do not want to do that. Did you every add 150 image sequences to your showfile in PB? The amount of clicks you need to do for that is more than painfull.
2.) BMP export
Do mot start to compare BMP with DDS or Hap. Do not tell me that the Quicktime plugin is great because it can do BMP export in After FX. This is not the point of this discussion.
3.) DDS is the same as Hap
Simply not true. DDS is an image sequence, Hap is a singel video file. Total different workflow. And I did a side by side test as mentioned before. Hap looks much better than DDS. If you like and can provide you the files.
4.) DDS can be viewed in Win8
Pleas explain how, it never worked on any of my machines. How about Win7?
5.) development changes
Yes, I agree. In this case implement a good working codec and make sure that all conten creators do know this codec and how to work with it. Also make sure that everybody understands this codec and that everyone can use it easily. And make sure that this will happen fast. If not, please add Hap, since Hap provides this already.
I'm sorry if I'm quite offensive with this now, but I'm dealing with the whole big discussion about codecs pretty much every day since I left Coolux. And as I said, it is the most important thing regarding media servers today.
So please do not get me wrong or take anything personal, but this is a very big topic for all the operators working with Pandoras Box.
Best wishes
Patrick