Studio Daily Blog By Scott Simmons Stop the presses! Apple has finally (finally!) given non-Final Cut Studio 2 installed machines the option to playback their proprietary compressed HD codec ProRes 422. The Apple ProRes QuickTime Decoder 1.0 for Mac is now available for install and there’s even an Apple ProRes QuickTime Decoder 1.0 for Windows. From the Apple website:

The Apple ProRes QuickTime Decoder software allows both Mac and Windows users to play Apple ProRes files through QuickTime. Apple ProRes is a visually lossless format that provides uncompressed HD quality at SD data rates. It is an excellent choice for mastering and can easily be transcoded to distribution formats like H.264. With new support for playback on both Mac and Windows computers, Apple ProRes can also be used for review and approval of Final Cut Studio sequences.

Ever since Apple released the new codec as part of Final Cut Pro 6 at NAB 2007 we’ve all wanted to be able to use ProRes on other machines besides our FCS installs. While Avid has released their competitor DNxHD as a standard that can be installed on any machine, ProRes has remained locked inside Final Cut Pro. read more...