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Oct 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By S. D. Katz

Working toward a universal pipeline.

Most production pipelines are a mixed environment of competing software, proprietary code, and legacy systems. We may expect companies to resist communicating with rival software, but even Adobe has not always shared data smoothly among its own complementary products. In the last two years, however, software developers have realized that workflow and pipelines are as important to customers as any new feature in an individual program.

Sharing projects among compositing programs and NLEs has always been an infuriating collection of workarounds. Avid's OMF open architecture was an attempt to overcome the problem for NLEs, but it was never comprehensive enough. For 3D programs, the life or death rivalry among Lightwave, Maya, XSI, and 3ds Max has stood in the way of moving models, textures, and keyframe information around a studio pipeline mainly because most of the big software developers want you to use their pipeline.

Fortunately, this is beginning to change. Developers have learned that mixed pipelines are a more compelling idea then proprietary pipelines. The reality is that no one company has provided a single vertically integrated software/hardware solution better than a user-designed system. In many cases, the main advantage of the proprietary system is that data can be shared seamlessly. Customers understand that this is an artificial barrier to promote sales and have consistently rejected giving up control of the pipeline.

It took a long time, but we are beginning to see more liberal data sharing throughout the industry, although this tends to be on the production side rather than the distribution side. Even with the continued proliferation of codecs and the yet-unresolved issue of MPEG-4 vs. Windows Media Player 9, data is beginning to move more fluidly within mixed production environments.

Microcosm

Digital production means cloning big files often. An HD or SD effects shot is frequently created in several different programs and assembled so that a 10-second shot may actually require 4 duplicates or 40 seconds of footage. Throw in duplication for versioning and archiving and you can double that number. The results can be daunting when you are working with several minutes of HD material.

San Francisco-based Digital Anarchy, developer of After Effects plug-ins, answered the need for a very efficient and high-quality file format to serve as an intermediate work format. The result is Microcosm (www.digitalanarchy.com/micro/micro_main.html), a 64-bit (16-bit/channel) RGB lossless Quicktime-based file codec. On average, Microcosm-optimized footage can dramatically reduce drive space with its 6:1 reduction ratio while maintaining image quality.

Microcosm, like most codecs, compresses some footage types more successfully than others. Black-and-white mattes compress approximately 100:1. CGI elements compress approximately 10:1, and film footage compresses approximately 4:1. Relative to other codecs, Microcosm generally outperforms competing file formats in each of these categories. Here are some comparisons provided by Digital Anarchy.

Beginning with a 64-bit RGBA HD motion graphics file (1920 x 1080) a comparison of Microcosm's with popular file formats looks like this:

Photoshop 64-bit sequence = 2310Mb
QuickTime TIFF 64-bit = 2310Mb
Maya IFF 64-bit sequence = 407Mb
Microcosm 64-bit QuickTime = 178.6Mb
(13:1 lossless compression)

Microcosm is $99, but the reader is free and can be downloaded at www.digitalanarchy.com. It's easy to recommend a product that provides important and immediate benefits, and has no learning curve.

Kaydara FBX

The studios I have been associated with were mixed-software environments. Here's the product I have been hoping for since the days of Alias Power Animator, Softimage 2.0, and the DOS version of 3ds Max. Several years ago, all three products might have been used in any given project. For example, Alias Power Animator would be used for character models, which were imported to Softimage for animation via OBJ. In addition, Houdini might have been used for its powerful particle effects. Today, you can add to that multi-program environment the need to share 3D data with compositing programs that support 3D — Inferno, After Effects, Combustion.

There have been workarounds of course, but ultimately the devil has been in the details of shared 3D info. While NURBS models could be moved using OBJ, texture coordinates, lighting, IK structures and cameras were problematic. Sharing an entire scene was out of the question. Today, with mo-cap data and motion control systems providing critical effects data that should — theoretically — be easy to integrate into a common coordinate system, the various 3D companies, competing for the same customers, have not reached détente on the issue.

Enter Kaydara, the Canadian software company that developed Filmbox and MotionBuilder (recently purchased by Alias) with the first truly universal 3D format. Kaydara calls FBX (www.kaydara.com/products/fbx/index.php) a “generic wrapper to 3D data” since it collects all the pertinent information about a 3D scene into a single file. Alias/Wavefront, however, purchased Kaydara this summer, which throws its previously neutral position into question.

The main thing to know is that against all odds the majority of industry 3D companies have signed on, and compositing programs are going to have to get with the program. FBX works with Linux, Windows, and OS X, and 3D apps including 2d3 (BouJou), Motek, NewTek (Light-wave), Autodesk/Discreet (3ds Max, Flint, Fire, Flame, Inferno), Zygote, Electric Image, Maxon (Cinema 4D), Vicon Motion Systems, InSpeck, Reflex Systems, Alias/Maya, and Softimage 3D/XSI. As you can see, a healthy number of mo-cap and modeling companies are on the list.

FBX for Quicktime

This is cool. This component is added to Apple's QuickTime platform so that you can play back 3D files interactively from any 3D application. This is useful for sharing low-poly models with clients over the Internet. Remember, all the interactive 3D online file formats that were touted during the Internet hysteria of only four years ago? FBX for QuickTime is the same idea, except Kaydara has provided a widely adopted free file format.

One very nice touch is at Kaydara's site (www.kaydara.com/products/fbx_for_quicktime/index.php). In the FBX section, there is a window called the Compatibility Chart. It's an interactive answer man with two type entry fields. Field one is where you enter the name of the application you want to export from. Field two is the destination application. Click Go, and you get a complete list of what 3D capabilities are supported by FBX for the product. The implementation is deep and covers a wide range of 3D deforms and IK structures areas that were problems in scene sharing.

There is also a license available for the FBX SDK in C++. Content creators can use Kaydara's conversion software to take existing assets and convert them to the FBX format. Cool, yes, but now we have to see if Alias continues to develop aggressively and evangelize for FBX.

OpenEXR

This relatively new open source imaging standard from Industrial Light & Magic is of interest to high-end facilities working with film elements for digital effects. Its main benefit is faithful preservation of film's dynamic range in an efficient file format. The OpenEXR site (www.openexr.net/about.html) provides detailed information on the math, clearly intended for the knowledgeable, so it's tough going unless you have a background in computer graphics and math. But the salient points are these:

Previous 8-bit file formats have a dynamic range of approximately 7 to 10 f/stops. This is insufficient to represent film's best-case scenario of 11 to 12 stops. While 10-bit Cineon gets you closer, EXR can represent 30 f/stops at full precision with an additional 10 f/stops with reduced precision. Cineon at 10 bits/pixel provides 1,020 steps per stop, while 16 bits provides 65,000 steps. Overkill? Well, yes, for camera negative. However, this is an open source SDK, and that means that an effects house could implement HDRI (High Range Dynamic Images) in the EXR format using floating point math.

Other advantages to OpenEXR include the ability to record metadata on arbitrary channels. This might include colored alpha channels, camera reports, match moving data (such as the camera position or mo-cap coordinates), Z-buffer info, and other special data of use to visual effects folks. At the moment, OpenEXR is compatible with Linux, Irix, OS X, Windows NT, and Windows 2000. Recently, Eyeon Software, the makers of Digital Fusion compositing software, announced support for EXR joining open source compositing and image editor Film Gimp. Expect to see other compositing applications follow suit.

Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) and Media Exchange Format (MXF)

All production data eventually ends up in postproduction. The vast funnel of content creation flows into NLEs and compositing and graphics programs where the data moves back and forth between artists, usually within the same studio. To make this work smoothly, we've had the EDL, and more recently OMF, initiatives that have not been able to keep up with the proliferation of media types and underlying effects capabilities.

AAF and MXF grew out of earlier attempts to allow an artist to share a project, for example, between an Avid and a Flame, with all the information intact. After years of slow development, NAB 2004 marked the end of a year during which AAF and MXF have finally reached widespread — though not total — adoption.

Since you will be seeing a lot more of these formats in the future, here are some short definitions:

The Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) is a production-based interchange format. It is primarily used in post-production environments to share project data such as timeline, editing, compositing, and effects information. While an open standard, AAF has a layer that supports proprietary metadata, meaning that Final Cut Pro or Avid can attach information unique to their systems to an AAF file.

The Media Exchange Format (MXF) is a program exchange format initiated by the Pro-MPEG Forum. It is primarily intended to allow broadcast programs to be shared among servers. MXF contains video and audio media wrapped within a defined data structure, permitting software applications to understand the contents. MXF is compatible with most format types, including MPEG, DV, WAV, AVI, and DPX.

The Pro-MPEG Forum and AAF association jointly developed MXF. For once, two standard bodies worked together to make their solutions complementary. In a sense, MXF is a subset of AAF, with the specific production project data removed to reduce the file size — a necessary requirement for finished broadcast program files where size is a major factor.

Recently, several of the bigger players jumped on the AAF/MXF bandwagon. In 2003, Avid, Apple, Adobe, Discreet, SGI, Leitch, Microsoft (Windows Media 9), Sony, and Quantel began showing some level of support for AAF or MXF. For example, at NAB 2004, Adobe was showing improved interoperability, based on native AAF/OMF support, between After Effects 6.5 and Premiere Pro. This allows After Effects to import Premiere Pro timelines and copy and paste keyframes between the programs. Avid also showed multi-product integration through the support of AAF metadata in its new Avid Xpress Studio product. Another refinement is XML support for Final Cut Pro HD, providing a simpler way of describing metadata in AAF and MXF.

Total interoperability is certainly not here yet, but the past two years have shown remarkable improvement over the balkanized state of broadcast and production file formats in the past. This trend underscores the inevitable pressure of digital technology to force companies to submit to open source standards. This happened because the production community demanded it. Innovation is critical, but standardization has its place too.

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S.D. Katz is a New York-based writer and director.

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