[FFmpeg-user] Apple prores issue

[Phil Rhodes]

>> Wouldn't it be possible to use Apple's dll to do the decoding?

Possible? Probably. I suspect it might be tough to sell the developers on  
doing that, as it's a rather jury-rigged and imperfect solution. Doing  
this sort of thing tends to beg a lot of future maintenance work as well.  
And even then, it's still a big reverse-engineering effort.

>>> Could the ..many.. of us who need it combine force$...
>>> if we all tossed  in $X ,
>>> could it happen?  Or is all a sticky apple mess?

...and doing it properly is an even bigger reverse-engineering effort.

I was once told (by someone who works a company making hardware which does  
both DNxHD and ProRes) that it's possible to transcode DNxHD and ProRes  
losslessly; the internals are sufficiently similar. This might not tell us  
much, since they're both ultimately fairly run-of-the-mill DCT codecs, but  
it does suggest that it is possible.

I would suspect the costs are in the many-tens-of-thousands range if you  
wanted to simply hire a software engineer to attack the problem and  
nobody's going to spend that sort of money on something they're forced to  
give away.

Presumably doing this would also cause Apple to have one of their spasms.  
They've so far exhibited an almost Gollum-like protectiveness of "their  
ProResssssss....".

P