QUOTE(gmask @ 05/13/08, 10:03 AM) [snapback]285493[/snapback]
Why do you need cinepak.. it looks terrible even for previewing???
Sorry for resurrecting an old thread but this comes up in Google searches and I have new information.
The Cinepak codec is actually pretty decent quality in a playblast compared to the other options. We need it because it will frame-by-frame forwards and backwards for analyzing motion. Mpeg4 derived codecs are bad for that because they don't go backwards well, and because of the method they use to compress the video. I haven't been able to find a substitute in 64bit yet. It's kind of sad really that codecs would be a problem...
The problem with Cinepak is that the rights to it were sold several years ago to a new company, and then that company evaporated. Also it was written using an older system interface for codecs, which has since been replaced by a newer standard. I contacted the previous rights-holders to see if they can figure out if anyone owns the rights to it anymore or if it is completely orphaned software. So far they've been helpful but preliminary recompiles of the code haven't produced a working Cinepak 64.
A new codec could be developed, but it would suffer the problem of portability. Organizations doing animation would rely on their I.T. team to keep the new codec available on all machines, which always falls through every now and then if a machine gets forgotten or something. And if a sup can't do their dailies because of something stupid, people get unhappy.
I have yet to find a good substitute. Suggestions welcome! Video1 is the definition of suck. I don't trust mass codec packs especially fddshow as it has broken firewire video capture in the past. There are a few Maya plugins to allow encoding directly to QuickTime, but they are beta or even alpha versions, written for Maya 7.0 or earlier, and have major setbacks like not supporting sound.
IMO the easiest way to blanket-solve a lot of codec problems would be a 64-bit passthrough codec, with its own configuration page allowing selection of a real destination codec. If it were written to properly see the 32-bit codecs, Cinepak would suddenly become available (it DOES exist on 64-bit machines, just only 32 bit). Also some other things could be made to work better.
In the meantime I'm having to fall back on 32-bit Maya for animation... ![]()