MOX - Open movie file format

[Rodney]

Brendan Bolles, creator of the ProEXR plugin for After Effects etc. has launched an effort to cull together various open source image and audio formats into a new (more universal) media format for image sequences.

 

It looks like he'll easily make his initial funding goal.

 

This is of interest primarily because having a -simple-, -universal- and -patent free- image format that allows for still and moving imagery has long been of interest.

 

Will MOX just be another file format to contend with or can it achieve it's lofty goal?

If anyone can do it it might be Brendan Bolles.

 

This video outlines some of the problems and the support behind the idea:

 

[Rodney]

It is interesting to note that the MOX format is going to take a large part of its approach from Open EXR becoming, in essence, an EXR movie format.

How Brendan plans to get this done is to effectively mirror Open EXR's architecture as a wrapper for other formats.

 

This is a little bit like what the new programming language Julia professes to do in that it provides a intelligent and web enabled wrapper (of sorts) to access other programming languages.

 

What makes Open EXR the ideal 'subformat' to work with is it's access to multiple images (within a single container image) and depth information via channels.

As those channels can be user defined this opens up the format for consider (local) programming.

 

The desire is to take a very complex array of image formats and expose the strengths of each wherever they are needed most.

 

Theoretically, at least at the user level, image formats themselves would be largely interchangeable all within the scope of this new file format.

 

While Brendan's immediate goal is more down to earth the potential is there to solve some of image formats more pesky problems:

 

- Image formats that don't display well in a browser

- Image sequences that can't leverage transparency

- 1D images trying to fit into a 4D world

 

While there have been and continue to be open image formats, MOX is the billed as the first open movie format.

 

'Tis a lofty goal to be sure.

 

 

Here's a PDF of the basic MOX proposal:

 

http://www.fnordware.com/downloads/MOX_Proposal.pdf

[Rodney]

Funding is now at 93% due (primarily) to a recent buy in from Red Giant.

MOX will most certainly see it's primary funding level reached but it is uncertain how much farther it may go with other (smaller) corporate heads buying into the idea.

 

In my estimation it's important that MOX reach it's stretch goal of adding an Adobe After Effects plugin (for that Adobe itself should be able to spare a few $).

Getting a format into the mainstream so that it can actually be used is that important.

[Rodney]

Whoops... a few minutes later... already funded.

 

Now moving on to the stretch goals of After Effects and Nuke plugins (I'm confident those goals will be met because of those deeply invested in those products).

Too bad I'm not in a position to suggest an A:M Plugin.

[robcat2075]

Perhaps if it does become opensource, A:M can incorporate it as an image file format plugin much as it does for the formats it now accommodates.

[Rodney]

The After Effects plugin (stretch goal) has been reached.

The folks at Video Copilot made sure of that with a $4K+ contribution.

 

With six days to go I'll guess that someone will fund the Nuke plugin as well.

Time will tell.

 

It'd be nice if a standalone viewer/converter could be created... or perhaps a commitment to add the format into Open Image.

[robcat2075]

I'm not sure I understand. If it will only have a plugin for certain apps then it wont' be useful as a new motion format.

[Rodney]

If it will only have a plugin for certain apps then it wont' be useful as a new motion format.

 

MOX code will be open. The plugins are just (basically) working proof of how they work (targeting software platforms that the majority of FX creators have in their arsenal (After Effects and Nuke).

Anyone will be able to take the code and use it in their own program. I say basically because they also will be fully working plugins ready for production use. Some folks may not need anything else beyond that as the internals (open image formats used by MOX) can already be generated by other programs.

 

Note that I *assume* the code of the plugins will be available to review. I don't know that has been explicitly stated but the concern itself has been specifically addressed by Brendan in interviews.

Even barring that ability to look at plugin code... all of the elements of the MOX format are themselves open source so once up and running programmers could use that open source code to program their own plugins. But Brendan has no intention of letting programmers need to go that route so I assume even the plugin code for After Effects and Nuke will be available for download and documented on git.

 

Assuming some critical mass of adoption of the format is reached somewhere in the process other utilities will be written (i.e. foregone conclusion).

It should be noted that some software (primarily high end video editors) have already embraced (i.e. they can access) the MXF wrapper planned to be used for MOX.

But finalizing all the various formats and creating working software to demonstrate the benefits of the open format is what the crowdfunding is all about.

Brendan's primary contribution is to work at approx. 50% of what he'd normally make from programming the code.

 

Although outside of your question/statement, this last bit of info is interesting as a measurement of how much it might take a programmer to create a specific plugin/feature.

i.e. if Brendan is saying he normally would be paid $40K to get such a format up and running and accessible that lets us know how much money we often expect programmers to 'freely' code for us. Note also that this isn't the creation of any new codecs (and in an interview Brendan suggested that one company bought another at several million dollars to get at a new codec they could call their own... the cost of which suggested he didn't want to go that route) but rather to use open source codecs in an open source wrapper to achieve am image frame movie format for FX production... the benefits of which are outlined elsewhere online (including indiegogo).

[Rodney]

For those of you keeping tabs on this kind of stuff...

 

Brendan has released the first Alpha plugins for After Effects and Premiere (with Nuke plugin to follow later).

He's opted to call the file beta format NOX (meaning Not MOX) with the format name shifting to MOX when it goes final (or Beta).

 

I don't have much detail to share beyond that presently but its good to see the format finally out in the wild and getting some real world testing.

 

Update: I tested it using Media Encoder which is perhaps the best way to currently integrate it into A:M workflow (i.e. using it as an external image format/container that collects product created by A:M). The NOX files can then be passed on to other applications that recognize MOX (Premiere and After Effects). The basic process: Set Media Encoder to watch the Renderfolder which then automates conversion of any rendered files to MOX for use in those programs.

 

There are still a lot of feature not added to the format yet so it's too early in the process to suggest how useful MOX will be.

[Rodney]

MOX is up to Alpha 5 now which includes compression codecs for PNG and EXR (previously those resources were uncompressed).

 

I experienced a problem with the After Effects plugin but the Media Encoder/Premiere plugin works great.

I hope the format gains enough traction in the industry that somewhere down the line the MOX format can be added to A:M beause having all the resources (sequence of images, sound, etc.) all in one file is refreshing.

A:M could use another movie format besides AVI and MOX (or a similar format... of which I'm not currently aware of) might be just the ticket.

As stated before though even if not directly incorporated into A:M using MOX as an intermediate format would help to collect everything in one place.

 

According to Brendan:

All the MOX codecs are lossless at the moment. The next step will be to get Dirac in there and expose controls for lossy compression.

Dirac is an open and royalty free video compression format capable of lossless as well as lossy compression.

[Rodney]

Brendan just uploaded an Alpha 6 that fixes the After Effects issue so all is well in NOXland.

I'm going to experiment with various workflows and if I come up with anything worth sharing I'll post it.

 

As most folks don't have a means to play MOX/NOX files yet here's a converted sampling that was directly run through After Effects to Premiere and then out to MOV (with a few minor adjustments at each stage to ensure changes in each application worked:

alpha6runthroughAEtoP.mov

[Rodney]

For those that are following...

 

A MOX/NOX update was posted that incorporates the DIrac codec which reportedly shaves files sizes down dramatically.

According to one source they went from a 178MB uncompressed NOX file to 178KB dirac compressed NOX file.

As such, for those that use Adobe's AE, Premiere or Media Encoder downloading these alpha plugins may be well worth your while.

 

Operational/Installation Note (should be stated in the readme file): The Premiere plugin goes in the common plugins folder (where it can be use by other Adobe applications) whereas the AE plugin must go into the AE plugins folder. You can operate without the AE plugin by launching the Premiere plugin (for instance to render through Media Encoder) through the AE UI.

 

http://www.moxfiles.com/downloads/

 

According to Brendan he's set his focus as follows: "Next steps are to get multiple layers/channels working and make a Nuke plug-in."