If you just can’t wait to get your hands on that Final Cut Studio 2 with ProRes 422, why not go ahead and pre-order it from apple.com? You’re gonna be spending $1,299 on it either way, so you might as well get it shipping the moment it’s available in May.

And is it just me, or are they using exactly the same box art as last time, but with an extra “2” at the end of the name?

I’ve put up a new page to the site which you can find on the top navigation bar. It’s titled “ProRes Spec” and guess where it leads. No, not down the rabbit hole, but in fact to the technical specification of ProRes 422. I figured that may be of some help to some people. Because, despite what someone may tell you, there is more to a video codec than a name.

This comes straight from the Wikipedia article, so thanks to whoever posted it there originally. In other news it has come to my attention that so far we have had 77 unique visitors and 4080 hits in total. This is quite interesting since we have not even been existed for a week yet (counting the day or two we showed the “coming soon” banner) and we haven’t even started promoting the site yet. Thus, I ask that you spread the word! There’s a lot more to come, trust me. We will be podcasting some HD video when FCS 2 is released and you can actually encode stuff in this format. It won’t all be coming from us, we’ll be showcasing some stunning clips from all over the internet direct to your Apple TV (which I presume will be getting ProRes 422 support). It would be most unlikely for the iPod to receive the codec since it can only support 480p. Still, if HD video can be compressed to a less-than-SD file size, maybe it can also work for SD video? That would be quite interesting. We will of course know a lot more when the new Final Cut Studio is released and the codec is released upon the waiting world.

I plan to roll out some nifty image banners soon so you can spread the word on your blog or MySpace or whatever other part of the incorrectly designated version of the internet you browse.

The white paper for the ProRes 422 codec has been released by Apple. This includes interesting information such as technical details and of course the usual occurrence of the words “stunning HD quality”. Interesting details if you don’t want to read the whole thing:

Variable bit-rate (VBR) encoding. “Smart” encoding analyzes the image and allocates more bits to complex frames. Eficiency is increased because excess bits are not wasted on simple frames.

The quality of uncompressed HD at data and storage rates lower than uncompressed SD.

Performance comparable to or better than the existing HD codecs in Final Cut Pro.

Two target HD bit rates. Normal quality is targeted at 145 Mbps, and high quality (HQ) is targeted at 220 Mbps. Except in the case of unusually complex material, actual bit rates are typically 5 to 10 percent lower than these targets.

Apple’s conclusion:

Apple ProRes 422 is changing the rules of post-production. The combination of industry-leading image quality, low data rates, and the real-time performance of Final Cut Studio 2 makes ProRes 422 the ideal format to meet the challenges of today’s demanding HD production workflows.

Hey there! Looks like you’ve stumbled upon our site. We are a site dedicated to the upcoming awesome video codec from Apple that compresses HD video to SD filesizes. We’re going to report everything we can find about this and podcast some new ProRes offerings as they appear on the net, so subscribe to our podcast feed in iTunes and you’ll get those as they arrive.

Our site is also available in multiple domains! Visit us at prores422.com, prores422.co.uk, prores422.org, prores422.net… whichever suits you. Really, we don’t mind. Bookmark whichever tickles your fancy.

ProRes 422 was only announced a few days ago at the NAB 2007 event, so we obviously don’t have a lot to say yet. We’ll post more details and info as we find it. In the mean time, stay tuned!