j2k 2.7

Now that I've figured out how to make a Premiere plug-in, someone suggested I add JPEG 2000 support to that program as well. Good idea. So that's what's new in j2k 2.7: a plug-in for Premiere Pro and Media Encoder. Just like in After Effects, the Premiere plug-in supports auto-proxy, so working at a lower resolution in Premiere can dramatically speed up frame load times. It also supports the choose-your-own bit depth and DCI features found in Photoshop and AE.

There are a few other optimizations and minor bug fixes for the other plug-ins too, so everyone should update. Yes, it's free. Enjoy!

OpenColorIO for After Effects

OpenColorIO ("OCIO") is an open source system for managing color in film production pipelines. It was originally created for internal use at Sony Pictures Imageworks, who then released it publicly in July 2010. It now includes an After Effects plug-in that I contributed.

The main advantage of OpenColorIO is that it will function identically across all programs that support it. So if you want to make sure that your color transformations in After Effects match those in Nuke (now shipping with OCIO), this is a way to do it.

Of course, like any open source project, the plug-in is free. Anyone is free to download the code, build it themselves, or contribute a change. Here I've got pre-built versions for you, which I'll try to keep up to date with the evolving OCIO library. A PDF manual is also included.

Update: The February 2023 After Effect update added native OCIO support. Use that instead! This plug-in will remain available for older projects.

ProEXR 1.7 available

Another six months, another two seasons, and another free 0.1 update to ProEXR. Version 1.7 includes some pretty nifty improvements and additions. They are:

1. Premiere Pro plug-in
OpenEXR is beginning to spread beyond the rarified world of 3D rendering and digital compositing. More and more it is being used to send images between editing software and color correction tools, and OpenEXR is also the foundation for the upcoming ACES digital cinema workflow. ProEXR for Premiere lets you import and export OpenEXR sequences in Premiere Pro. It supports timecode, all the EXR compression options, and takes advantage of Premiere's native floating point pipeline.

2. After Effects performance boost
More work has been put into getting performance gains out of the AE plug-ins. In some tests, the new plug-ins are twice as fast as what was released in version 1.6, which was already an improvement over 1.5, the version currently shipping in After Effects. The new OpenEXR, EXtractoR, and IDentifier plug-ins are project-compatible and free, so don't waste any time replacing your current After Effects versions with the latest and greatest.

3. ProEXR EZ is free
No longer be held captive by fnord software's greedy capitalists! More information below.

4. VRimg support
Many VRay users convert their multipass VRimg files to OpenEXR and then open them with ProEXR. Now they can skip a step and open VRimg files directly in Photoshop and After Effects. (Both programs prefer you use the 3-letter file extension ".vri" instead of ".vrimg".)

Enjoy!

ProEXR EZ is Free

A fact of life for plug-in developers is that a good idea for a plug-in today may become a new feature in the main program tomorrow. If you have saved an OpenEXR file out of the Photoshop CS6 public beta, you will have seen this dialog:

Which might remind you of another dialog:

So thank you, Adobe, I'm glad that you decided to give Photoshop users some more options for saving EXR files. And I'm glad I could help them out in the meantime with ProEXR EZ, which I'm now making free. Download ProEXR 1.7 and run ProEXR EZ without a serial number, even in versions of Photoshop prior to CS6.

But even if you're using CS6 and don't need to read or write multi-channel EXR files, you'll still want to use ProEXR EZ instead of Photoshop's built-in OpenEXR module. Our plug-in has these advantages:

• Photoshop's input options dialog comes up every time, while ProEXR EZ's only comes up if you hold down the shift key. You can also set a preference to make it come up every time if you want and set your own default settings.
• ProEXR EZ lets you write Luminance/Chroma images, while Photoshop can only read them.
• ProEXR EZ let you write files with Zip16, B44, and B44A compression, which Photoshop has left out for some reason.
• ProEXR lets you write out files in 32-bit float for the rare time when EXR's 16-bit float is not enough.
• ProEXR EZ includes the ProEXR File Description that tells you about all the channels and metadata in the EXR file you're using.
• ProEXR EZ reads and writes EXR color space information while Photoshop does not.

As a refresher, the following plug-ins are free in ProEXR:

• ProEXR EZ for Photoshop
• OpenEXR, EXtractoR, IDentifier plug-ins for After Effects
• OpenEXR for Premiere
• ProEXR Comp Creator for After Effects (part of ProEXR AE)

The following ProEXR features require a license:

• ProEXR for Photoshop (read/write layered EXR files)
• ProEXR AE (write layered EXR files out of After Effects)
• VRimg support (part of ProEXR for Photoshop and ProEXR AE)

j2k 2.6

The last release of j2k added support for Digital Cinema files, but I've since received some user feedback asking for more control over DCI bit rate. Ask and ye shall receive:

The controls are modeled after those found in OpenDCP. It defaults to a megabits per second model, but you can also specify a per-frame size in kilobytes if you prefer. The slider tops out at the DCI spec maximum, but you can enter a higher number in the text field if you wish.

As usual, j2k is free. Enjoy!

ProEXR 1.6 released

A modest 0.1 version increase for a pretty significant update to ProEXR. It includes, of course, any number of minor bug fixes, but also a few pretty significant features. The update is free, as usual.

1. Nuke Comp Builder script
Since the beginning, files saved with ProEXR in Photoshop have contained a little blurb of data detailing the layer arrangement, transfer modes, and other things beyond the scope of the EXR format. ProEXR for Photoshop and After Effects could use this data to rebuild their project exactly as it was saved, but for Nuke you were forced to do it manually. Well, no longer—ProEXR includes a Python script that will read the data (requires Nuke 6.3) and build a comp for you. Linux users, download it here.

2. AE plug-in optimizations
A significant amount of work was put into the After Effects plug-ins to try to eke more speed out of them, particularly when reading layers using EXtractoR. I won't bore you with the details, but in some tests I've seen a 40% improvement. Feel free to swap these in for the ones that ship with AE. Don't worry, they're 100% project compatible with the previous versions you've already been using.

3. Memory Mapping
A new option has been added when reading files: "Memory Mapping." What this means is that the entire raw EXR file is loaded into a memory buffer before it is decompressed. Some users have found that performing one big read can speed things up tremendously on certain networks. Access this option from the input options dialog in Photoshop, or it can be set by editing the Preferences file in AE. More details in the manual.

4. Render layered EXR files from After Effects
This feature merits its own blog post, don't you think?

ProEXR AE

New in version 1.6 of ProEXR is a new plug-in for After Effects: ProEXR AE. On one hand, this is the old ProEXR Comp Creator plug-in with a new name. But installing this plug-in also will add an extra option to your list of output formats.

Funny how sometimes one tiny little UI widget can indicate a whole world of possibilities. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, choosing "ProEXR Layers Sequence" will render all the layers of your After Effects comp into a multi-channel OpenEXR sequence. And of course each file will include our blob of layer data so it can be reconstructed in Nuke, Photoshop, or even back in AE.

Needless to say, this is somewhat beyond the scope of a typical After Effects file module, so perhaps it should be considered experimental for now. If it behaves oddly, please send email telling me so. And do remember that it follows the same layer naming conventions followed by the Photoshop plug-in (more on that in the manual).

To take advantage of this functionality, you'll need a ProEXR serial number. (It will run in trial mode for 15 days, like the Photoshop plug-ins.) You do not need a serial number to use the comp building functionality however.

Enjoy!