Hi peoples,
so.. the new Apple ProRes 4444 XQ is out and there’s quite a lot of people wanting to get hands on it with their favourite editing-, grading-, or encoding application. Now there’s a couple of tools, that already include the codec – but they install it in a way, that only those tools can make use out of it.
Tools, that rely on the standard Quicktime library (to be found in /Library/Quicktime), will not see the codec as an option, when encoding to Quicktime. Also, many people install Apple’s ProApps codec-pack and are wondering where their XQ-flavour is.
Reason for that is simply, that ProRes XQ is not included with ProApps.
So what we will do, is find an application that includes ProRes 4444 XQ, and extract the codec from there in order to copy it the the general Quicktime Library, hence making it available to all applications that use the general Quicktime Library – such as Adobe tools, Quicktime Pro, or Assimilate SCRATCH.
The application we will extract the codec from will be FCP-X.
Before we continue – please keep in mind, that the following steps
are most likely not what Apple wants us to do and it might actually be in breach with their terms & conditions. In other words: I do not take any responsibility for you following what’s described next in this article.
Okay, once you clarified the legal situation of your country, you might proceed reading:
Basically, what we’re going to do is pretty simple:
Locate the codec inside the FCP-X app, get it out of there and copy it to the general Quicktime Library, so every other tool can make use of it.
To do so, we do not even need to install FCP-X – just get the install-image of the trial from the Apple website and mount it with a double click.
Once opened, you will see the app, ready to be dragged to the applications-folder. Don’t do that, if you don’t need FCP-X on your machine anyways.
Rightclick the app, and choose “Show Package Contents” – a new window opens up, showing the content of the app:
Navigate to “Contents/PlugIns/Compressor/“ to find the “CompressorKit.bundle“.
Again, right click and select “Show Package Contents” – and again, a new window opens up.
Here, navigate to “/Contents/PlugIns/ProMediaIO/Components/“ to find a file called “AppleProResCodecEmbedded.component” .
That actually is the Quicktime-component, that includes our so badly wanted ProRes 4444 XQ codec.
Now just copy this component-file to the general Quicktime library on your system disk: /Library/Quicktime .
Done – if you now open up any app, that uses the general Quicktime library, it will show the XQ flavour.
I guess, it will only be a matter of time until the apps in question will add their own ProRes XQ implementation.
But until then… this might be the way 😉 .
Cheers,
Mazze