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Prores+Quicktime metadata editor

Piers Deseilligny

Piers Deseilligny

A little while ago I wrote this small tool to view/edit the colour metadata in Prores and Quicktime video files. I've recently polished it a bit so that it's available for the wider community (free and open-source under the MIT License, contributions welcome!).

It's cross-platform and supports:
  • Replacing the color primary, transfer function, color matrix, and creator ID of QuickTime/ProRes videos
  • Examining and comparing all available frame metadata
  • Warning of any inconsistencies in the metadata (in the "Errors" tab), for example if any of the prores frames define the color primary differently from the QuickTime nclc atom.
  • Batch processing multiple files
  • Exporting JSON files containing the probed metadata
Link to Github Repository

Download from the Microsoft Store
Download .zip for macOS (I would have submitted to the Mac App Store, but cannot really afford Apple's $100/year developer program, especially for a free and open-source app)

The file analysis itself is quite naive: it scans files at the byte-level, looking for the quicktime header and/or prores frames, and then patches them with the requested modifications. So it might be a little rough around the edges, but it's worked with pretty much anything I've thrown at it.

If anyone has any feature requests/feedback/thoughts, I'll happily have a look :)

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Cool app, I have been thinking about something similar.

I downloaded the Mac version and try to run it on 10.15.7, but I get a "Metacolor.Editor.XamMac.app" can't be opened.

What could that be?
 
Hey Piers,

thanks for making this available.
Quick question - the macOS version seems to need some kind of .net implementation, is that correct?
 
Thanks for the feedback everyone!

Marc Wielage said:
Any documentation available? You also should add a PayPal link for donations.
Click to expand...

Yep, I've just added some to the wiki on GitHub. And thanks for the PayPal link idea! added that too.

Nikolai Waldman said:
Cool app, I have been thinking about something similar.

I downloaded the Mac version and try to run it on 10.15.7, but I get a "Metacolor.Editor.XamMac.app" can't be opened.

What could that be?
Click to expand...

Yeah that's a weird bug related to Xamarin, I believe, where the permissions of the app aren't set correctly during build. It can be fixed pretty easily through the terminal by running
Code: 
chmod +x /Users/johnsmith/Downloads/Metacolor.Editor.XamMac.app/Contents/MacOS/Metacolor.Editor.XamMac
. So "chmod+x " followed by the path of the .app, followed by "/Contents/MacOS/Metacolor.Editor.XamMac"

And then macOS will probably complain that "Metacolor.Editor.XamMac.app cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified", which can be solved by command-click > "Open" > "Open anyway" (only necessary the first time it's opened).

It's all a bit of a pain, but I don't have consistent access to a macOS machine, so can't really easily test/solve these things :/

Mazze Aderhold said:
Hey Piers,

thanks for making this available.
Quick question - the macOS version seems to need some kind of .net implementation, is that correct?
Click to expand...

It does indeed use Eto, which relies on .NET, but the macOS build available for download uses Xamarin under the hood, and includes it in the .app (which is why it's unfortunately a slightly obscene 90MB for a small utility app). However that means you don't actually need to download mono or any other framework etc...
 
Piers Deseilligny said:
Yeah that's a weird bug related to Xamarin, I believe, where the permissions of the app aren't set correctly during build.


It does indeed use Eto, which relies on .NET, but the macOS build available for download uses Xamarin under the hood, and includes it in the .app (which is why it's unfortunately a slightly obscene 90MB for a small utility app). However that means you don't actually need to download mono or any other framework etc...
Click to expand...

Yes indeed - the ".net" (which turned out to be the Xamarin bug) was the issue it wouldn't start on Mac and the Terminal command worked and I got it to run - thanks :) !
 
Thanks a lot, Piers. It worked perfectly for me.
(and was somehow more convincing for my client than my explanation that it's a common quicktime problem ; )

I wonder if there is a downside to this metadata specification, or why else it is not common practice by all NLEs. But probably there is already a thread about this somewhere...
 
Sebastian Bodirsky said:
I wonder if there is a downside to this metadata specification, or why else it is not common practice by all NLEs. But probably there is already a thread about this somewhere...
Click to expand...

That metadata is supported for display by many post apps, but only editable in a few of them, hence the need for a metadata editing app like this.

Resolve allows setting that metadata on export, while NLEs like Premiere and FCPX default to tagging all SDR exports as 1-1-1. FCPX is at least internally color managed around 1-1-1, while Premiere Pro is just a hopeless mess since it doesn’t color manage for 1-1-1 yet it tags outputs that way.
 
Jamie LeJeune said:
That metadata is supported for display by many post apps, but only editable in a few of them, hence the need for a metadata editing app like this.

Resolve allows setting that metadata on export, while NLEs like Premiere and FCPX default to tagging all SDR exports as 1-1-1. FCPX is at least internally color managed around 1-1-1, while Premiere Pro is just a hopeless mess since it doesn’t color manage for 1-1-1 yet it tags outputs that way.
Click to expand...
Premiere Pro is even worse than this.

- Material will always export as 1-1-1 in SDR
- Material with other tags than 1-1-1 will likely be converted to 1-1-1
- You can't affect how Premiere reads footage (i.e. force all SDR to be read as Rec 709 / Gamma 2.4).

So if you render files externally tagged with Rec 709 / Gamma 2.2, Rec 709 / Gamma 2.4 and Rec 709 / Gamma 2.6 they will all render differently with-in Premiere and be converted to a Rec 709 / Rec 709 (1-1-1) file. Files tagged with Rec 709 / Rec 709 are rendered as Rec 709 / Gamma 2.4.

The above behaviour seems unique to Premiere and AME thought. After Effects in a color managed workflow seems to assume Rec 709 / Gamma 2.4 and render out 1-1-1. It makes sense the color managed app disregards these tags…

Oh, I think since some versions back AVID respects these tags also.
 
Hi Piers,

It's slightly off the color topic but I wonder if you could easily edit the quicktime frame rate information. Long time ago, there was a very useful apple app called Cinema Tools (Final Cut Pro) where one could edit the frame rate info (change from 24fps to 25fps, etc...) but since apple stopped supporting it there is not an equivalent replacement. I guess there are a lot of people out there that would find this utility very useful.
 
Carlos Almeida said:
It's slightly off the color topic but I wonder if you could easily edit the quicktime frame rate information. Long time ago, there was a very useful apple app called Cinema Tools (Final Cut Pro) where one could edit the frame rate info (change from 24fps to 25fps, etc...) but since apple stopped supporting it there is not an equivalent replacement. I guess there are a lot of people out there that would find this utility very useful.
Click to expand...
I really miss this app and wish there were a 2023 replacement.
 
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