Daniel2 Codec for Adobe Creative Cloud with Accelerated Production now available for Mac


The Windows version has been available for almost a year and has seen numerous features added to it during this short time. Now the Mac OS version of Cinegy Daniel2 Accelerator Plugin Pack brings these capabilities to the Mac community. The main feature is the Daniel2 codec, which, being designed for massive parallel computing, brings massive performance gains when running on GPUs. It is also the fastest production codec when running on CPUs. Compared to other codecs Daniel2 creates less load on the CPU and/or GPU or achieves significantly higher encoding and decoding speeds using the same hardware. This makes production work in 4K, 8K or higher resolutions achievable on hardware where this was previously impossible or too slow.

Unified, accelerated workflows for ultra-fast HD, UHD, 8K or even higher resolution production are now possible cross-platform on Mac and Windows. The Daniel2 codec is utilizing the open, professional MXF OP1A file format, which also supports edit-while-ingest, e.g. capturing multiple channels of live video using Cinegy’s Capture Pro software.

In addition to highest performance, the preservation of the best image quality is equally important. The real “icing on the cake” is Daniel2’s clever Alpha channel support. It addresses the need for an elegant and efficient cross-platform alpha channel format, which had been missing for years. Additional features of the Windows version such as GPU accelerated H.264 and HEVC export will be supported in the Mac version where the hardware will permit this.

“Our customers working with 4K and 8K video always appreciate additional performance enhancements,” says Sue Skidmore, head of partner relations for Adobe pro video. “We are happy to see that now both Windows and Mac users will enjoy the same benefits.”

“Every second email I receive on Daniel2 is asking when there will finally be a Mac version. The answer is: now! The Mac version benefits from all the hard work and improvements we made for the Windows version over the last year,” said Jan Weigner, CTO at Cinegy. “Now there is an open, cross platform ultra-high-speed codec for the broadcast and media production that addresses all current and future challenges including 8K, HDR and HFR. Yes, there is a Linux version of the Daniel2 codec available as of today as well, addressing those emails as well.”

Cinegy stands by its claim that Daniel2 is the world’s fastest acquisition and production codec. It is available for as free plug-in for the Adobe Creative Cloud video applications including Adobe After Effects® CC, Adobe Premiere Pro® CC, and Adobe Media Encoder CC. It can be found on the Adobe Exchange or directly at www.daniel2.com. Developer information and SDK documentation can also be found at www.daniel2.com with code samples being available via Github and SDK binaries via Nuget.