MOX – The Open Source Movie Format Project

I was browsing my Twitter feed today when I saw these tweets in quick succession:

It’s not enough to just get MOX funded. We need it to reach the @AdobeAE plug-in stretch goal. Give if you can. https://t.co/txcx2Wr7PI

— Stu Maschwitz (@5tu) November 5, 2014

Getting close to deadline and reaching goal – help make it happen for MOX File Format on @indiegogo http://t.co/con71FltR5 #vfx

— Jeff Heusser (@neonmarg) November 5, 2014

I’d never heard of MOX before but it was obviously something that Stu and Jeff were excited about so I clicked through to the Indiegogo page.

MOX is a project by Brendan Bolles, a visual effects artist and software developer. He wants to write an open source movie format that would work like QuickTime or AVI, but that is based on existing open source image and audio file formats like OpenEXR, instead of proprietary codecs like Apple ProRes or Avid DNxHD. The IndieGogo page describes the project much better than I could, and in much more detail so click through, and watch this Video:

I realised that I have already used After Effect plug-ins developed by Brendan so I know he’s got the skills to pull it off.

Only recently I was struggling with QuickTime gamma issues, something that I didn’t think would be an issue in 2014. And I have also had to have long discussions about which codec we should base whole editing projects around, even when we were all using Premier Pro, just on different operating systems. I love the idea that one guy can fix all this for everyone. So I donated $20 to the project.

I hope you will consider donating too.