Apple wins an Engineering Emmy for its ProRes video codec

The Television Academy has awarded Apple with an Engineering Emmy for its ProRes video codec, which has seen widespread adoption in the film and TV industries since debuting in 2007.

Engineering Emmys are given to companies for developments that "are either so extensive an improvement on existing methods or so innovative in nature that they materially affect the production, recording, transmission or reception of television," according to the academy.

For the 72nd Engineering Emmys, Apple earned an award for the ubiquitous use of the ProRes video in both the film and television industry. The academy praised the codec's preservation of source video quality and Apple's innovative algorithm design, which offers fast encoding and ultra-fast decoding.

"These two properties— combined with Apple's industry licensing and certification support— make ProRes among the most widely used codecs for end-to-end content-creation workflows: from high-quality acquisition to high-performance editing, color correction, broadcast ingest and playout, and FX creation to master content distribution and archiving," the Television Academy wrote.

First introduced in 2007, the ProRes codec supports a variety of frame sizes at full resolution. It also offers multi-stream, real-time editing performance, excellent image quality, and reduced storage size. Earlier in 2020, Apple released beta software for Windows that allowed Adobe suite to use ProRes RAW files on non-Mac computers.

Along with Apple, the Television Academy awarded eight other companies Engineering Emmys. Some of them include Epic Games for its Unreal Engine, HP for its ZCentral Remote Boost, and Sohonet for ClearView Flex.

The 72nd Engineering Emmy Awards will be hosted by Kirsten Vangsness and streamed live on Emmys.com on Thursday, October 29.

13 Comments

Beats 3073 comments · 4 Years

About 4 years ago

Bravo for Apple putting quality first. Would love to see Apple TV get exclusive picture quality. Something no one can match for streaming.

Also why is a game company getting an Emmy? Maybe it's time Apple take Unreal Engines crown with an engine that works flawlessly across Apple Silicon.

mknelson 1146 comments · 9 Years

Beats said:

Bravo for Apple putting quality first. Would love to see Apple TV get exclusive picture quality. Something no one can match for streaming.

Also why is a game company getting an Emmy? Maybe it's time Apple take Unreal Engines crown with an engine that works flawlessly across Apple Silicon.

The Epic award could be due to the Unreal Engine being used for virtual sets. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/forging-new-paths-for-filmmakers-on-the-mandalorian

SpamSandwich 32917 comments · 19 Years

mknelson said:

Beats said:

Bravo for Apple putting quality first. Would love to see Apple TV get exclusive picture quality. Something no one can match for streaming.

Also why is a game company getting an Emmy? Maybe it's time Apple take Unreal Engines crown with an engine that works flawlessly across Apple Silicon.

The Epic award could be due to the Unreal Engine being used for virtual sets. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/forging-new-paths-for-filmmakers-on-the-mandalorian

I really encourage people to check out The Mandalorian. The virtual sets are unbelievably good. I couldn’t believe what was and was not real after I saw the episodes.

ro_ro_ur_boat 51 comments · 4 Years

There’s an engineering Emmy and been going for 72 years! I’ve Been living under a rock!

mknelson said:

Beats said:

Bravo for Apple putting quality first. Would love to see Apple TV get exclusive picture quality. Something no one can match for streaming.

Also why is a game company getting an Emmy? Maybe it's time Apple take Unreal Engines crown with an engine that works flawlessly across Apple Silicon.

The Epic award could be due to the Unreal Engine being used for virtual sets. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/forging-new-paths-for-filmmakers-on-the-mandalorian

Hey I heard about this! Good job on Epics part. What an opportunity for Apple to take over this space.