I'm spending more time in FCP X, i'm quite enjoying it actually. My other system is a PC based PPro with cineform.

Now i'm wondering what the best archival storage format is for my media. I cannot encode pro res on windows so that's out (i think)

cineform is a possibility as there is a player on the mac, but it doesn't really work well within FCP so i would have to transcode again.

And i cannot get avid DNxHD codecs to install under OS X Lion.

If i'm going to have to go through a transcode in FCP to ProRes intermediate then i could archive in any format. Is there a super high very compressed option these days that's freely available. I mean are there any options for for MPEG4 running at 10 bit for example?

Just curious how people are handling their FCP media in a mixed environment

cheers
paul

Apple ProRes can play on either Mac or Windows. The playback component is free from Apple if it's not installed with the current versions of Quicktime on Windows.
Apple ProRes QuickTime Decoder 1.0 for Windows (http://support.apple.com/downloads/Apple_ProRes_QuickTime_Decoder_1_0_for_Windows)

Encoding to ProRes Windows is another story. It can be done but the least expensive way to do it on Windows is with Telestream Episode Engine at about $4000.
Video Encoding Software | Episode - Engine Product Details | Telestream (http://www.telestream.net/episode/episode-engine.htm)

Encoding to ProRes Windows is another story. It can be done but the least expensive way to do it on Windows is with Telestream Episode Engine at about $4000.
Video Encoding Software | Episode - Engine Product Details | Telestream (http://www.telestream.net/episode/episode-engine.htm)

That's the problem with ProRes, i would generally be on windows generating source footage (vfx work etc) and want a nice cross platform source file format. I can then leave those on a NAS and in FCP generate proxies locally on my MBP to edit with.

DNxHD doesn't seem to want to install the codecs on my Lion machine (plus they seem to be buggy last time i used them on windows and snow leopard)

Cineform i do have on windows but read only codec on mac. Ideally i want an open or very well supported codec on the Mac read/write. One problem i have now is i'm having to pull footage from a 5 year old project and the plug-ins, software etc,. are so far out of date it's a nightmare rebuilding - i don't want to have a problem in a few years time with cineform support

That leaves something i don't know about, or whether it's possible to generate a mp4 with such a high quality compression it's practically lossless at >8bit depth...?

Open to all codec suggestions, cross platform!

And i am amazed there isn't a clear and simple solution.

cheers
paul

Cineform is not read only on the Mac. You can buy it here: CineForm Inc (http://estore.cineform.com/index.aspx)