Codec information in the info window or anywhere in Premiere Pro?

Question

Hi all,
I'm very new to Adobe Premiere Pro so pardon the newly question.  I of course come from the Final Cut Pro world.
So one of the things I didn't get was the level of information provided in the various info panels.  I noticed that neither the file properties or info panels, display what kind of codec a particular video is when it's in the project.  Lets say I had some XDCAM files and some ProRes files that i've imported, and I look at the info on the files either through right clicking and selecting properties or selecting the file and then going to the info panel, it doesn't ever display the actual codec in which the video is in.  It usually says something like MPEG movie or Quicktime Movie, but it won't get more detailed like it's a "ProRes 422 file" or something like that.
Is there any place in Premiere where this information can be displayed?  That's something that I did like about FCP, is it's transparent display of file attributes and how specific it gets down to what codec the file is encoded in, etc.
There's got to be a place in Premiere that has that info, no?  Please advise.
Thanks!!

Answer 1

From what I understand, QT is now 64-bit native, so I'm not sure that would be the issue.
QuickTime X is 64-bit, but that's a completely different application and architecture than QuickTime 7, which is only 32-bit. Premiere Pro uses QuickTime 7 exclusively for QuickTime import/export support, since QuickTime X a) doesn't do everything QuickTime 7 does and b) is only available on the Mac.
Premiere Pro is not a QuickTime based application, the way that FCP 7 was (I think FCP X is a completely different animal, all the way). In many respects, QT is a bolt-on in Premiere Pro, but that's by necessity rather than by design. The QT32 Server application that Todd referenced is a result of this necessity; Apple didn't make it easy for other application authors to integrate QT into their applications, so Adobe had to do the next best thing. Not including QuickTime support of any sort in Premiere Pro CS5 and beyond, once the application went 64-bit, would have been an unacceptable end for many shops and editors who use QuickTime in their workflows. This comes at certain expenses, but there's only so much Adobe could do with the limitations of the QuickTime 32-bit architecture.
That said, Adobe has done a lot with many types of QuickTime files that completely circumvent the 32-bit QuickTime process, and allows Premiere Pro to natively and directly support certain MOV flavors. For example, Canon DSLR QuickTime MOVs are handled by Premiere Pro's MPEG importer (that's why they show up as MPEG Movie in Properties), as are DV/DVCPRO50/DVCPRO HD MOVs and JVC XDCAM EX MOVs. There are several other examples as well, but the end result is the same: you don't even need QuickTime 7 installed (on Windows or Mac) to import these files and they're always handled with a 64-bit importer. That's a pretty major workflow and performance enhancement, and I think goes a long way to suggest Adobe's commitment to handling as many media types natively and as robustly as possible.
Ultimately, I think that once Apple discontinues QuickTime 7, we'll be at a crossroads. Adobe appears to be trying to support as many different QuickTime codec flavors natively as they can, but that's a long list, and there are only so many that are viable to develop and maintain support of in the future. What that means for the formats and codecs you need for your workflows, I couldn't say, but definitely use that feature request form (when it works!) to add your voice to the conversation.