Codec

[David Battistella]

ANNIMATION

[Donato M. rondinelli]

Thanks.
-dMR

[David Battistella]

I will add that this file can then be rendered into any SD timeline/codec preset you set up in FCP and will look great.

David

[Marco Solorio]

Some good alternatives to Animation are…

PhotoJPEG @ 100% quality (crunches the file size a little bit lower than animation)
BitJazz SheerVideo (encoder costs money)
Microcosm (encoder costs money)

When working in RGB space, Animation is always the safest bet if file size isn’t the biggest concern. With a :30 spot, the file size differences may be moot.

Marco Solorio  |  OneRiver Media

[David Battistella]

Hey Marco,

Will BitJazz shrink any file in half or just annimation files. I like the idea of this kind of codec for archiving client projects and being able to restore them quickly.

David

[Marco Solorio]

Hey David,

Good question. No, it actually wont shrink any video file by half. IOW, if you have a Sorenson 3 video file that’s 50 MB, it wont make it 25 MB. It’s (roughly) half the file size in relation to the raw source. It also depends on what kind of footage is being encoded, i.e., fast motion cuts vs. a talking head, as most codecs are. It’s a very intelligent algorithm as there are Y’CbCr options as well.

The good thing too is that the decoder/player is free on Mac/Win, including OS9, so anyone can read a Sheer Video file if they need to. It is only the encoder that costs money.

Marco Solorio  |  OneRiver Media

[Hans Vernhout]

Marco,

Is this SheerVideo codec in any way supported by the Kona2 hardware?
Can we use it as a substitute for the Apple/AJA codecs for realtime SD and HD editing (FCP) and compositing (Motion, After Effects) with about half the storage requirements?
Any pitfalls?

Hans Vernhout
Director / lighting cameraman
The Netherlands

[David Battistella]

Hans,

This codec is designed specifically for archiving material. I would not class it as a “capture” codec. It is a proprietary codec that uses lossless compression to get file sizes down. If you work with a lot of annimation files, for example, you can save a lot of space archiving or rendering this codec out of AE. You can import this codec into fcp and render it into any timeline you like and it works beautifully and it is very, very clean and pixel perfect.

It’s a great way to save space for livetype as well. Anywhere you would use the annimation codec, you can use this codec as a half space replacement.

There is a free demo of it on the site which expires after 28days, and it costs $145 to buy. The player is free, so clients etc, can get the player for QT and view anything you create on their machines.

David

[Hans Vernhout]

Thanks David,

Why not use it in our own workflow as a ‘capture’ codec as it’s faster than realtime according to the Sheer Video website? It might help our Apple Xserve RAID to serve more video streams, as the bandwith needed is about half that of our uncompressed 10-bit video. As long as we don’t need compatability with other parties this codec might double our stream count without sacrificing quality, or do we lose realtime effects etc. in for example FCP or Motion?

Hans Vernhout
Director / lighting cameraman
The Netherlands

[David Battistella]

Well,

First off it would have to be RT enabled by apple within FCP and it is not. The RT enabled codecs are DV, DVCPRO50, 100, Uncompressed and maybe a couple f the offline rt codecs as well.

People have been pushing fro Apple to RT enable M-jpeg, because it is such a good codec, but Apple has not done tis. Even at half teh size of teh Annimation codec the data rates are still very high and it is a 4:4:4 codec.

I thimnk I might ask Bitjazz support to read this thread and offer up an explaination.

David