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Codec
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Was the spot done at 8 bits per channel or 16?
Animation is only lossless up to 8b. PhotoJPEG is never lossless. SheerVideo is lossless up to 10b, Microcosm up to 16b, but is nowhere near real-time.
Also note that SheerVideo uses Synchromy to losslessly convert to high-precision YUV in Final Cut Pro, which no other codec can do. -
Animation uses run-length encoding, so it’s excellent for constant-shaded 2-D animation and anything else with large areas of constant color. But for high-detail footage where neighboring pixels are unlikely to be exactly the same color, Animation only shrinks the file by around 5%, while SheerVideo still cuts the file size in half.
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Actually, SheerVideo is designed to be an editing codec, so it doesn’t do any interframe compression. This means it does just as well on fast motion as on talking heads.
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AJA and BitJazz work together to make sure SheerVideo works properly with the Kona2, but SheerVideo doesn’t currently run in the Kona2 firmware.
Yes, you can use SheerVideo as a substitute for the Apple/AJA codecs for real-time SD and HD editing and compositing with about half the storage requirements.
There are a couple caveats: One is that Final Cut Pro doesn’t support RT Extreme for SheerVideo yet, so if you do anything other than cuts, you still need to render. The other is that SheerVideo’s native support for AJA’s new RGB 10b pixel formats isn’t yet real-time, but that should be fixed in a week or two. -
Thanks for the good word, David. However, SheerVideo is definitely a capture codec, and is being used in many studios for real-time HD acquisition, including a live show on a major broadcast network.
The demo period is actually 20 days (not necessarily consecutive), and the price is $149 for one key, $99 each for two or more.
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Yes, SheerVideo should let your Xserve RAID serve around twice as many uncompressed-quality video streams.
And yes, unfortunately you lose real-time effects in FCP – but Apple has said that if enough customers complain, they will fix that. -
[Andreas Wittenstein] “Animation is only lossless up to 8b. PhotoJPEG is never lossless.”
Absolutely true. However, there are times when it has worked perfectly in a particular workflow. Mostly when the client needs it over FTP, crunched down in file size as much as possible, doesn’t care that it is a bit lossy but doesn’t *look* lossy and doesn’t want to (or can’t) download and install 3rd party codecs on their FCP or AVID system.
PhotoJPEG 100% Quality is never my first choice, but it does have its merits and purposes that end up working perfectly.
Marco Solorio | OneRiver Media
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[Andreas Wittenstein] “so it doesn’t do any interframe compression. This means it does just as well on fast motion as on talking heads.”
Doh! That’s right. My bad… it typically compresses it by half, which is part of what I was mentioning. If it was interframe, it wouldn’t do that. Silly me :-p
Marco Solorio | OneRiver Media
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Andreas,
Thanks for all of the useful info.
I wonder if AJA support can kick in to this forum.
One question I have is about HD, what kind of frame size and DATA rates would we be talking about ith the Sheer Codec as a replacement for 10bit uncompressed.Do you have File size comparisions for this.
If this is all true this could be the ulitmate solution loosing M-Jpeg.David
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So curiousity is getting the best of me. I did this small test. Try it yourself if you like.
Made two ten second sequences.
Sequence A Sheer Codec
Sequence B Apple 10 bit uncompressedSequence A Exported movie is about 100mb
Sequence B Exported movie is about 300mbBUT ON MATCHED FRAMES ON THE SEQUENCES THE WAVEFORM TELLS A DIFFERENT STORY
Sequence A has a slight color shift, is about 1 IRE unit lower and is visibly less saturated compared to to 10 bit uncompessed.
But it is a full third the frame size, is sharper than DVC PRO and renders very quickly.
I invite you to try your own little test.
David
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