SheerVideo's breakthrough speed and power make it possible to stream pixels through a transmission pipe or to or from a hard disk at more than twice the average rate as uncompressed footage, while consuming less than half the bandwidth or storage space. In real-time situations, if your data stream takes one clock cycle too long or one bit too much bandwidth or space, it won't just be a hair too slow or too big; It won't work at all. Thus, in many cases, SheerVideo's real-time compression capability is the critical enabling factor that makes it straightforward to accomplish tasks that would otherwise be impossible.

To ensure optimal performance of your storage systems and networks:

• Ensure that your disks or other storage devices have sufficiently fast sustained read and write rates. The standard engineering safety margin is a factor of 2, so your disks should ideally have twice the sustained transfer rate per video stream specified in the table below. Storage systems typically do not degrade gracefully when pushed near their limit. A single hiccup can cause a precipitous drop from which the stream never recovers until it is restarted.
• Ensure that your buses, cables, and other transmission devices have sufficiently fast sustained transfer rates.
• If you are using a single hard disk, ensure that it has enough unfragmented free space that your entire video can be stored in a single contiguous region of the disk.
• Ensure that each stream is in a "flattened", self-contained movie without any edits that would force the disk head to thrash around.

Here is a table comparing the average Sheer data rate with the uncompressed data rate for some common video and digital-film standards. The uncompressed data rates assume tightly packed bits with no padding between components, words, or pixels. The Sheer data rates assume an average compression power of 2.2. The data rates are given in MB/s (10^6 Bytes/second) as is common among storage vendors, rather than in MiB/s (2^20 Bytes/second) as reported by file systems. All data rates are rounded up for safety.

				data rate
standard	resolution	frame rate	Sheer format	uncompressed	Sheer
	p/f	f/s		MB/s	MB/s
Small	160 x 120	30	Sheer RGB 8bf	2	1
Small	160 x 120	30	Sheer RGBA 8bf	3	2
Small	160 x 120	30	Sheer RGB 10bf	3	1
Small	160 x 120	30	Sheer RGBA 10bf	3	2
Medium	320 x 240	30	Sheer RGB 8bf	7	4
Medium	320 x 240	30	Sheer RGBA 8bf	10	5
Medium	320 x 240	30	Sheer RGB 10bf	9	4
Medium	320 x 240	30	Sheer RGBA 10bf	12	6
NTSC	640 x 480	30	Sheer RGB 8bf	28	13
NTSC	640 x 480	30	Sheer RGBA 8bf	37	17
NTSC	640 x 480	30	Sheer RGB 10bf	35	16
NTSC	640 x 480	30	Sheer RGBA 10bf	47	21
NTSC D1	720 x 486	30	Sheer RGB 8bf	32	15
NTSC D1	720 x 486	30	Sheer RGBA 8bf	42	20
NTSC D1	720 x 486	30	Sheer RGB 10bf	40	18
NTSC D1	720 x 486	30	Sheer RGBA 10bf	53	24
PAL D1	720 x 576	25	Sheer RGB 8bf	32	15
PAL D1	720 x 576	25	Sheer RGBA 8bf	42	20
PAL D1	720 x 576	25	Sheer RGB 10bf	40	18
PAL D1	720 x 576	25	Sheer RGBA 10bf	53	24
XGA	1024 x 768	30	Sheer RGB 8bf	71	33
XGA	1024 x 768	30	Sheer RGBA 8bf	95	43
XGA	1024 x 768	30	Sheer RGB 10bf	89	41
XGA	1024 x 768	30	Sheer RGBA 10bf	118	54
HD	1280 x 720	24	Sheer RGB 8bf	67	31
HD	1280 x 720	24	Sheer RGBA 8bf	89	41
HD	1280 x 720	24	Sheer RGB 10bf	83	38
HD	1280 x 720	24	Sheer RGBA 10bf	111	51
HD	1280 x 720	25	Sheer RGB 8bf	70	32
HD	1280 x 720	25	Sheer RGBA 8bf	93	42
HD	1280 x 720	25	Sheer RGB 10bf	87	40
HD	1280 x 720	25	Sheer RGBA 10bf	116	53
HD	1280 x 720	30	Sheer RGB 8bf	83	38
HD	1280 x 720	30	Sheer RGBA 8bf	111	51
HD	1280 x 720	30	Sheer RGB 10bf	104	48
HD	1280 x 720	30	Sheer RGBA 10bf	139	63
HD	1280 x 720	60	Sheer RGB 8bf	167	76
HD	1280 x 720	60	Sheer RGBA 8bf	222	101
HD	1280 x 720	60	Sheer RGB 10bf	108	95
HD	1280 x 720	60	Sheer RGBA 10bf	277	126
D4	1440 x 1024	24	Sheer RGB 8bf	107	49
D4	1440 x 1024	24	Sheer RGBA 8bf	142	65
D4	1440 x 1024	24	Sheer RGB 10bf	133	61
D4	1440 x 1024	24	Sheer RGBA 10bf	177	81
Cineon Half	1828 x 1332	24	Sheer RGB 8bf	176	80
Cineon Half	1828 x 1332	24	Sheer RGBA 8bf	234	107
Cineon Half	1828 x 1332	24	Sheer RGB 10bf	220	100
Cineon Half	1828 x 1332	24	Sheer RGBA 10bf	293	133
HD	1920 x 1080	24	Sheer RGB 8bf	150	68
HD	1920 x 1080	24	Sheer RGBA 8bf	200	91
HD	1920 x 1080	24	Sheer RGB 10bf	187	85
HD	1920 x 1080	24	Sheer RGBA 10bf	249	114
HD	1920 x 1080	25	Sheer RGB 8bf	156	71
HD	1920 x 1080	25	Sheer RGBA 8bf	208	95
HD	1920 x 1080	25	Sheer RGB 10bf	195	89
HD	1920 x 1080	25	Sheer RGBA 10bf	260	118
HD	1920 x 1080	30	Sheer RGB 8bf	187	85
HD	1920 x 1080	30	Sheer RGBA 8bf	249	114
HD	1920 x 1080	30	Sheer RGB 10bf	234	107
HD	1920 x 1080	30	Sheer RGBA 10bf	312	142
2K	2048 x 1536	24	Sheer RGB 8bf	227	103
2K	2048 x 1536	24	Sheer RGBA 8bf	302	138
2K	2048 x 1536	24	Sheer RGB 10bf	284	129
2K	2048 x 1536	24	Sheer RGBA 10bf	378	172
D16	2880 x 2048	24	Sheer RGB 8bf	425	194
D16	2880 x 2048	24	Sheer RGBA 8bf	567	258
D16	2880 x 2048	24	Sheer RGB 10bf	531	242
D16	2880 x 2048	24	Sheer RGBA 10bf	708	322
Cineon Full	3656 x 2664	24	Sheer RGB 8bf	702	319
Cineon Full	3656 x 2664	24	Sheer RGBA 8bf	936	426
Cineon Full	3656 x 2664	24	Sheer RGB 10bf	877	399
Cineon Full	3656 x 2664	24	Sheer RGBA 10bf	1169	532