BitJazz Press Releases
April 22, 2004

BitJazz Announces Revolutionary Nondestructive Color-Conversion Technology
for Professional Video and Film Production

RGB ↔ Y'CbCr Lossless Interconversion Breakthrough

LAS VEGAS, Nevada - April 22, 2004 -- At the NAB convention today, BitJazz Inc. announced the development of Synchromy™ (formerly known as StickyColor), a revolutionary process for interconverting between spectral RGB color pixels and video Y'CbCr color pixels with absolute zero loss in image quality. Designed to increase the interchangeability of studio-quality video and CGI formats in professional video and film production, Synchromy permits editors to switch between their favorite tools without having to worry about error accumulation from repeated conversion between RGB and Y'CbCr color spaces. Protected by US Patent 7,659,911.

"Imagine if you could repeatedly edit your video footage with RGB tools, or repeatedly edit your CGI or film footage with Y'CbCr tools, without having to worry about generational loss or even first-generation loss. Synchromy does that for you. Untouched pixels in the final output are bit-for-bit identical with the original source pixels, and the rest have the highest possible accuracy."

Andreas Wittenstein, BitJazz Founder

what it does

Some essential production and postproduction tools, such as rendering and compositing tools, often work only in spectral RGB space. Other essential tools, such as real-time editors, often work only in video Y'CbCr space. Because everyone in the production industry "knows" that converting between RGB and Y'CbCr color spaces is always inherently destructive, this means that production workflows must be planned with great care to minimize the number of times that such interconversion takes place. Synchromy removes that restriction by maintaining source material with perfect fidelity through any number of interconversions between RGB and Y'CbCr. And even in a traditionally restricted workflow, Synchromy reduces the image degradation because of its maximum accuracy.

how it works

BitJazz's proprietary Synchromy technology is based on a branch of mathematical information theory company founder Andreas Wittenstein calls discrete deprecision theory, which was previously used to develop BitJazz's PhotoJazz and SheerVideo products. Synchromy maintains the theoretically highest possible accuracy in converting between RGB and Y'CbCr color spaces. In cases where the two color spaces have the same precision, Synchromy has measurably lower error than any other method. Given an RGB component precision one or two bits greater than the Y'CbCr precision, the error is exactly zero when converting from Y'CbCr to RGB and back; and given a Y'CbCr precision two bits greater than the RGB precision, converting from RGB to Y'CbCr and back yields exactly zero error. For example, in an RGB -> Y'CbCr -> RGB workflow, if you start with uncompressed 10-bit RGB[A] material, convert it to Y'CbCr[A] 4:4:4[:4] data of at least 12 bits per component with Synchromy, edit it with a high-precision Y'CbCr editor, and convert it back to 10-bit RGB[A] with Synchromy, any pixels not affected by the editing will be maintained with perfect fidelity, and the edited pixels will be interpolated with the maximum possible accuracy. Similarly, in a Y'CbCr -> RGB -> Y'CbCr workflow, if you use Synchromy to convert 10-bit uncompressed Y'CbCr[A] 4:4:4[:4] footage to RGB[A] pixels of 12 or more bits per component, edit it with a high-precision RGB compositor, and convert it back to 10-bit Y'CbCr[A] 4:4:4[:4], untouched pixels will be mathematically identical to the originals, and the remaining pixels will be interpolated as accurately as theoretically possible.

versatility

Synchromy supports fixed-point RGB[A] and Y'CbCr[A] 4:4:4[:4] pixel formats of any precision, from 8 to 16 bits per component and beyond, in all standard RGB and Y'CbCr color spaces. Synchromy supports any resolution, including SD and HD, NTSC and PAL, 4:3 and 16:9, progressive and interlaced, with or without alpha.

price and availability

Synchromy will be incorporated in the upcoming version 2 release of BitJazz's acclaimed real-time nondestructive SheerVideo™ codecs for use with QuickTime on Mac and Windows, which is expected out by the end of May. In addition, Synchromy will be released as an independent set of cross-platform uncompressed codecs, first for QuickTime and then for Windows Media (AVI). The technology will also be available for licensing. Pricing is not yet set.

About BitJazz Inc.

BitJazz Inc. is the market leader in lossless image compression technology and development. The company first made headlines in 1998 with PhotoJazz, a revolutionary nondestructive image codec whose compression power of 2.5 for real-world imagery leapfrogged PNG's previous record of 1.8. For additional company and product information, please visit http://www.bitjazz.com/.

BitJazz, SheerVideo, and PhotoJazz are trademarks of BitJazz Inc. All other product names and company names are trademarks of their respective owners. SheerVideo and Synchromy are protected by US Patents 7,693,339 and 7,659,911.